Open Frame Drum Sander ("OFDS") I've got one in my school shop. Great machine and it becomes more versatile the longer you have it. Put any machine like this in a school shop and the students will invent uses you can't imagine. Not all of them have been terrifying but I'm awfully glad I have the kids trained to ask first before they try weird uses. You can replace the belt with a coated abrasive belt of the same size. They are readily available, and sold for the Jet and Supermax 16-32 drum sanders which are substantially the same as yours. I'd get one right away if I had your machine. You should also get the infeed and outfeed tables. You'll be glad to have them, great for staging when you have lots of small parts and also running really long ones. That oversized base starts to seem small when you are feeding through a long 4x6. Can't remember why we were cleaning up a 4x6, but glad we had the tables and the wide stance base when we did. With the open end, you can feed through long twisty snake shapes by manhandling the ends (imagine for example, laminated sides of a bentwood rocker, laminate the frame shape, thickness the laminations on the OFDS and round them off on the router table. You can also sand a 30" wide panel in two passes. Great for the signs we make on our CNC routers. The idea behind the "slippery" conveyor belt is that if you are taking a heavy pass, the work piece will slide on the conveyor instead of overloading the drum. Also makes it easier to turn and feed that weird snake shaped piece mentioned above. Still, I agree, the slippery belt is not a great idea. I passed on that option. Performax and Jet use a sensor to check the load on the drum and instead of "slipping" the work piece, they dynamically adjust the conveyor's feed rate, but you can do just as well manually, listening for motor strain and adjusting the feed rate. I run 60 grit on the drum for cleanup and thicknessing. The kids have to use the ROS or sand by hand if they want a finer finish. But 60 rapidly cleans up the salvaged wood, mostly scrap "HEM-FIR" framing lumber that makes up most of my material supply for the school. I keep a cleaning stick at the machine and clean up the drum after every operation. Go easy on "pitchy" or wet wood. We get lots of Lodge Pole Pine and Douglas Fir which clogs the drum fast if you get greedy. Dont even think of running it without dust collection!
I bought a Supermax sander that had the poly belt, I replaced it with a sandpaper belt and there is no comparison. The key to an overhead sander is proper feed speed / removal thickness. I had to play with mine a lot to get it down. I bought a digital read out for mine and I only take off maybe a quarter of a turn at a time, or about .010 per pass. You will get way better life from the sandpaper if you clean it a lot, especially with resinous woods. The finer the paper the faster it clogs. Great video!
Someone may have already commented but for small pieces double side tape them to a larger piece. Run then through back to back. I know guitar makers who use this trick and can drum sand down to 2mm.
I bought a Jet sander that looks very similar to your unit. The belt is a abrasive material, about 80 grit and I never had a problem with wood slipping. Good luck.
I have a Performax, which is the same design as yours, Delta and Jet's model. The inboard tensioning clamp on my drum is so strong it requires a special tool to compress it to put the tail of the paper in it. To make matters worse, while using the tool, your hand is in the way and you have to feed the end of the paper in blindly. My conveyor works well and I imagine it will fit your sander. However changing paper on mine requires an extensive library of profanity and patience.
I've got a Steel City dual drum sander. The biggest complaint I had with it is the clips NEVER held the sand paper to the roll. After a few passes, the paper would come out of the clip and wrap itself around the roll in a strange way and ruin the piece of wood going through. I eventually upgraded to Grizzly hook and loop system and it's been great! If your clips start to fail, remember you can upgrade.
That's why I don't buy Craftex anymore. I have the supermax 19/39 drum sander. It's really sweet. The conveyor belt it just like sandpaper. No slipping at all. If you take too much of a big bite, the computer slows down the conveyor belt automatically.
When doing your synthetic, run chalk on the drum first. But the big sidewalk chalk stick kids use and just run that over the drum. It helps keep gummy materials from sticking. Wax can also be used but is a lot messier. I have done this on belt Sanders and it works great.
I was in the same boat about getting a drum sander, and it is the most important piece of equipment I have. I put mine on a wheeled stand and just push around where I need it.
That’s a great idea! I don’t really have the room to leave mine on a stand and have to carry it under the stairs in the garage and man, that is getting old. Might have to make some room for a roller stand sooner than later 👍
For synthetic materials, you may want to check out the flatmaster sold by stockroom supply ( not an ad, just a satisfied user) because there is no pressure on the material, it doesn't heat up, so it won't gum up the sandpaper. you use it like a jointer, so it may not be efficient for the sign boards, but I love it for knife scales, cutting boards etc.
I bought a used JET brand drum sander that was in almost new condition and it uses a sand paper material for their conveyor belt. The surface that grips the wood is a sand paper like material and the underneath part of the belt that slides against the table is a soft fabric type material so it slides well against the table and grips well against the wood. Great tool though, I love mine.
I had no idea that there were drum sanders that small. The one I once saw was huge. Regarding the planer, well let's just say "I know what you mean". The first time I used mine was with some stabilized wood. Man, when that sumbitch came shooting out, it came with a vengeance. Took me 20 minutes to find my left testicle. That was a bad day.
There are even smaller ones at 10", so you could do 20" wide pieces at best. 16-32 are quite common in the woodworking world. Very useful, sometimes finicky to tune up correctly if you have some of the older models.
I have the same sander, the conveyor works well on mine and I prefer it over the abrasive type belt. It seems like it wears in and gets some more grip but you have more experience with belts than I do.
@Simple Little Life mine was made by Ryobi, maybe different material. I support anyone that modifies their tools to suit them like you do and it's super helpful that you put the results out.
I have one of the older ones that has a black conveyor that is actually another sandpaper sheet. When I first discovered the machine buried in my dads shed, and before I learned to use it, I thought it might sand both sides at once. Yeah, that was dumb, but it is sandpaper so I had a senior moment. Some hate the machine but I think it’s awesome. It beats a hand held belt sander, where my hand would go numb.
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it but you should mount a belt sander vertically so you can run all the edges of your sign pieces across it and all but do away with your orbital for sign creation. You can buy Sanders made to do this job. They use them extensively in cabinet shops. However, with the size of pieces it looks like you are making I would think you could use a hand held belt sander mounted 90deg to a table surface. Also that could be small enough you could possibly mount the jig above your drum sander and save the floor space.
Our Mens Shed has a dual drum sander. It has two drums on which two different grades of sandpaper is used. The first drum which is on the input side has 80 grit paper, while the second drum behind the first has a 220 grit. It gives great results in one pass. The biggest enemy of drum sanders is excessive glue on boards you are sanding, the friction melts it and the only place it can go is on the expensive belt. Hope this helps...
The base is set at a angle to hold the weight without being knocked over .... I know what everyone is thinking I am dumb for pointing out the obvious ...but what I am getting at is for every let's say ten pounds one buts it the air the base would taper out slightly let's say an 1/8 or even a 1/4 inch depending on height I would imagine making a cart that is squared and on locking casters would be best suited .. can wait for that vid! Keep em coming
I have the Jet version, with an abrasive feed belt. The sandpaper holding clips are designed by a sadist. I strongly suspect that if you upgrade the feed belt you will uncover weaknesses in the sandpaper clips. Nothing like hearing one end let loose and tearing up the cover. Choice of abrasive really depends upon the job. Are you flattening? Trying for a finished surface (I rarely try for that, using it mainly for sizing or stripping). Can't recall using it on softwoods yet, just hardwoods where if the paper shifts and over laps a tad you'll get a burn stripe on the wood. Fun times. Good luck!
We've had one of these for almost 30 years, still works great. The only problem we have had is that it sands more off closer to the motor and adjusting it is not available. Ours has a feed that looks and feels like 100 grit black sand paper.
