Official Luthiers Forum!

Dieter Have persistent trouble with the sandpaper sliding on the drum and overlapping. I use Jet brand paper. Any suggestions?

I’m also interested in what solutions have worked for others. I find the end clip very difficult to engage while holding tension on the paper. I have been pulling the paper tight and wrapping with 2” blue tape a few inches short of the clip just to hold it while I fiddle with the clip. Even after doing that I wrap both ends of the paper with brown binding tape. Just have to be careful about running plates through at the tape margins. Hasn’t been an issue yet, but there has to be a better way.

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Brad Hall
Mystic Dawg Guitars

This has been asked many times here on the OLF and here are some tips that always worked for me and resulted in no issues.

1). Leave 1/8" gaps between winds so the paper can snug-up as it is designed to do from the tensioning arm and have some room to slide tighter. This is VERY important the paper cannot snug up with out the gaps. If it overlaps it's WAY loose and even dangerously loose.

2). Super important to get it inserted in the tension arm snuggly AND with the arm pulled out as far as you can so it has more tension and travel to snug things up. They offer a tool to do this with if you can't get it by hand. I have the tool somewhere but never used it.

3). I only used Performax papers, what mine was built as because they fit better than things I read here about alternatives.

With these things I never had an issue.

I have no answer yet, but after I posted I realized that on the inboard clip, the paper end was wrapping around the tension clip and jamming between the clip and the housing (no clearance) and perhaps keeping the clip from achieving full tension. I will have to tray another sheet and see if that helps. l use pliers on the outboard paper end to try to pull it tight before the clip is released. If I solve anything, I will post.

Getting the tail of the paper at the right length can sometimes be an issue. You want it to be long enough to easily slip into the spring loaded clamp, but not so long that the extra length gets in the way, and not so wide at the end (caused by you starting with a really skinny tail at the beginning) that it won’t easily fit into the clamp. If you snip some of the beginning tail off until that end has a 3/8” wide snub end, that works well for me. And Hesh is spot on regarding leaving a gap between the wraps. You can’t easily snug the paper up if the wraps are rubbing against each other.

Yep that happens and that will indeed prevent the tensioning arm from tensioning. Good catch, that may be the issue for you.

Yep as well I used to cut 1/2" off my 10 - 20 Performax papers but I never heard of anyone else doing this until now so I was not sure if it was just my machine.

Definitely not just your machine. My pre-Jet Performax ShopPro 25 has the same thing going on. I cut my own paper from the Jet rolls that have different colors on the back, signifying where to cut for different sized machines. If you leave those tails pointy, the pointy ends are too long and get in the way inside the clamps.

I've been using a Performax 16-32 and use the Jet rolls Don mentioned above that are marked on the back for different size machines. I've followed the instructions on the outside of the box (with a diagram) which say to cut exactly 2" off the pointy end that goes on the drum first, outboard end. Cutting 2" off leaves the end 3/8" wide as Don mentioned above. The first time I loaded a new paper onto the drum, it took some experimenting to find out how much to cut off the other end. For my machine, it turned out that cutting 3" off that end works. Once I had that number, I just kept doing it for new papers. It's still a pain (literally) to get the inboard end into the clamp but the paper ends up snug on the drum. I also leave small gaps between the winds as Hesh said.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

By the way, is anybody else's 16/32 actually a 15/30 due to a design error that has the bed not centered under the drum? This is not adjustable.

What are "instructions?" Just kidding. Dave and I joke about instructions being a last resort... Good on ya J!

I have not experienced this on my 22/44. I do use the labeled rolls (from Klingspor), cut the pointy ends. Additionally, since I switch back and forth from 80 to 36 grit, I mark the front end so as to put it back the way it was. Once its inserted into the tensioning clamp, I tension again by "pushing" it in with my left hand thumb while engaging the clamp. Rinse and repeat till its tight. I have the tool as well, but my right hand has gotten the hang of it.

Glad it isn't just me struggling with this! I did eventually get the tool (with the funny name) to work and that does help.

All the things people have said plus I have to use tweezers to ensure the paper goes into the right bit of the clip rather than sliding outside it.

Cheers Dave

I was kind of wondering about Hesh's 1/8" gap thing. I never did that.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+ ... 59qs0Aw_41

I used to have this issue, actually HAD this issue of overlapping once and ruined a set.

Immediately figured it was the left (first) clip and how I started the roll. I’d try to start the roll as deep as possible, and roll as tight as possible. The right (end) clip was fine, but the first clip had loosened, and caused overlap.

Solution is to NOT insert the roll as deep as possible, roll it with a small gap (like Hesh), secure the right clip, then go back and resecure the left clip. No issues since.

Note: the key is to let the “spring do the work”. I had to wrap my head around that one for a bit.


If you're doing this, you're not letting the spring do the work. No pliers needed. Wrapping instructions in the manual actually work, except for little tips like gapping the wrap from left to to right.