Sander idea....possibly dangerous

[Jay Pique]

Did a bunch of sanding today and got to thinking of potentially better ways to get a smooth surface. A dual drum sander would be very nice, but it's rather pricey. I was thinking that a large vibrating flat surface might do the trick. What if you bought one of those Grizzly granite surface plates, stuck some rubber feet on it, and then bolted a concrete vibrator (or two or three) to the bottom. Then you put some PSA 120 grit on top, crank up the power and sand away. Anybody out there tried this? Anyone seen this type of device already out there? I like the idea of the vibrating action versus the linear marks put out by a spinning drum. Am I likely to get the same result with an oscillating belt sander? What would be really cool is to set up your material feeder over the top of the surface plate.

Who knows.

JP

[Jerry Gilreath]

Just don't let the better half sit on it while your sanding

[Bestest Handsander]

If you do decide to give it a try, be sure the video camera is running. You just might make $10K!

[CW]

Not a new idea. They have been lapping rocks this way for a long time.

[Charles Erskine]

Delta had a stationary random orbit sander on the market for a short while. Imagine a hand-held ROS fixed upside down to a table. I tried one and hated it. Basically, the board just shook rather than being sanded. Enough people agreed with me that they took it off the market.

[Jay Pique]

Thanks for the reply Charles - you answered one question and prompted a few others. Sounds like you'd need to have a pretty solid grip on the wood for sure. I've got a few ideas on how to fix that, but now we're getting a bit more "complex".... Heck, a few more complexities and I'll have built myself a dual-drum Performax!

JP

[Dave Balderstone]

Is that the 9" benchtop? I picked one up at the borg on clearance a whie back and like it fine. Especially with the fence, it's a nice little unit for smaller pieces.

djb