I have a 24 inch grizzly twin drum sander it thickness stands and finish sands in one pass, it also has the same belt as yours, but mine has pressure rollers on the infeed and out feed to keep pressure on the work piece, works great, I think that's just a sub standard machine meant for the Hobbyist market
Check out Festool random orbital sanders for the vibration. They are expensive but very little vibration transfers to your hand. They also stop instantly and with a dust collector there is practically no dust.
I had the name brand version of that and put many hours on it at my business. We got the sandpaper belt on it, but nothing I did would get the belt tracking to be true. The replacement was no better. We only got good tracking with the belt like you have, but I agree, traction isn't great. I improved it by putting weighted caster wheels at the infeed and outfeed to put downward pressure on the wood against the belt. We also would feed items one against the next, so it would push things through. It took a lot of fine tweaking to get the drum level to the belt. A RUclipsr showed a good method of using a metal ruler with a wire connected that went through a lightbulb, battery and connected to the metal drum. That way you could detect with the two came into contact more accurately than by feel. As our need for speed increased, we switched to a 38" Woodmaster sander which has been so much nicer.
On small pieces use double side tape between two long boards. It's called saddling and it works great. Keeps your small pieces from being destroyed by the planer.
Performax's belt might fit on that, it looks like a copy of them. The performax also has infeed and outfeed rollers to hold down pressure on the workpiece. I have ran a lot of oak, alder and maple through mine in the form of cabinet doors. I don't have the space for a widebelt.
From my experience with Drum Sanders the feed problems are caused by trying to make to heavy a cut or feed running to fast for the material being sanded Itis not designed to be a thicknesser
Advice! For the sandpaper gumming up, with soft wood you need to use your paper cleaning bar far more often to stop that. as for the conveyor belt, spray contact adhesive on it and let it dry, it will work much better, we coat as needed as the dust collects and makes it slipery again.
Great video. I feel your pain having spent countless days sanding. The 60g feed belt will work. For the drum i switched over from cloth-back to indasa sticky-back free cut and this is a marked improvement and cost saving. For resinous woods that tend to gum up a good trick is to rub the drum/abrasive with dry soap bar and this will prevent most glazing. For those incorrigible oily woods you can sprinkle talcum powder over the surface to be sanded and this will stop gumming. All the best.
Good luck with the drum sander. I have a Performax 16in drum sander purchased in the late 90's. This originally had 2 1/2in dust port which was too small to allow the airflow needed to remove the dust. I cut this out and epoxied in a 4in dust port. Performax changed the design to include 4in dust port the next year. My unit has a belt made from abrasive, which is what you need to replace the crappy belt. My biggest issue with this style of drum sander is the heat generated when sanding. The synthetics melted due to the high heat. It is so easy to get burnt resin from e.g., pine due to the heat. These marks are impossible to remove so the wrap has to be replaced. I have had wraps ruined in a single pass. Change to blue zirconia abrasive paper. More expensive, but less heat and so will last longer. I use 80 or 100 grit zirconia paper. Higher grits clog up too easily for me. Dave.
You should also use a joiner for cups in bows and your planer to run it parallel, or spend the money on better lumber, you don't have to spend time finishing with expensive tools, and replacement cost of paper and blades, of course if you had a spiral cutter you wouldn't have to worry about maintenance to much. I accidentally ran something through with a screw head in it, planed it right off and didn't phase it at all the next boards still came out perfect and it cut no different.
Yeah I did end up getting a new planer with the Shelix cutting head on it and man, that was a very worthwhile upgrade. I actually find that this setup works quite well and for the minimal sanding I do (as far as material removal) the abrasives are lasting quite well. When we get busy, I run these machines about 8hrs a day (just the drum sander) an I have a few hundred hours on it now. I would like to get a jointer but I think this is a little faster, and for the area that I have, it’s fairly easy to set up and also store away when I’m not using it. But yeah, the helical head is sweet!
I've had this same machine for almost 20 years. Mine is under the name of Accura but is identical. Don't buy cheap paper. Use Norton or Klingspor heavyweight paper and it gives little trouble. I'm still on original conveyor belt, just keep it clean
Right on. That’s great to hear yours has lasted so well. I have several hundred hours on mine now (maybe upwards of 1000hrs) and it’s still going strong. I’m actually surprised it’s doing so well with the intensity I use it during the Etsy Christmas rush 👍
I use the Grizzly G0458Z, it's a very similar 18" open end thickness sander. It uses the sandpaper style belt and I can tell you it's not any better. There are a lot of complaints about the G0458Z online but for what it is it works very well, it is by no means an automatic machine. Just like yours you have to feed in and out all the stock, It's belt requires constant adjustment as it is constantly running too far to one side or the other, and it can not take deep passes as its a little underpowered. for the price, it does what I need it to I just don't expect it to do more than it is designed to do.
heres a tip, to lengthen the life of the sanding belt order a crepe block from lee valley tools. you hold the crepe block against the sandind belt and it cleans out all the caked on sawdust. give it a try you wont be disappointed!
How is the finish of the boards? Looking at how the paper is wound on the drum it looks like where it over laps would dig slightly deeper than the rest and you would end up with small ditches the length of the board. It may not be doing that but it just looks like that would happen. Might be worth running a test piece through with a little bit of an aggressive bite. Then shade the top with a pencil (making lots of side to side squiggles ) then hit it with something square and flat and as wide as the board like a card scraper or something. Just to see if there are any valleys left. Just an idea mate. Great video as always man. Just thinking out loud
I imagine the little squares in the belting are there to catch the excess saw dust and remove it without it buiding high spots as a flat belt would do. I use a slim push stick with mine. I find it helps a lot. Our local mens shed (community workshop) has a big dual drum sander. Its a $4500 unit that although better, it still slips and burns out belts just as quickly as my small unit.
Before you start making a new feed belt try spraying the the one it came with with some Rustoleum leak seal. It should make it way gripper. Do your synthetic scales with 80, 220 and use the whole roller starting left to right. that way you won't gum up the paper as fast. 👍😃
Got the Steel City version. Getting - and keeping - the belt on is a real pain. Rips. Won't clip in place easily. Clips don't hold well and requires constant adjustment.
Quick idea from me: Make a sandpaper cutting stencil, you really want to use decent quality sandpaper (you can buy in a roll) and making stencil that shows you where you should cut helps a lot
there is no free lunch, one gets what they pay for. The sander I use in my shop has a 36" wide feed capacity, and was over $15,000 performing flawless. Much larger scale I know, but I have seen other shops with the same wide capacity that are about good enough for a huge paper weight, costing a whole lot less. Its unfortunate but quality has a huge price tag
make sure you leave a gap between the wrapping of the sanding paper to help with clogging. It looks like you've put the paper close together and you can clean the paper to cut down on buying more.
I’ve found a great solution for the slippery belt! Don’t bother trying a sandpaper belt (I got a custom one made, and I couldn’t get it to track straight no matter what). Buy a can of plastidip (rubberized spray) and put in a bunch of coats (I think I did the whole can). No more slipping! I used clear spray. Honestly totally fixes the problem. Follow the instructions on the can. I would advise taking the belt off and spraying it standing upright.
At 13:56, there is view of the pressure rollers. Setting them properly will stop the slipping issue. There are 2 pressure rollers, one in front and one behind the sanding drum. If you look on the inside of the drum frame on the ends, there are screws for setting the downward pressure. Also, you should center up the conveyor belt, by adjusting the tension bolts on either side. "Read the directions even if you don't follow them.", from a Baz Luhrman Sunscreen song ;)
Must use a dust extractor. Mark a pencil line every inch or so along the length of the board to see where yoiu need to work. I have an Excalibur and it has a drive system. I use mostly 60 or 80 grit and finish with a random orbit.
