I have the pages up now for the new version of my drum sander. I do have a couple of kits available for sale so I apologize for the slightly spammy nature of this post, but the plans are up there for free and I hope it will be of benefit to those thinking about building one of these.
It does not even have the hint of Spam smell. ;~) Why not? Because you contribute!
Great looking unit. Nice work.
Building machines from wood reminds me of how you can often tell what trade a guy is in by looking at his pickup truck. Carpenters will often have a nice plywood and 2-b-for frame. A wood worker has spar varnished oak rails, a plumber a rack made from pipe, etc.
This extends to other areas too. I have a neighbor, obviously a sheet metal guy. About half of the 4x4 post and two rail fence > I have the pages up now for the new version of my drum sander. =A0I do
"SonomaProducts.com" wrote
Great looking unit. Nice work.
Building machines from wood reminds me of how you can often tell what trade a guy is in by looking at his pickup truck. Carpenters will often have a nice plywood and 2-b-for frame. A wood worker has spar varnished oak rails, a plumber a rack made from pipe, etc.
This extends to other areas too. I have a neighbor, obviously a sheet metal guy. About half of the 4x4 post and two rail fence on his corner lot has rotted away. He is replacing it with sheetmetal studs which after painting look pretty much like the rest of the wood fence.
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I know of what you speak.
I used to build gym equipment. We made most of our equipment with steel square tubing. And we used a lot of pulleys and cable. Using those materials and skill set, I have built a lot of things that raised some eyebrows. But it is what I know and it is sturdy!
Ahhhhh...., that is so cute!! A baby drum sander.
This ain't spam. This is sharing some wildly creative garage engineering with us. Aren't you the guy who makes those mad creative jewelery boxes? This is more of the creative side of you. We love to see that sort of thing. I read the whole thing through. To tell the truth, I would have never thought of doing something like this. Good on ya Kevin.
I put this post right up there with the best of Swingman's posts. There are some folks who really CONTRIBUTE when it comes to informative websites/posts. You and swingman are in that catagory.
Again, this ain't spam. This is the good stuff. Feel free to create anything else you desire, document it and share it with us. We will lap it up and feel a little envious/unworthy.But that is OK. And I have to say it again.
Ahhhhh...., that is so cute!! A baby drum sander.
Baby! This is a baby:
Yeah, I know. Just wanted to give people a heads up there was something for sale in there.
-Kevin
Well it looks a lot better than the old one, that's for sure. I don't worry about what things for the shop look like too much, just so long as they do the job. But it's going to look pretty spiffy once I get the table covered in stainless :)
-Kevin
Ok Lee, the machine is "cool" and appears to be well thought out. Cute?, A baby drum sander? I immediately pictured my ND neighbor making a similar comment about a 2k walnut desk I had just completed for a customer. He is a little light in his loafers. ;~)
thought that the 16/32 would be the better choice. My wife talked me into the 22/44. I find it adequate and am perfectly happsy with it. I shutter to think having to do some of the things that I do with the smaller models.
Concerning yours, it appears to be a manual feed style, correct? Strictly light pass? Have you ever considered the Sand Flee?
Hell, that's pretty
Not in the market yet, but long term I may get lustful.. I was considering a face drum sander but I can see advantages here too.
1 Howsabout considering shipping to the land of our own dear Queen?2 How's the drum made?
Every time my wife sees a Ferrari, Lambo, Porche or other very cool looking European sports car, she says, "ahh, that's a cute little car."
It really depends on the stock. I make a lot of dovetailed cedar boxes for a wholesale client. I start out with rough 4/4 which is usually about 1-1/8 to start with from my supplier. That gets resawn in half at the band saw and then I make some pretty aggressive passes through the drum sander with 60 grit. But try that with hard maple and you'll just destroy the paper.
But you can't sand to a thickness with that. With the case of the dovetail parts, I may not care what the actual final thickness ends up being but I do care that all ~50 pieces are the same thickness. I don't even own a planer, haven't felt the need for one. I either buy s2s or I resaw and sand it. With figured woods, or anything with knots, you're going to need to make several passes to get out the tearout, and like a jointer sure you could get away with just a light pass but start making many passes and who knows if your surfaces are going to still be parallel.
I use it all the time in fitting parts to a groove or slot, sometimes it makes more sense to do that than to fit the groove to the part. For example when I make jewelry box drawer dividers, the slots in the dividers are a saw kerf wide and they need to fit perfectly.
The other nice thing about the way the paper is attached is you can have multiple grits on the drum at the same time, without losing any of the drum. Apparently with the sand flee you can use multiple grits too, but with the spiral wrapping you're going to lose an area in the middle where the grits are overlapping each other. Typically I have
60 grit on half and 120 on the other half. As long as it's less than 9" wide I don't have to change the paper.I don't know how the results compare to a performax. I am sure with the conveyor you can get more consistent results, and not get a workout using it. You're doing the work of that ~1/6 hp feed motor. Pricewise it sure beats the pants of it though, especially if you already have a motor.
-Kevin
I'm only doing a handful of these. I had visions of selling them when I first came up with the second design a few years back and ordered a bunch of parts, but I am not set up as an LLC and the liability issues are more than I want to deal with. Plus I'm busy enough doing actual woodworking now I'd rather concentrate on that. So I just want to sell what I have on hand, and if someone else wants to run with making the kits they're more than welcome, the plans are there for anyone to use and improve upon.
It may not have made it obvious enough, but there are a bunch of pages up there explaining everything with photos, there's an index of the links off to the right of the photo. But basically, it's just a bunch of MDF circles. I had 100 of them CNC'd, but you can just band saw them as they don't need to be accurate. Once it's all glued up you true it up by attaching sandpaper to a block of wood and just raise up the table until it's true. If you want to spiral wrap paper on it that's all you need to do besides figure out a way to clamp the paper at the edges. But I use a wedge clamping method to use regular sheet paper, so there's a slot cut in the drum and evenly spaced threaded inserts.
-Kevin
Would it be easier for someone with a good lathe to make one?
Thanks for the explanation Kevin. It makes more sense to me now. One thing in particular I enjoyed using my drum sander for was making jewelry box drawers fit with even spacing. My 12 drawer chests have 4 different height drawers and I cut the drawers to fit the opening exactly. Then I sand the top and bottoms of the drawer assemblies to get the perfect gap on top and bottom.
And that is the perfect comment, she is a "girl". LOL
I think the trick would be to have the center shaft perfectly centered. But, perhaps if you could mount the shaft with the pieces already mounted...
Maybe even tweak the drum in the machine by running a board with PSA paper attached to sand the drum... Basically work it backwards.
I was thinking, lathe, because the whole thing looks like a giant pen kit. :-)
Kosher spam :-)
I don't think so. It really only takes a few minutes to true it, and not only do you get it rounded but you also get it parallel to the table at the same time. In practice it doesn't stay *perfectly* parallel once you move it up and down a few times, but what's a few thou between friends. The difficult part is the groove, installing the threaded inserts, and making the wedges.
-Kevin
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