Without modern power equipment, period cabinetmakers had to rely on planing and scraping wood surfaces rather than sanding them, as is often done today. The result is that the originals show the wavy surfaces indicative of such methods. Authentic re-creations should show these marks well. The outside surfaces should show slightly wavy marks from scraping, while the interior surfaces should show the rough tracks of the smoothing plane. I plane and scrape every surface, and do not rely on sanding as the primary method of leveling a surface. Beware of the reproductions that seem too flat and smooth, as they most probably have been sanded with machinery that doesn’t replicate the look of the originals.