You can reduce the amount of gumming by using sandpaper specifically designed for synthetic materials.... different abrasives use more or less amounts of sodium lauryl sulfate to prevent gumming
I had that sander demoed and it is useless......I bought the 19-38 Super Max and its awesome. The conveyor never slips even on small 3" x 3/16 crafts. So worth it!
When you get your new conveyor belt made if it works better? No doubting you,I’d shoot them a video and hopefully you show us your upgrade!! Happy holidays my friend
As you should know by now drum sanders require extreme dust management and a regular shop vac will not cut the mustard unless you clean/change the filter ever few passes because it will be saturated fast with all that dust.
A handy machine, mine is the same but probly 20+ yrs old. Keep in mind that they are designed for finishing work not for dimensioning, larger ones 600mm capacity are capable of dimensioning but this is hard on the machine and wears out belts pretty quick. Take very light passes ,even lighter as your grit gets finer. A more grippy belt might help but be sure the seam is dead flat or you will get problems similar to sniping. Be nice to see a vid about your wifes work one day. 🍺
This video is my discovery of your channel, so I'm not sure the type of woodworking you do yet, but my drum sander has been invaluable. I have a Supermax 1938 which has a sandpaper belt instead of that material of yours. I've used it way more than I expected to when I bought it. Almost every project I do, cutting boards, signs, bandsaw boxes, segmented bowls, etc, run through the drum sander. Not sure how I lived without one for so long.
Well, I really don’t do any wood working. I mostly make knives so the only wood is in some of the handles. I’ve but over 800 boards through this so far and I love this thing. I made some modifications to it and now have it working really well. 👍
You bought a cheap machine! I use a Delta and I use it often and it works very well. I did a lot of research before buying and did not go by price alone. The right drum sander is not dumb.
I agree with you. I have made several modifications to this and it is working great now. I’ve sanded over 800 boards with this since changing a few things in the machine (and removing some parts of it 😆) and it works way better than from the factory 👍
Good to hear you got it working as you wanted. My jointed is only 6" so I use mine to true up one side of wide boards before sending them through my planer. I also use it to fine tune splines etc.
Man you and my father could tell each other some stories. My father retired from the Siemons Dematiq company formally known as Rapistan. He built huge conveyor belts for Large airports. I remember a huge job he worked on for the Frito Lay company when I was a child, I'm 35 now. He also did a lot of the computer management boxes that ran the conveyor. I thought that sounded so much like what you used too work at.
That’s cool! I have work with Rapistan equipment and actually have an aluminum logo plate of theirs hanging in my garage. The conveyor world is a small one I’ve found. 👍
I wonder if the conveyor belt isn't super grippy so it prevents overworking the sand paper or the sanding wheel motor, or trying to force the peace through a pass, which could cause the depth set mechanism to go out of wack. I was looking at belt sanders recently because I was having trouble getting resawn boards to a desired thickness, similar to your problem with your scales, and found that instead just using a backer board for the planer did the trick. As far as getting a desirable finish using the thickness planer, maybe look to see if your planer will accept a helical cutter. They provide a much cleaner cut, that in some cases doesn't even need sanding afterwards, at least nothing super coarse. Also, as far as eliminating snipe from your planing, check and make sure your infeed and outfeed tables are aligned properly. they should be at the height of the center table of the planer (I don't know the technical term), and should be level with it. I corrected that on mine and snipe and gouging issues disappeared. Of course, I was mostly working with hardwoods, so that might just be an issue you have with softer woods. That's with the assumption that what you had there was pine. Great video, good luck with all of your family's projects!
Trading chips for dust. The best part of sander is the you set to just kiss the surface with high number sand paper and a ready for finish surface or put on a coarse paper and sand stuff down to thickness. The only warning is watch the heat build in the wood.
Something you need to understand about the lumber you buy, a red knot will normally not fall out or screw you when you plane the board. A black knot is the absolute opposite, avoid black knots or cut them out if you can. I you can't work around black knots, epoxy them in place before you do anything.
Use a piece of carpet tape to temporarily stick smaller pieces to a longer scrap of flat 1/2” plywood before feeding them into the sander. It will keep the piece flat so it doesn’t tip into the feed rollers. No snipe.
As someone who’s had a few back surgeries - lift with your legs, man! Watching 3:45 - 3:52 made me cringe. Good content! Thank you for taking the time to make this
Seems to me a Stroke sander would suit you better. At 80 grit it cuts fast and finer than a drum sander, almost ready for finish. I'd put 40 or 60 grit in your drum sander rather than feed through several times with a finer one because Pine is sticky stuff. One pass with that and one with finish grit should suffice. To be frank I wouldn't use a drum sander for anything other than reclaimed wood or veneers. Once I've touched sand to a piece of wood I am reluctant to wear out my edge tools on it. About tearout and curvy fiber around knots and such, there are thicknessers where the cutter runs with the feed direction, thus eliminating tearout. But I think it's mainly an industrial thing, I haven't actually seen one, just the boards it made. It needs to hold the workpiece very securely.
Another suggestion: :) check out crepe blocks for cleaning your sanding belt. I was skeptical at first, but having used one I find my sanding paper lasts a LOT longer.
It is essential in my opinion. I use the dressing stick as the work feeds through. If I don’t it clogs up in very few passes. I wouldn’t be without it. It doesn’t tear grain and it’s quiet. I often push the work a little.
I haven't used Craftex specifically, but I have a King Canada drum sander which is basically identical. Very similar belt material and I have zero issues with it. I won't go against your knowledge of conveyer belts but I will give you my two cents on drum sanders. This machine isn't designed to take off more than a 1/64" at a time. That's using 80 grit, so it's cutting as fast as possible to remove that 1/64" and it will still gum up and burn. This machine also isn't designed for any pieces less that (about) 6" in length. There are spring loaded rollers on either end of the sanding drum, which pushes the material down against the belt to feed it through. The piece isn't long enough to touch BOTH rollers while going through it will get stuck in the middle. Unless your conveyer belt is a suction cup, it will not feed through on its own, it will spit that material out without the use of the rollers. Another thing to note is that the drum and belt surface often need adjustment out of the box to be parallel, so it may not grab on the "high" side if this adjustment hasn't been made. Maybe you head the instructions and know all of this but that's what I learned from using these.
I was looking at possibly buying your Last Ditch Necker on your website, and in the description noticed a possible typo "acid stone-was finish". If you meant to put that I apologize, but I think you may have meant to put acid stone-wash finish. Hope this helps, just looking out for you. Your quality and craftsmanship is amazing and I want your website to be the best it can be. You deserve all this success and have inspired me and many others to give a shot at custom knife making. Hopefully next year I'll have a knife good enough to make an appearance on your viewer knive videos. Again, I hope this doesn't come across as nagging, just want to help you. Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see your next video!
I hate to be rude but you have a typo as well "Last Ditch Necker on you website" correct me if I'm wrong but I think you meant to say "Last Ditch Necker on your website" , you placed a "you" instead of a "your" hope this helps...
I definitely remember you opening up the planer and running the small piece in it. I think the drum sander was a great addition for what you do. I sure could have used one last year but I don’t build cabinets everyday. When I do build them it would be nice.
Its rare to have someone with actual years of experience on something that can add to a video like this. I hope they reach out to you and not only improve your system, but improve all their tools like this. Often, they get more ideas - better ideas - from practical users like yourself than they do in a think tank in their boxed offices.
If the drum gets pitch loaded spray it with methyl hydrate, wait 10 seconds and scrub with a wire toothbrush. Works like a hot damn. I have had one of these for many years and use it more than my thickness planer. Does NOT tear out burled or highly figured wood.
