Howdy all.
i have been thinking of getting a drum sander and was wondering what other peoples experience has been.
1. if you run a cabinet door through it, what happens to the wood going sideways? do you still end up doing a bunch of hand sanding to get rid of the cross grain marks? what if i used 180 grit, will the cross grain still be rough?
what kinds of other things do you use yours for?
do they ever snipe?
i prefer to buy machines that are going to save me a ton of time and sanding seems to be the big time eater. do you find it worth it?
i am thinking of getting the General double drum sander.
any other comments would be helpful, good or bad.
Tmaxxx
Urban Workshop Ltd
Vancouver B.C.
cheers. Ill buy.
Replies
I purchase an 18" V-Drum sander from Stockroom Supply at one on the Edmonton Tool Shows. I have had mine for 4 years and never a regret. Well one regret that I didn't get a 30" and that I have not installed a good set of fences and material hold downs to make managing long pieces.
But Paul has released a new model this year called the Flat Master and I am going to buy one.
This sanding device is absolute great for material that suffers tear out, heavily figured, painted, stained, excessive resin and pitch. The only wood I have found that even looks like it is sticking to the sandpaper is teak which I am working right now.
Believe it or not, the only reason I have had to replace sandpaper is when I have not paid attention and have caught the edge of the paper with a sharp edge of the work piece and have ripped the paper.
From the website you can view demo videos and see the show dates.
Because changing paper on the V drum is so easy and fast you can sand the length of the door and when you get to your final grit, the cross grain marks will be at 180 or 220 if you need to go that fine. When your sander is running in a straight line you can not avoid the cross grain marks. I haven't done a completed door this way, and I can not remember if Paul ever suggested putting masking tape over the cross grain. The drum is not forcing the paper into the wood, so the abrasive action is different than a conventional drum sander.
Other uses: edge sander before edge gluing. Big increase in gluing surface.
Snipe: Can occur, you have to start level and end level. As with jointers and planers long pieces need the extended support.
Noise: Very quiet. I have no numbers. About the same as my 10" drill press.
Dust: Most of the dust drops into the box. You still need dust collection, but if you forget, I get less dust blowing around than with my random orbital sander.
Efficient: Absolutely. It is one of those ideas that works to well, inexpensive to buy, inexpensive to run, portable (the 18"goes under the table when I'm done), flexible - the 30" drum can handle 2 grits at the same time.
Sorry to ramble on. Am I biased? Yes. I love this tool!
Try and see it at the Victoria show Oct 12 before you commit.
Regards,
Don
T,
I've had a 16 inch open-ended drum sander for some years and I used to use it a lot to make parts smooth and perfectly dimensioned (rather than faring whole glued up doors or similar). It is a joy to putparts together and have the joints flat and even with no "lips". As Don says, bigger would be better; and the double drum idea (1st rough, 2nd fine) would certainly save even more time.
Issues I had were these:
* The clips holding the ends of the sand paper can be troublesome. Make sure they are maintained as they can easily snap off or fall to bits, then it becomes a pain to reinstate them.
* Even 240 grit sandpaper will leave fine parallel scratches that you will need to get out with a quick RO sand or a scrape (whichever you prefer). These fine scratches will show under a transparent finish (but not undr paint).
* Some timbers do not like the drum sander because of the heat it generates. Anything with pitch or gum in it can be problematic, with some timbers that will not sand at all withour burning (eg tambooti and ziricote). Others are tempramental (eg some cherry and white oak will burn more easily that other samples). Stuff like afromosia will sand well but clogs the sandpaper, which must be constantly cleaned with one o' them rubber sticks or the sanding action just stops. As Don notes, teak is just too hard to sand, as is some iroko (must be the high silica content) so it just heats up and quickly wears the sandpaper out.
For getting parts dimensioned perfectly to within 0.1mm, the drum sander is great. As I use handplanes a lot these days for smoothing, the drum sander is now relegated to doing just those critical-dimension jobs, such as making stringing, banding, square sections for plugs and so forth.
If you get one, make sure you use a fine fiter in your dust extractor (down to half a micron) as these machines make lots of dust, including the invisibly small particles that are the real danger to your health.
Lataxe, more a shaver than a duster these days.
any other comments would be helpful, good or bad.
Tmaxxx
Well, here is my opinion. One of my daughters bought me a PerformaX 10-20. The 'little' one. I thought.. Where thew heck she come up with this.. It is a wonderful tool.. Not that I have anything to compare it to.. I think I ran every stick I had in the shop through it just to see what would happen trying different grits.
Well, guess what? As I expected.. Tear out on some woods with coarse grits! As I would expect..
Take purpleheart or birdseye maple. Hell, even hand sanding can 'pop' a hole in the surface or cause a splinter to POP up!
It is a WONDERFUL tool. I should have had one LONG ago.. BUT like any tool there is always something that comes up!
The size she got me is about perfect because it fits most of the sticks I want to sand.
Size depends on what you usually do. Being able to sand both sides at once would be a + for me but I'm more that happy with this 'little tool' Hard to find any gripes except changing the belts but I would assume they all have the same problems.
Just go for what YOU think best. Even if it does not meet all your expectations you will STILL be pleased with it!
tmaxx,
I check into the cross scratching. You don't tape off the cross grain. You just scratch it up and sand it out later. With the V-Drum you can easily go progressively up to 320 grit (higher if you want) to minimize the hand sanding. The only way to beat this is to sand the pieces separately, with the grain.
To clarify on Teak. It sands very nicely in the Vdrum, just behaves differently and is the only plain wood to leave a residue of any kind on my sandpaper. I don't know which species or variety of teak I have. I am waiting for th distributor to tell me. It is plain weird.
The Vdrum does not generate heat, so adhesives, resins, paint just sand off with the wood and do not bond with the sandpaper.
Dust is almost a non issue. it falls into the box. A mask and dust collector are recommended, but this thing blows less dust around the shop than my 5" RO hand sander.
Don
Edited 9/24/2007 7:11 pm ET by Don01
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