Official Luthiers Forum!

Much thanks to Pat Hawley and Matthias Wandel for making the plans available!

One thing that might be helpful to put in the plans is what size belt it takes. I used a 64", but would probably go with 63" instead.

I used a 3/4 horse motor, because that's all I had on hand, except for a 1-1/2 horse, which would have been overkill.






I decided to try it out on something cheaper than rosewood, so here's a set of osage orange I thicknessed to .080":

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Regards,
Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

https://hoosierbladesmith.wordpress.com

You must be quite happy!
Good thing I've not got the room for one of those,
otherwise I'd build one.
Congrats!
Alan

How wide did you build it and what is your steel shaft diameter?

I am hoping to up-grade from fourteen inches wide to thirty inches wide to thickness a double-bass.

Bob

The drum is about 19" wide, and I used 3/4" shaft. I would have preferred 1", but I already had the 3/4" pillow bearings.

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Regards,
Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

https://hoosierbladesmith.wordpress.com

Wow, deja-vu! Nice job Phillip. Hope it works well for you.

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

very nice and inspiring. Maybe one day soon...

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

I need to make one too. I like your wood on the tabletop. How dusty are these things to run? I suppose it depends on how much suction you have.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

The table surface is leftover laminate flooring from my bedroom. Nice to have tools that match the decor.

It's not too dusty. Here's what it looked like after sanding the osage:

http://www.pattonblades.com/41011-4.jpg

My vacuum needs a new bag, and isn't sucking that hard, so it would do even better.

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Regards,
Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

https://hoosierbladesmith.wordpress.com

Hi Phillip,
Hey nice job on your sander. I'm wondering about the shaft, is it any special designate type of steel? All I've seen around here is some rusty weldable round rod, not very round or straight, diameters mike out all over the place, and comes in 21 ft. lengths so you can imagine how bowed up it is.
Maybe you or someone can steer me to some high quality shaft material, nice and round high rpm stuff.

Thanks,
Rusty

Hi Rusty,
I used TG & P (turned, ground, and polished). Its made specifically for using as shafting, so it's made to much tighter tolerances than cold rolled or hot rolled. I got mine from Metal Supermarkets, and they were charging about $5 per foot.
I couldn't find it on their website, so you'll have to call your local store and see if they have it.

_________________
Regards,
Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

https://hoosierbladesmith.wordpress.com

Thanks Phillip,
Now I know what to search for.

Rusty

Nice Job on the sander Obviously I am not seeing the entire picture here , how does the board feed and what stops the force of the sander from spitting the boards back at you . Can you show a few more pics ?

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
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http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

The wood is fed in by hand, and steady pressure is what keeps you and the workpiece from becoming joined at the hip.

I'm toying with an idea for a hand cranked feed conveyor which would be a nice improvement, but this still works.

I have a bunch of in-process pics of the sander in this thread:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showt ... ect./page2

If you can't see them, I'll copy them here.

_________________
Regards,
Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

https://hoosierbladesmith.wordpress.com

Did you use hook and loop? if so where did you get it?

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Duffy Johnson
http://www.j-r-guitar.com

Looks like the product that woodmaster sells, they had the best price when I looked a few weeks ago.

Nice job on the sander.
Rob

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http://shastaguitar.com/
http://www.kalimbakit.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/comfyfootgr ... ature=mhee
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Great job, Phillip.
You won`t regret having this tool handy.
Coe Franklin

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Wud, mine is of similar construction (manual feed). It really is more effective than you would guess feeding by hand. The trick is to feed slowly and evenly and take off small bites at a time. I positioned mine such that (unless I am doing a very small part) I stand on the side and feed in with one hand, pull out with the other. When I get to the thickness I want, I do several passes at that setting and things come out pretty darned even.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I mounted mine on an old barbecue frame so that it is mobile.
I used a hip-roof on the air hood to improve air velocity over the drum.
I use sliding doors, front and back, to control air velocity entering the hood.

I like the structure of your stand, it looks solid.

Bob

Bob - do you have any photos of your setup? Those sliding doors sound interesting.

Charlie:
I am not tech-savy enough to post pictures.

The doors are just flat wood mounted on the front and back vertical faces. They are slotted to accept thumb-screws into tee-nuts in the face. They slide up and down on the face and are held in place by the thumb-screws.

When I start sanding, I set the doors with about an eighth inch of clearance above the wood on the feed-side and about a quarter inch on the back-side. This provides good air velocity to keep the dust in the hood at the feed but gives enough mass-flow of air to carry the dust through to the shop-vac. The slots allow adjustment for thicker or thinner wood. My sander has a maximum thickness of 0.35 inches, my new one should handle 1.5 inches I hope.

Bob

No worries, Bob. Thanks for the description...I can picture it now. Great idea.

Very cool!

On the dust collection side, be very careful. A sander makes boatloads of the very fine particles that are most hazardous to your health. Your vac is doing a nice job of cutting down on the mess, but the dangerous particles are too small to be captured effectively by a vacuum. There's a big difference between suction and airflow, and airflow is what you need for the tiny particles. Until you have a good dust collection system set up, make sure to wear a good NIOSH dust mask. Keep in mind that those particles will keep floating around your shop for a long time, so opening a door to the outside and running a big fan will cut down on the amount of time you have to wear the mask after you finish sanding.

Hello all,

I've started building my own, but I'm wondering about how to couple the disks to the shaft. I've found at least a dozen builds on the web, but none go into any detail about that. It seems that just epoxying the disks to the shaft wouldn't be very durable.

Have you had any trouble with expansion of the disks due to humidity? Some builders recommend leaving a space between sets of disks. This seems like it could make it even harder to couple the disks to the shaft.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Once I get over this hurdle I think I can finally get going on my drum sander and then finally on to building a guitar.

Thanks,
George

I used PU glue to glue the MDF disks together on the steel shaft. I don't remember if I roughed p the surface of the shaft or not (it was about 6 years ago). I have seen no evidence of the drum comming detached from the shaft. I suppose it could happen at any time without warning, but I doubt it.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Nice one Bryan, enjoy it.
Thanks for posting.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.