You should be able to get a sandpaper style belt without a problem. Take a look at the belts that fit performax (now Jet) 16”. Other tip is to get a crepe block to clean your paper. Should get you a lot more life out of a wrap. The slick belt might be saving you from the nuisance of driving the belt too hard and tripping a breaker which becomes a PITA if the machine doesn’t have a “smart” controller. Still, a great tool and always a nice fallback for erasing mistakes :)
That "chunk out" is called "tear out" and it's what happens when you plain wood with knots. It also happens on endgrain that gets too dry and in a variety of other places. The easiest way to avoid it is to not use dimensional pine or go with clear pine at the cheapest. Hard woods will generally have less tear out as well. Lastly you can also fill tear out. Lots of wood fillers available. Oh also the "dishing" is called "cupping" and "bowing". :)
@@prestonkd Ah yes, that was a typo. In fact likely because of autocorrect. However I wasn't being pedantic by letting him know the terms in woodworking. Terms that may help him as he looks for ways to improve his craft. (Googling chunk out will probably lead you astray.) Many thanks for pointing out the typo. I've grown so much as a person.
Just a comment on the conveyor belt... I'm not a conveyor specialist, but I do incorporate a lot of conveyance in my designs (I'm a machine designer for food packaging). Perhaps the belt is designed to slip under the wood instead of jamming it into the sanding drum which could cause damage to the tool or the operator? I'm not familiar with the features of this machine so I could be totally off base. Just something to think about. In certain instances I've wanted my conveyors to slip under the product it's handling.
My Performax used a large course grit sanding belt. It works well. I have never had a kickback. The one problem is that I cannot get the drive belt to track correctly
I agree, I have exactly the same machine and the footprint of the base is a tripping hazard for sure, just too wide at the floor. The other more frustrating thing is the slippery belt. I nearly sent in back but learnt to be less aggressive with my cut. Did you ever up grade yours, I would love to know your outcome. Cheers Paul.
@@Simplelittlelife Supergrit has replacement 120 grit conveyor belt 16" X 43 1/2" for $26.00 worked great on the old Ryobi 1600 that I got off craigslist. New belt works great. Supergrit sells belt rolls reasonably priced as well, good company to deal with.
First thing I thought, Oh no that thing is too small :) the belt is going to get hot. I used the ones with a big belt in them, worked great for sanding a tabletop. The 80-100 grit is a good finish for oak if you ever make something with oak.
Congratulations on your new machine. I've had a Performax 16/32 for 20 years and I love it! Your machine looks to be remarkably similar so I expect your experience will be similar, too. That said, you need to understand what these machines do well. They aren't rigid enough to hog off a lot of material in a single pass. As has been mentioned by numerous other posters the maximum depth of cut is 3/32" and my experience is that you'd better be sanding thin strips of soft wood with a quality sandpaper to make that work.When I'm sanding guitar backs, tops or sides I consider a quarter turn to be a sufficient amount of down-feed. I'm guessing that your boards are 5 1/2" wide and pine can be pretty "sappy" so you need to be careful about how much heat you create to avoid loading up the sandpaper with sap. I haven't seen your wife's signs and don't know how you're finishing them but I wonder if you might get good results if you used 150 grit paper with much finer depth of cut and kept your feed speed in the lower half of it's range of adjustment. In the part of the video where you sped up the video and showed running a bunch of pieces through the sander it appears the the whole sanding arm is deflecting which indicates to me that you are using too fast a feed, too much depth of cut, too fine a grade of paper or possibly a combination of all three. I understand your frustration with the level of grip that the conveyor has but changing out the belt is treating the symptom not the cause of the problem. I know you won't want to hear it but the conveyor belt you have works well for a machine of this size and rigidity. The sandpaper belts work well too but wear out and need replacement frequently and are often difficult to keep running true.
Try tilting the machine by putting a short length of 2x4 under the legs on the infeed side, so that the board is feeding in and out of the sander at a slight downward angle. There isn't any law of nature or engineering which says that the machine can only operate in a purely level, horizontal stance. Your boards are heavy; let gravity assist the feed process. When you elevate the infeed, the force from the weight of the board under gravity resolves itself into two separate vectors: one is the force of the board pressing flat against the feed belt, while the other is a perpendicular force thrusting the board toward the sanding drum. As you elevate the tilt you increase the feed thrust component. For instance, imagine if you fed the sander vertically rather than horizontally... there would be no need for the belt at all, gravity would do all of the feed work. But in this case you probably don't need to tilt the sander by much, the belt is already providing almost enough feed thrust force. Your boards are heavy. Perhaps gravity can supplement the belt's existing feed thrust to get you a better feed. And if it works, it's simple, quick and free.
"had to jump onto youtube"... haha.. That's exactly what brought me here to you... I'm getting. a drum sander in the next couple of days and decided to watch some YT videos on the operation.. and came upon your channel... I'm in Edmonton.
If you plan on replacing the belt anyway why not put some hot glue on it. Spread it out or just use small dots. When it sets up it’s rubbery and will grip the boards. There is a chance that the small diameter rollers will cause the glue to come off but it’s worth a try and again if you’re going to replace it anyway what could it hurt.
Thickness planers are not meant to flatten a cupped board. A jointer is the tool for that. Typically the planer would push down on the board when it’s going through the planer and the cup remains.
FYI, Klingspor does not make conveyor feed belts. They do make wide sanding belts that you can specify the width and length, and these can serve as a conveyor belt.
@@rfcomm2k FYI, Klingspor is a sandpaper maker and distributor and they absolutely make conveyors for drum sanders. I have personally purchased them for my woodworking business. I didn't have to custom order anything.
Did you consider getting an industrial sander second hand Using domestic quality machines becomes a maintenance headache as your business scales up. For a small fee I sand a batch of recycled flooring, periodically, on an industrial machine at local joiners shop and it does not take long.
I looked around but I couldn’t find one. I still have no clue where to look for used industrial equipment around here. That would have been my first choice. Probably 4X the tool for the same price or less 👍
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Open Frame Drum Sander ("OFDS") I've got one in my school shop. Great machine and it becomes more versatile the longer you have it. Put any machine like this in a school shop and the students will invent uses you can't imagine. Not all of them have been terrifying but I'm awfully glad I have the kids trained to ask first before they try weird uses.
You can replace the belt with a coated abrasive belt of the same size. They are readily available, and sold for the Jet and Supermax 16-32 drum sanders which are substantially the same as yours. I'd get one right away if I had your machine. You should also get the infeed and outfeed tables. You'll be glad to have them, great for staging when you have lots of small parts and also running really long ones. That oversized base starts to seem small when you are feeding through a long 4x6. Can't remember why we were cleaning up a 4x6, but glad we had the tables and the wide stance base when we did.
With the open end, you can feed through long twisty snake shapes by manhandling the ends (imagine for example, laminated sides of a bentwood rocker, laminate the frame shape, thickness the laminations on the OFDS and round them off on the router table. You can also sand a 30" wide panel in two passes. Great for the signs we make on our CNC routers.
The idea behind the "slippery" conveyor belt is that if you are taking a heavy pass, the work piece will slide on the conveyor instead of overloading the drum. Also makes it easier to turn and feed that weird snake shaped piece mentioned above. Still, I agree, the slippery belt is not a great idea. I passed on that option.
Performax and Jet use a sensor to check the load on the drum and instead of "slipping" the work piece, they dynamically adjust the conveyor's feed rate, but you can do just as well manually, listening for motor strain and adjusting the feed rate.
I run 60 grit on the drum for cleanup and thicknessing. The kids have to use the ROS or sand by hand if they want a finer finish. But 60 rapidly cleans up the salvaged wood, mostly scrap "HEM-FIR" framing lumber that makes up most of my material supply for the school. I keep a cleaning stick at the machine and clean up the drum after every operation. Go easy on "pitchy" or wet wood. We get lots of Lodge Pole Pine and Douglas Fir which clogs the drum fast if you get greedy.
