Diameters of commonly used drum sanders?

[David King]

A metal lathe with power feed on the carriage would be your best bet. You can turn most aluminums as fast as you want, 500 RPM would probably be fine with carbide tooling and a little WD40. Sanding aluminum is very problematic, you can wet-sand it at low speeds which wouldn't be much help in terms of getting it round.

[Bob Hammond]

The sander that I built that is in the library worked very well. The setup wasn't difficult and it was very easy to adjust and produced good results, but the operating position was clumsy and it also encumbered the lathe. That's why I'd like to build another.

Here's the one from ten years ago. I want to make the infeed table horizontal instead of inclined, sol I'll build a cabinet with inclined tracks. You might visualize it as a planer with the elevation mechanism of a jointer.

http://www.mimf.com/old-lib/hammond_sander_lathe.htm

Here's a simplified version from 1958, of what I have in mind, that I saw a year ago while websurfing:

http://books.google.com/books?id=KN8DAA ... ics&f=true

[Jonathan Rubinstien]

Hi, finally, I think I'll have some time to build a new drum sander, about 20" wide so that it's possible to sand cross-grain as well as with the grain. I would like to use pre-cut belts, and so I'd like to know (as exactly as possible) the diameter of the drums from different manufacturers. Hmm, I wonder if it would be cost-effective to buy a replacement drum and bearings from a manufacturer. Can anybody provide information?

I have scavenged a 2HP DC motor with variable speed up to 5000 rpm from a treadmill. I'm thinking about putting on a strobe tachometer something like this:

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/stro ... 9#post6323

Jon here from HomemadeTools.net.

I know this thread is an old one, but thanks for the mention

To celebrate our 20,000th homemade tool, we made a new ebook featuring our top 50 homemade tools. You guys are welcome to it for free:

http://download.homemadetools.net/50MustReadTools.pdf

[David King]

Anyone looking at this topic with a thought towards building their own drum sander and taking the sandpaper into consideration might want to consider using the 2-3/4" wide Mirka abranet and adjusting the drum width accordingly. The abranet is superior to any sandpapers out there in terms of durability, resistance to clogging, aggressive stock removal, smoothness of the surface and dissipation of heat that you'd be sorry not to take advantage of it.

[Bryan Bear]

One of these days I'll try a decent paper on my shop built sander. I hate to admit it but I just use the rolls from Harbor Freight and take like cuts. I can get away with this because I am a hobbiest with no deadlines, my sander is 25 inches wide so I can do the early passes across or at an angle to the grain and I'm not too picky about my paper getting ratty. Mostly I'm just using to to get level and close to thickness expecting to clean up the surface by other means; I've never had anything higher than 80 grit on it. I'm sure I would change my mind if I used a premium paper though; It would be nice to be able to be a bit more aggressive and change the paper less. But. . . it sure is nice to be able to pop in and buy a roll of paper as soon as I realize I need it and not to have to spend much to get it.

As for fitting the paper, I don't really use much math. I cut an angled line from the corner to the opposite edge of the same length as the drum circumference. I tape that cut edge along the edge of the drum and wrap the paper at whatever angle that makes. My wraps are never perfect depending on how well I got the first side taped and aligned but as long as the paper isn't buckling up or overlapping itself small gaps between the wraps is no big deal.

[Bob Hammond]

Wow, I'd completely forgotten that I started this thread!

In the time since, I've moved on to using handplane techniques, because that suits my needs -- they don't need floorspace, belts, and other maintenance, and they don't generate clouds of dust. Maybe they're not for modern high-speed production work, but they're convenient and work well for me.

I think I'll divert the variable speed 2HP DC treadmill motor to the wood lathe. It should be perfectly suited for that machine.