I've built three flattops now and am pretty happy with the result, so I decided it's time to try a carved top. Armed with a couple of nice gouges, a 12mm Ibex arched sole finger plane, and a good scraper, I have the outer side of an A-style plate looking pretty reasonable. Rough carving with sharp tools is a lot of fun, so I didn't feel the need for power tools for that phase, at least for a spruce plate. I'm now carving in the recurve. So my question is, what's the best way to get from here to finish sanding, meaning blending in the various areas to get nice smooth curves and transitions? I tried a sanding disk in the drill press and found it hard to avoid grooves from the edge of the disk. Is it worth investing in a random orbital sander? Sometimes it feels like a large riffler file would be really handy (if there is such a thing), especially compared to my results with the Ibex or scraper going cross-grain. Obviously, hand sanding is an option, but I don't mind turning to a little mechanization if it makes sense.
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