Dont even think of running it without dust collection!
I bought a Supermax sander that had the poly belt, I replaced it with a sandpaper belt and there is no comparison. The key to an overhead sander is proper feed speed / removal thickness. I had to play with mine a lot to get it down. I bought a digital read out for mine and I only take off maybe a quarter of a turn at a time, or about .010 per pass. You will get way better life from the sandpaper if you clean it a lot, especially with resinous woods. The finer the paper the faster it clogs. Great video!
Someone may have already commented but for small pieces double side tape them to a larger piece. Run then through back to back.
I know guitar makers who use this trick and can drum sand down to 2mm.
I bought a Jet sander that looks very similar to your unit. The belt is a abrasive material, about 80 grit and I never had a problem with wood slipping. Good luck.
I have a Performax, which is the same design as yours, Delta and Jet's model. The inboard tensioning clamp on my drum is so strong it requires a special tool to compress it to put the tail of the paper in it. To make matters worse, while using the tool, your hand is in the way and you have to feed the end of the paper in blindly. My conveyor works well and I imagine it will fit your sander. However changing paper on mine requires an extensive library of profanity and patience.
I've got a Steel City dual drum sander. The biggest complaint I had with it is the clips NEVER held the sand paper to the roll. After a few passes, the paper would come out of the clip and wrap itself around the roll in a strange way and ruin the piece of wood going through. I eventually upgraded to Grizzly hook and loop system and it's been great! If your clips start to fail, remember you can upgrade.
That's why I don't buy Craftex anymore. I have the supermax 19/39 drum sander. It's really sweet. The conveyor belt it just like sandpaper. No slipping at all. If you take too much of a big bite, the computer slows down the conveyor belt automatically.
Hey buddy, try rubbing light candle wax on the belt. If the belt material is soft enough it will grip
Have you tried this yet?
When doing your synthetic, run chalk on the drum first. But the big sidewalk chalk stick kids use and just run that over the drum. It helps keep gummy materials from sticking. Wax can also be used but is a lot messier. I have done this on belt Sanders and it works great.
I was in the same boat about getting a drum sander, and it is the most important piece of equipment I have. I put mine on a wheeled stand and just push around where I need it.
That’s a great idea! I don’t really have the room to leave mine on a stand and have to carry it under the stairs in the garage and man, that is getting old. Might have to make some room for a roller stand sooner than later 👍
Ha, the key of the music matched the note of the dust collector kicking on at 9:20 and running. Well played sir.
For synthetic materials, you may want to check out the flatmaster sold by stockroom supply ( not an ad, just a satisfied user) because there is no pressure on the material, it doesn't heat up, so it won't gum up the sandpaper. you use it like a jointer, so it may not be efficient for the sign boards, but I love it for knife scales, cutting boards etc.
I bought a used JET brand drum sander that was in almost new condition and it uses a sand paper material for their conveyor belt. The surface that grips the wood is a sand paper like material and the underneath part of the belt that slides against the table is a soft fabric type material so it slides well against the table and grips well against the wood. Great tool though, I love mine.
I had no idea that there were drum sanders that small. The one I once saw was huge. Regarding the planer, well let's just say "I know what you mean". The first time I used mine was with some stabilized wood. Man, when that sumbitch came shooting out, it came with a vengeance. Took me 20 minutes to find my left testicle. That was a bad day.
There are even smaller ones at 10", so you could do 20" wide pieces at best. 16-32 are quite common in the woodworking world. Very useful, sometimes finicky to tune up correctly if you have some of the older models.
I have the same sander, the conveyor works well on mine and I prefer it over the abrasive type belt. It seems like it wears in and gets some more grip but you have more experience with belts than I do.
Yeah it’s a great sander but your belt must be a different material. This one feels like Teflon or something similar. I doesn’t grip anything at all.
@Simple Little Life mine was made by Ryobi, maybe different material. I support anyone that modifies their tools to suit them like you do and it's super helpful that you put the results out.
I have one of the older ones that has a black conveyor that is actually another sandpaper sheet. When I first discovered the machine buried in my dads shed, and before I learned to use it, I thought it might sand both sides at once. Yeah, that was dumb, but it is sandpaper so I had a senior moment. Some hate the machine but I think it’s awesome. It beats a hand held belt sander, where my hand would go numb.
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it but you should mount a belt sander vertically so you can run all the edges of your sign pieces across it and all but do away with your orbital for sign creation. You can buy Sanders made to do this job. They use them extensively in cabinet shops. However, with the size of pieces it looks like you are making I would think you could use a hand held belt sander mounted 90deg to a table surface. Also that could be small enough you could possibly mount the jig above your drum sander and save the floor space.
Our Mens Shed has a dual drum sander. It has two drums on which two different grades of sandpaper is used. The first drum which is on the input side has 80 grit paper, while the second drum behind the first has a 220 grit. It gives great results in one pass. The biggest enemy of drum sanders is excessive glue on boards you are sanding, the friction melts it and the only place it can go is on the expensive belt. Hope this helps...
and than there is pine
The base is set at a angle to hold the weight without being knocked over .... I know what everyone is thinking I am dumb for pointing out the obvious ...but what I am getting at is for every let's say ten pounds one buts it the air the base would taper out slightly let's say an 1/8 or even a 1/4 inch depending on height I would imagine making a cart that is squared and on locking casters would be best suited .. can wait for that vid! Keep em coming
I have the Jet version, with an abrasive feed belt. The sandpaper holding clips are designed by a sadist. I strongly suspect that if you upgrade the feed belt you will uncover weaknesses in the sandpaper clips. Nothing like hearing one end let loose and tearing up the cover.
Choice of abrasive really depends upon the job. Are you flattening? Trying for a finished surface (I rarely try for that, using it mainly for sizing or stripping). Can't recall using it on softwoods yet, just hardwoods where if the paper shifts and over laps a tad you'll get a burn stripe on the wood. Fun times. Good luck!
Try a spiral head on the planer, that drum sander is going to gum up really quick running pine
We've had one of these for almost 30 years, still works great. The only problem we have had is that it sands more off closer to the motor and adjusting it is not available. Ours has a feed that looks and feels like 100 grit black sand paper.
I feed the board both ways for the above reason.
yes! so glad I found your channel. I've recently inherited a bunch of tools and don't know what half of them even are.
I have a 24 inch grizzly twin drum sander it thickness stands and finish sands in one pass, it also has the same belt as yours, but mine has pressure rollers on the infeed and out feed to keep pressure on the work piece, works great, I think that's just a sub standard machine meant for the Hobbyist market
Check out Festool random orbital sanders for the vibration. They are expensive but very little vibration transfers to your hand. They also stop instantly and with a dust collector there is practically no dust.
I didnt know what a drum sander was untill today i learn so much from you
Right on👍
I had the name brand version of that and put many hours on it at my business. We got the sandpaper belt on it, but nothing I did would get the belt tracking to be true. The replacement was no better. We only got good tracking with the belt like you have, but I agree, traction isn't great. I improved it by putting weighted caster wheels at the infeed and outfeed to put downward pressure on the wood against the belt. We also would feed items one against the next, so it would push things through. It took a lot of fine tweaking to get the drum level to the belt. A RUclipsr showed a good method of using a metal ruler with a wire connected that went through a lightbulb, battery and connected to the metal drum. That way you could detect with the two came into contact more accurately than by feel. As our need for speed increased, we switched to a 38" Woodmaster sander which has been so much nicer.
Could you add something like the disc sander adhesive you did a video on, applied on the belt to give it some grip?
That’s a great idea! 👍
On small pieces use double side tape between two long boards. It's called saddling and it works great. Keeps your small pieces from being destroyed by the planer.
