Official Luthiers Forum!

After printing and Embroidering many many shirts for the Davidson College Basketball Team, I have finally found time to set up a 24 inch kit made Kuster Sander I purchased on Ebay. All the chains and pillow blocks are greased and the motors have new bushings.

Now, I need some advise. What type of sandpaper rolls should I be purchasing. Klingspor is abount 40 miles from my home. Should I get cloth back or paper back. Adhesive or non adhesive. Do I need to put duck tape on each end to secure the paper better? Please give me some advise. I want to crank this baby up over the long weekend. Will have pictures next week of some sanded pieces, I hope.

Thanks,
Ken Hageman

Hi Ken,
Congrats on the sander. I also have an old Kuster, as does Craig Sullivan. I suspect there are several of us here on the OLF with them. They're built like tanks! I've been using the 3" rolls of Klingspor's "blue" paper. It doesn't have adhesive on it, so I use spray adhesive on the aluminum drum before I apply the paper. The rolls have a cloth back. I would get you a link to the exact product, but their website seems to be a tad less than functional at the moment. This is by far the best paper I've ever used. Some folks have been using the hook & loop paper lately and have felt it offers some advantages.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hi Ken,
as Don said, I too have a Kuster. I built it at least 15 years ago and use it to thickness most everything too thin to put through my planer. Admittedly, they can be a little quirky, but with a little fussing you can thickness tops, backs, sides, linings, whatever very consistently with these machines. A couple of helpful hints: you can set it up to feed from either side — against the rotation of the sanding drum or the same direction as the drum. You want to feed so that the material being sanded is moving "with" the direction of the drum. Otherwise, there's a real possibility of the feed rollers slipping as they try to overcome the force of the sanding drum. The feed motor is easily reversible if I remember just by reversing 2 wires. Secondly, the original assembly instructions might have lead you to believe there should be two 1/8" shims (one each side) under the bearings on the outfeed roller. If there are, get rid of them. Otherwise there will be less pressure on the piece being sanded once the infeed roller disengages and you will end up with a "snipe" over the last few inches. Another thing that comes to mind is to make a simple device, such as a turnbuckle, to place additional pressure on the drive belt. The weight of the motor is not enough to keep belt tension high enough when sanding large surfaces. When sanding multiple parts it's best to send them through one after the other rather than side by side. When feeding one after the other it's best to place them so they are touching end to end. Then there's no change at all in feed roller pressure. As far as the sandpaper goes, you can use either 3" or 4" wide paper, but it should be cloth backed. Don has been using the blue-backed stuff and claims it doesn't load up as quickly. The next time I buy paper I'm going to try it because loading is always an issue, especially with the types of woods we like to play with. Once you have trimmed a piece to fit on the drum (angled cuts at each end) keep that piece once you've worn it out and use it as a template to cut pieces in the future. There's a little slot in one end of the drum where you can insert the leading edge of the paper. I have a little wooden wedge I place there as well to hold the paper in and then I just wrap a few turns of heavy masking tape around the end of the drum to hold everything on. At the trailing edge I simply place a few wraps of masking tape there as well. Be warned — after you have run wood through a few passes the paper heats up and stretches. You will then need to remove the tape on the trailing end and tighten up the paper, then retape. It's a pain, but I haven't found a workaround. Maybe using hook and loop would solve that, but I would think it might be too much spongy to get consistent sanding. Others here that use it on other drum sanders can probably shed better light on that issue. There's probably more, but if I write any more Lance will probably kick me off the OLF! posting.php?mode=reply&f=10101&t=17318#
PM me if you'd like.
Craig S.

Thanks for the advise. I am going to Klingpor in Hickory, NC tomorrow and get some sandpaper rolls. That's there North American headquarters and they can go to the warehouse to get about anything you need. The advise with the wood shim at the start is a good one. And the masking tape seems to be how to go on each end of the drum. I will check on the outfeed roller shims. I wasn't aware they might be there. The drum roller motor is a single phase 3 horse. It is a moose!!

Thanks again

Ken Hageman