I bought the lumber for the second level of the aquarium rack.

Again, it's raw tiger wood. This time, i worked the wood better :

1. cut wood to size;
2. use the electric planer to rectify the global shape of the wood;
3. use the belt sander to smooth the surface;
4. use the orbital sander if needed.

Last time, i used the electric planner then the orbital sander : it is really ineficient. The belt sander is incredibly faster, and in my case, gave a comparable surface finish. Obviously, with fine grain on the orbital sander, you can go smoother. However, it has little to no effect on the final piece once oiled.

Indeed, when oiling the wood, it will raise the grain, and you will have to sand anyway between passes. In the end, this time, i skipped the orbital sander completely, but used 500 grit sandpaper, by hand between each layer of oil. It was a faster process, and i got a way smoother result (however last time i used only 3-4 layers of oil, this time i did use 8 layers).

You can see on the picture above the wood after sanding, before any oiling.

All in all, this went much faster, but the wood was neither straight nor square, i would really love to have access to a planer. However, i did without it, and ended up with a pretty close result to what i had designed. However, the assembly required a bit more work to compensate for 1-2 missing/extra millimeters here or there.

In the next log, we'll see how i made the foots for the second level of the aquarium rack.