Performax's belt might fit on that, it looks like a copy of them. The performax also has infeed and outfeed rollers to hold down pressure on the workpiece.
I have ran a lot of oak, alder and maple through mine in the form of cabinet doors. I don't have the space for a widebelt.
From my experience with Drum Sanders the feed problems are caused by trying to make to heavy a cut or feed running to fast for the material being sanded
Itis not designed to be a thicknesser
Agreed!
Advice! For the sandpaper gumming up, with soft wood you need to use your paper cleaning bar far more often to stop that. as for the conveyor belt, spray contact adhesive on it and let it dry, it will work much better, we coat as needed as the dust collects and makes it slipery again.
Good advice. I also find that spraying the sandpaper with Simple Green and give giving a quick scrub.
Great video. I feel your pain having spent countless days sanding. The 60g feed belt will work. For the drum i switched over from cloth-back to indasa sticky-back free cut and this is a marked improvement and cost saving. For resinous woods that tend to gum up a good trick is to rub the drum/abrasive with dry soap bar and this will prevent most glazing. For those incorrigible oily woods you can sprinkle talcum powder over the surface to be sanded and this will stop gumming. All the best.
Good luck with the drum sander. I have a Performax 16in drum sander purchased in the late 90's. This originally had 2 1/2in dust port which was too small to allow the airflow needed to remove the dust. I cut this out and epoxied in a 4in dust port. Performax changed the design to include 4in dust port the next year.
My unit has a belt made from abrasive, which is what you need to replace the crappy belt.
My biggest issue with this style of drum sander is the heat generated when sanding. The synthetics melted due to the high heat. It is so easy to get burnt resin from e.g., pine due to the heat. These marks are impossible to remove so the wrap has to be replaced. I have had wraps ruined in a single pass.
Change to blue zirconia abrasive paper. More expensive, but less heat and so will last longer.
I use 80 or 100 grit zirconia paper. Higher grits clog up too easily for me.
Dave.
I agree with you on the conveyor belt, my sander using a sand paper for the conveyor belt. I also don’t care for the 2 1/2” dust collection
You should also use a joiner for cups in bows and your planer to run it parallel, or spend the money on better lumber, you don't have to spend time finishing with expensive tools, and replacement cost of paper and blades, of course if you had a spiral cutter you wouldn't have to worry about maintenance to much. I accidentally ran something through with a screw head in it, planed it right off and didn't phase it at all the next boards still came out perfect and it cut no different.
Yeah I did end up getting a new planer with the Shelix cutting head on it and man, that was a very worthwhile upgrade. I actually find that this setup works quite well and for the minimal sanding I do (as far as material removal) the abrasives are lasting quite well. When we get busy, I run these machines about 8hrs a day (just the drum sander) an I have a few hundred hours on it now. I would like to get a jointer but I think this is a little faster, and for the area that I have, it’s fairly easy to set up and also store away when I’m not using it. But yeah, the helical head is sweet!
I've had this same machine for almost 20 years. Mine is under the name of Accura but is identical.
Don't buy cheap paper. Use Norton or Klingspor heavyweight paper and it gives little trouble. I'm still on original conveyor belt, just keep it clean
Right on. That’s great to hear yours has lasted so well. I have several hundred hours on mine now (maybe upwards of 1000hrs) and it’s still going strong. I’m actually surprised it’s doing so well with the intensity I use it during the Etsy Christmas rush 👍
I use the Grizzly G0458Z, it's a very similar 18" open end thickness sander. It uses the sandpaper style belt and I can tell you it's not any better. There are a lot of complaints about the G0458Z online but for what it is it works very well, it is by no means an automatic machine. Just like yours you have to feed in and out all the stock, It's belt requires constant adjustment as it is constantly running too far to one side or the other, and it can not take deep passes as its a little underpowered. for the price, it does what I need it to I just don't expect it to do more than it is designed to do.
Just a quick idea if you want to try to salvage the original belt: there are sprays you can get to make surfaces more tacky.
That's what I was thinking. Some kind of a rubberized spray. It would probably work really well with that belt looking at the texture.
I have the Jet 18-36 drum sander it's awesome, conveyor is abrasive style belt no slip ever! It has the Smart Sand feature. A real great drum sander!
heres a tip, to lengthen the life of the sanding belt order a crepe block from lee valley tools. you hold the crepe block against the sandind belt and it cleans out all the caked on sawdust. give it a try you wont be disappointed!
How is the finish of the boards? Looking at how the paper is wound on the drum it looks like where it over laps would dig slightly deeper than the rest and you would end up with small ditches the length of the board. It may not be doing that but it just looks like that would happen. Might be worth running a test piece through with a little bit of an aggressive bite. Then shade the top with a pencil (making lots of side to side squiggles ) then hit it with something square and flat and as wide as the board like a card scraper or something. Just to see if there are any valleys left. Just an idea mate. Great video as always man. Just thinking out loud
I imagine the little squares in the belting are there to catch the excess saw dust and remove it without it buiding high spots as a flat belt would do.
I use a slim push stick with mine. I find it helps a lot.
Our local mens shed (community workshop) has a big dual drum sander.
Its a $4500 unit that although better, it still slips and burns out belts just as quickly as my small unit.
All of those machines of that design have belts like that, I took to mine with some course sandpaper to take the slickness off, it worked okay.
Before you start making a new feed belt try spraying the the one it came with with some Rustoleum leak seal. It should make it way gripper. Do your synthetic scales with 80, 220 and use the whole roller starting left to right. that way you won't gum up the paper as fast. 👍😃
Got the Steel City version. Getting - and keeping - the belt on is a real pain. Rips. Won't clip in place easily. Clips don't hold well and requires constant adjustment.
Quick idea from me: Make a sandpaper cutting stencil, you really want to use decent quality sandpaper (you can buy in a roll) and making stencil that shows you where you should cut helps a lot
Pretty sure he knows abrasive paper better than most people.....
there is no free lunch, one gets what they pay for. The sander I use in my shop has a 36" wide feed capacity, and was over $15,000 performing flawless. Much larger scale I know, but I have seen other shops with the same wide capacity that are about good enough for a huge paper weight, costing a whole lot less. Its unfortunate but quality has a huge price tag
make sure you leave a gap between the wrapping of the sanding paper to help with clogging. It looks like you've put the paper close together and you can clean the paper to cut down on buying more.
I’ve found a great solution for the slippery belt! Don’t bother trying a sandpaper belt (I got a custom one made, and I couldn’t get it to track straight no matter what). Buy a can of plastidip (rubberized spray) and put in a bunch of coats (I think I did the whole can). No more slipping! I used clear spray. Honestly totally fixes the problem. Follow the instructions on the can. I would advise taking the belt off and spraying it standing upright.
At 13:56, there is view of the pressure rollers. Setting them properly will stop the slipping issue.
There are 2 pressure rollers, one in front and one behind the sanding drum. If you look on the inside of the drum frame on the ends, there are screws for setting the downward pressure.
Also, you should center up the conveyor belt, by adjusting the tension bolts on either side.
"Read the directions even if you don't follow them.", from a Baz Luhrman Sunscreen song ;)
Must use a dust extractor. Mark a pencil line every inch or so along the length of the board to see where yoiu need to work. I have an Excalibur and it has a drive system. I use mostly 60 or 80 grit and finish with a random orbit.
You can reduce the amount of gumming by using sandpaper specifically designed for synthetic materials.... different abrasives use more or less amounts of sodium lauryl sulfate to prevent gumming
I had that sander demoed and it is useless......I bought the 19-38 Super Max and its awesome. The conveyor never slips even on small 3" x 3/16 crafts. So worth it!
