Hello,
I am at a stage in my shop where I need a drum sander to sand veneers to a consistant thickness. I do allot of laminate glue ups and might use 10-12 plies in certain situations. Having inconsistant thicknesses can result in the overall piece being thicker than the one along side it. Also since I resaw the veneers, I really need to keep them consistant. A commercial drum sander is out of the question right now. I have researched the kits/plans that are available but haven’ t found one that I feel will handle my needs.
Any recommendations/imput would be humbly appreciated.
Ken
Albuquerque
Replies
hi ken,
friend of mine has a performax sander. you might google performax and see what's what. sounds like you're on a budget. maybe a used one for sale on line. the machine is a bit touchy, but once set up correctly, performs very nicely.
eef
I do not know the size of veneers which you are resawing, however if they are not too wide, you might consider something like the attachment shown in the following link. http://www.luthiersfriend.com/
I have also seen, online, DIY approaches to constructing the same thing. What is nice about this commercially made model is the ability to make small adjustments. I assume that you have some sort of drill press. If not a Harbor Freight low end unit would be fine.
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
Somehow sanding in a vertical position seems weird to me and there are the width limitations of the drum. I have been looking a 4 different designs but when I wrote them asking about theability of sanding to a uniform thin thickness, they all said that I should look at a commercial drum sander. I think that I will try to choose from one of the four and redesign it to meet my needs. If anyone has experience with a DIY sander, I would love to hear from you.
Thanks,
Ken
Ken,
I meant to build one for years but never got around it. I found a barely used one at the tool store and pounced on it, so I never built one. ShopNotes had some nice plans for one a while back (2 years, maybe). It used pillow blocks to support the drum made up of many, many MDF discs laminated together. The drum was cleverly powered by a pulley mounted on a tablesaw in place of the blade. The conveyor belt was a wide sanding belt over the bed with two drums at either end; the drum at the infeed had a hand crank on it so you had to turn the handle to feed the stock.
Here's a link to the ShopNotes page with a picture of this contraption. The PDF file is a cuttling list, which might be all you need if you are clever.
http://www.shopnotes.com/issues/086/extras/thickness-sander/
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