When you get your new conveyor belt made if it works better? No doubting you,I’d shoot them a video and hopefully you show us your upgrade!! Happy holidays my friend
As you should know by now drum sanders require extreme dust management and a regular shop vac will not cut the mustard unless you clean/change the filter ever few passes because it will be saturated fast with all that dust.
I have the same issue with the conveyor belt. It's fine with heavy cutting boards but light work is a pain
A handy machine, mine is the same but probly 20+ yrs old. Keep in mind that they are designed for finishing work not for dimensioning, larger ones 600mm capacity are capable of dimensioning but this is hard on the machine and wears out belts pretty quick. Take very light passes ,even lighter as your grit gets finer. A more grippy belt might help but be sure the seam is dead flat or you will get problems similar to sniping.
Be nice to see a vid about your wifes work one day. 🍺
This video is my discovery of your channel, so I'm not sure the type of woodworking you do yet, but my drum sander has been invaluable. I have a Supermax 1938 which has a sandpaper belt instead of that material of yours. I've used it way more than I expected to when I bought it. Almost every project I do, cutting boards, signs, bandsaw boxes, segmented bowls, etc, run through the drum sander. Not sure how I lived without one for so long.
Well, I really don’t do any wood working. I mostly make knives so the only wood is in some of the handles. I’ve but over 800 boards through this so far and I love this thing. I made some modifications to it and now have it working really well. 👍
You bought a cheap machine! I use a Delta and I use it often and it works very well. I did a lot of research before buying and did not go by price alone. The right drum sander is not dumb.
I agree with you. I have made several modifications to this and it is working great now. I’ve sanded over 800 boards with this since changing a few things in the machine (and removing some parts of it 😆) and it works way better than from the factory 👍
Good to hear you got it working as you wanted. My jointed is only 6" so I use mine to true up one side of wide boards before sending them through my planer. I also use it to fine tune splines etc.
Man you and my father could tell each other some stories. My father retired from the Siemons Dematiq company formally known as Rapistan. He built huge conveyor belts for Large airports. I remember a huge job he worked on for the Frito Lay company when I was a child, I'm 35 now. He also did a lot of the computer management boxes that ran the conveyor. I thought that sounded so much like what you used too work at.
That’s cool! I have work with Rapistan equipment and actually have an aluminum logo plate of theirs hanging in my garage. The conveyor world is a small one I’ve found. 👍
@@Simplelittlelife
Coolness
I wonder if the conveyor belt isn't super grippy so it prevents overworking the sand paper or the sanding wheel motor, or trying to force the peace through a pass, which could cause the depth set mechanism to go out of wack. I was looking at belt sanders recently because I was having trouble getting resawn boards to a desired thickness, similar to your problem with your scales, and found that instead just using a backer board for the planer did the trick. As far as getting a desirable finish using the thickness planer, maybe look to see if your planer will accept a helical cutter. They provide a much cleaner cut, that in some cases doesn't even need sanding afterwards, at least nothing super coarse. Also, as far as eliminating snipe from your planing, check and make sure your infeed and outfeed tables are aligned properly. they should be at the height of the center table of the planer (I don't know the technical term), and should be level with it. I corrected that on mine and snipe and gouging issues disappeared. Of course, I was mostly working with hardwoods, so that might just be an issue you have with softer woods. That's with the assumption that what you had there was pine.
Great video, good luck with all of your family's projects!
Trading chips for dust. The best part of sander is the you set to just kiss the surface with high number sand paper and a ready for finish surface or put on a coarse paper and sand stuff down to thickness. The only warning is watch the heat build in the wood.
Something you need to understand about the lumber you buy, a red knot will normally not fall out or screw you when you plane the board. A black knot is the absolute opposite, avoid black knots or cut them out if you can. I you can't work around black knots, epoxy them in place before you do anything.
Use a piece of carpet tape to temporarily stick smaller pieces to a longer scrap of flat 1/2” plywood before feeding them into the sander. It will keep the piece flat so it doesn’t tip into the feed rollers. No snipe.
As someone who’s had a few back surgeries - lift with your legs, man! Watching 3:45 - 3:52 made me cringe.
Good content! Thank you for taking the time to make this
Seems to me a Stroke sander would suit you better. At 80 grit it cuts fast and finer than a drum sander, almost ready for finish.
I'd put 40 or 60 grit in your drum sander rather than feed through several times with a finer one because Pine is sticky stuff. One pass with that and one with finish grit should suffice.
To be frank I wouldn't use a drum sander for anything other than reclaimed wood or veneers. Once I've touched sand to a piece of wood I am reluctant to wear out my edge tools on it.
About tearout and curvy fiber around knots and such, there are thicknessers where the cutter runs with the feed direction, thus eliminating tearout. But I think it's mainly an industrial thing, I haven't actually seen one, just the boards it made. It needs to hold the workpiece very securely.
Someone used a 1/4" piece of acrylic to scrape the build off the drum. seemed to work pretty well and not dull the abrasive.
Another suggestion: :) check out crepe blocks for cleaning your sanding belt. I was skeptical at first, but having used one I find my sanding paper lasts a LOT longer.
It is essential in my opinion. I use the dressing stick as the work feeds through. If I don’t it clogs up in very few passes. I wouldn’t be without it. It doesn’t tear grain and it’s quiet. I often push the work a little.
I use these on my grizzly spindle sander and get a lot more life out of the spindles.
I haven't used Craftex specifically, but I have a King Canada drum sander which is basically identical. Very similar belt material and I have zero issues with it. I won't go against your knowledge of conveyer belts but I will give you my two cents on drum sanders. This machine isn't designed to take off more than a 1/64" at a time. That's using 80 grit, so it's cutting as fast as possible to remove that 1/64" and it will still gum up and burn. This machine also isn't designed for any pieces less that (about) 6" in length. There are spring loaded rollers on either end of the sanding drum, which pushes the material down against the belt to feed it through. The piece isn't long enough to touch BOTH rollers while going through it will get stuck in the middle. Unless your conveyer belt is a suction cup, it will not feed through on its own, it will spit that material out without the use of the rollers. Another thing to note is that the drum and belt surface often need adjustment out of the box to be parallel, so it may not grab on the "high" side if this adjustment hasn't been made. Maybe you head the instructions and know all of this but that's what I learned from using these.
I was looking at possibly buying your Last Ditch Necker on your website, and in the description noticed a possible typo "acid stone-was finish". If you meant to put that I apologize, but I think you may have meant to put acid stone-wash finish. Hope this helps, just looking out for you. Your quality and craftsmanship is amazing and I want your website to be the best it can be. You deserve all this success and have inspired me and many others to give a shot at custom knife making. Hopefully next year I'll have a knife good enough to make an appearance on your viewer knive videos. Again, I hope this doesn't come across as nagging, just want to help you. Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see your next video!
Thank you so much! I’ll change that typo for sure! I really appreciate you taking the time to let me know🙏. Thanks so much. Cheers👍
I hate to be rude but you have a typo as well "Last Ditch Necker on you website"
correct me if I'm wrong but I think you meant to say "Last Ditch Necker on your website" , you placed a "you" instead of a "your" hope this helps...
@@lennym1273, thanks for the quality check. I'll get that fixed, never been the best at typing or writing.
I definitely remember you opening up the planer and running the small piece in it. I think the drum sander was a great addition for what you do. I sure could have used one last year but I don’t build cabinets everyday. When I do build them it would be nice.
I have a similar sander and it has the sandpaper conveyor belt. You are right to assume it's grips better.
Its rare to have someone with actual years of experience on something that can add to a video like this. I hope they reach out to you and not only improve your system, but improve all their tools like this. Often, they get more ideas - better ideas - from practical users like yourself than they do in a think tank in their boxed offices.
If the drum gets pitch loaded spray it with methyl hydrate, wait 10 seconds and scrub with a wire toothbrush. Works like a hot damn.
I have had one of these for many years and use it more than my thickness planer. Does NOT tear out burled or highly figured wood.
You should be able to get a sandpaper style belt without a problem. Take a look at the belts that fit performax (now Jet) 16”.
Other tip is to get a crepe block to clean your paper. Should get you a lot more life out of a wrap.
The slick belt might be saving you from the nuisance of driving the belt too hard and tripping a breaker which becomes a PITA if the machine doesn’t have a “smart” controller.
Still, a great tool and always a nice fallback for erasing mistakes :)
That "chunk out" is called "tear out" and it's what happens when you plain wood with knots. It also happens on endgrain that gets too dry and in a variety of other places. The easiest way to avoid it is to not use dimensional pine or go with clear pine at the cheapest. Hard woods will generally have less tear out as well. Lastly you can also fill tear out. Lots of wood fillers available. Oh also the "dishing" is called "cupping" and "bowing". :)
J. Bly Since we are correcting everyone, it’s plane and planing. Not plain. Unless you are talking about “ordinary” wood.
@@prestonkd Ah yes, that was a typo. In fact likely because of autocorrect. However I wasn't being pedantic by letting him know the terms in woodworking. Terms that may help him as he looks for ways to improve his craft. (Googling chunk out will probably lead you astray.) Many thanks for pointing out the typo. I've grown so much as a person.
J. Bly No worries. Autocorrect is the scourge of us all!
Just a comment on the conveyor belt... I'm not a conveyor specialist, but I do incorporate a lot of conveyance in my designs (I'm a machine designer for food packaging). Perhaps the belt is designed to slip under the wood instead of jamming it into the sanding drum which could cause damage to the tool or the operator? I'm not familiar with the features of this machine so I could be totally off base. Just something to think about. In certain instances I've wanted my conveyors to slip under the product it's handling.
My Performax used a large course grit sanding belt. It works well. I have never had a kickback. The one problem is that I cannot get the drive belt to track correctly
I agree, I have exactly the same machine and the footprint of the base is a tripping hazard for sure, just too wide at the floor. The other more frustrating thing is the slippery belt. I nearly sent in back but learnt to be less aggressive with my cut. Did you ever up grade yours, I would love to know your outcome. Cheers Paul.
No I never did upgrade. I did the same as you, adjust the depth of cut. I also usually push each board through and then pull it out the other side.
@@Simplelittlelife Supergrit has replacement 120 grit conveyor belt 16" X 43 1/2" for $26.00 worked great on the old Ryobi 1600 that I got off craigslist. New belt works great. Supergrit sells belt rolls reasonably priced as well, good company to deal with.
You can buy the sandpaper type belting, I have it on my supermax sander I found a mom and pop online that sells and will make any size cheap.
I believe they make several replacement belt types.
First thing I thought, Oh no that thing is too small :) the belt is going to get hot. I used the ones with a big belt in them, worked great for sanding a tabletop. The 80-100 grit is a good finish for oak if you ever make something with oak.
wow that looks identical to my ryobi sander that i bought 20 years ago
i like mine except the paper change
Congratulations on your new machine. I've had a Performax 16/32 for 20 years and I love it! Your machine looks to be remarkably similar so I expect your experience will be similar, too. That said, you need to understand what these machines do well. They aren't rigid enough to hog off a lot of material in a single pass. As has been mentioned by numerous other posters the maximum depth of cut is 3/32" and my experience is that you'd better be sanding thin strips of soft wood with a quality sandpaper to make that work.When I'm sanding guitar backs, tops or sides I consider a quarter turn to be a sufficient amount of down-feed. I'm guessing that your boards are 5 1/2" wide and pine can be pretty "sappy" so you need to be careful about how much heat you create to avoid loading up the sandpaper with sap. I haven't seen your wife's signs and don't know how you're finishing them but I wonder if you might get good results if you used 150 grit paper with much finer depth of cut and kept your feed speed in the lower half of it's range of adjustment. In the part of the video where you sped up the video and showed running a bunch of pieces through the sander it appears the the whole sanding arm is deflecting which indicates to me that you are using too fast a feed, too much depth of cut, too fine a grade of paper or possibly a combination of all three. I understand your frustration with the level of grip that the conveyor has but changing out the belt is treating the symptom not the cause of the problem. I know you won't want to hear it but the conveyor belt you have works well for a machine of this size and rigidity. The sandpaper belts work well too but wear out and need replacement frequently and are often difficult to keep running true.
Way to convey your expertise!
A wonderful sander!
Try tilting the machine by putting a short length of 2x4 under the legs on the infeed side, so that the board is feeding in and out of the sander at a slight downward angle. There isn't any law of nature or engineering which says that the machine can only operate in a purely level, horizontal stance. Your boards are heavy; let gravity assist the feed process. When you elevate the infeed, the force from the weight of the board under gravity resolves itself into two separate vectors: one is the force of the board pressing flat against the feed belt, while the other is a perpendicular force thrusting the board toward the sanding drum. As you elevate the tilt you increase the feed thrust component. For instance, imagine if you fed the sander vertically rather than horizontally... there would be no need for the belt at all, gravity would do all of the feed work. But in this case you probably don't need to tilt the sander by much, the belt is already providing almost enough feed thrust force. Your boards are heavy. Perhaps gravity can supplement the belt's existing feed thrust to get you a better feed.
And if it works, it's simple, quick and free.
"had to jump onto youtube"... haha.. That's exactly what brought me here to you... I'm getting. a drum sander in the next couple of days and decided to watch some YT videos on the operation.. and came upon your channel... I'm in Edmonton.
Right on, fellow Albertan! I still use this sander and probably have 60-70 hours on it. Still works exactly as it did when new. So far, so good 👍
@@Simplelittlelife I got a King Canada 16" from KMS tools. Picking up tomorrow.
Can I ask what you paid for this? And where can we see some of the finished signs? Didn't see a link here.
Thanks!
If you plan on replacing the belt anyway why not put some hot glue on it. Spread it out or just use small dots. When it sets up it’s rubbery and will grip the boards. There is a chance that the small diameter rollers will cause the glue to come off but it’s worth a try and again if you’re going to replace it anyway what could it hurt.
could have probably bought a helical blade for your planer for cheaper than the drum. Less MX, faster processing, and more precises.
Check out the feed belts for a carvewright machine.
did you try adjusting the tension on the pinch rollers to prevent slipping?
Yup. I mentioned that in the video. I had them as loose as they would go and still would hang up. I don’t understand them being there.
Where diss you get this sander? I searched and searched but couldn’t find it anywhere. Thanks.
Performax has a belt that you can retrofit
Thickness planers are not meant to flatten a cupped board. A jointer is the tool for that. Typically the planer would push down on the board when it’s going through the planer and the cup remains.
If you do Birdseye Maple you will love it, it never pulls an eye out like a planer does.
Look at Klingspor's selection of conveyor feed belts, they are a sandpaper style belt that come in all kinds of sizes. good quality stuff.
FYI, Klingspor does not make conveyor feed belts. They do make wide sanding belts that you can specify the width and length, and these can serve as a conveyor belt.
@@rfcomm2k FYI, Klingspor is a sandpaper maker and distributor and they absolutely make conveyors for drum sanders. I have personally purchased them for my woodworking business. I didn't have to custom order anything.
Did you consider getting an industrial sander second hand Using domestic quality machines becomes a maintenance headache as your business scales up. For a small fee I sand a batch of recycled flooring, periodically, on an industrial machine at local joiners shop and it does not take long.
I looked around but I couldn’t find one. I still have no clue where to look for used industrial equipment around here. That would have been my first choice. Probably 4X the tool for the same price or less 👍