4" x 30" V-Drum Sander kit....Build your own Drum Sander!

You will enjoy this little adjunct to your shop.
Mine is about 5 years old and has more than paid for itself.

p.s. the 10 year old grnd son uses it and I am not too concerned with his safety.

Bob

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

Have you noticed any flex in the drum? How much pressure can you apply to the middle before it starts
to bend?

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

Gary, actually when it’s set up correctly the drum doesn’t touch your work. The work is straddled over the in and outside of the drum opening and centrifugal force lifts the paper up to contact your work.
It not for hogging down lumber but it seems to work just fine for that final leveling after the planer.

Cheers
Bob

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner

I looked in to getting one of these over a year ago. I’m still not sure about the cost/benefit vs. just buying a thickness sander. The smallest version (which is only a drum, bearings, belt and pulleys) is still $200 bucks. Seems a little (actually a lot) overpriced. Thanks for making me think about it again, and good review. I’ll consider it. I still don’t have a thickness sander.

-- Dust collectors suck.

I think this is a cheaper way to go then to purchase the sand flee, some where in the $700 range the last time I looked for the sand flee. I’ve been thinking about building this “kit” but I have a lot more ideas then I have time to work on such projects.

I did put together a model that is just 6” long sanding drum wise to see how this actually worked. As it turned out it really is a cool way of sanding. A lot less work then hand sanding and a lot more fun. The true is I have ended up using it a lot even with the limited size.

It is not a thickness sander and while you can take off wood to make something flat it would take a very long time…

Thanks for reminding me of this, if I have time now to look into it farther before I pick my summer projects.

Ed

I have this and don’t really like it. I have used this to try to sand the bandsawn veneer will little success. In addition I have try to remove stain/finish from from a small tabletop again with little success. For a little more money I could have gotten a used drum sander.

-- www.responsetolight.com - A Woodworking & Renovation Blog

I have the 24” with the hold-downs-supplied by stockroomsupply. It is awesome. easy to use, easy to set up and i have no sniping or”ruts” OR any burnmarks on the sandpaper nor wood. I have a performax drum sander as well and use this a lot more. The two machines are really for two different applications ( in my opinion). The V drum sander is a lot easier to change sandpaper belts,you can use one, two, three different grits at one time ( unlike the performax),obviously depending on size of project and it really doesn’t need dust collection

-- Colyn,......... Louisville, KY

I bought a Shopnotes Tools and Jigs magazine that has a lot of great jigs and different things in it along with the plans for a drum sander that you can sit on top of your table saw and use your table saw pulley and motor to power the thing. Which would save you the price of a motor. It claims to cost 200.00 dollors but the way its made and with the material I have on hand I could make it for the price of the pillow blocks. I have a motor and everything else. Many of you would too. I’d check it out. It also has better plans than what these have. Plus you get access to their website for more plans and such. For one thing its got a 5” drum that you make yourself out of mdf by cutting circles and glueing them together and drilling your 3/4” hole in the center. It actually looks beefier than this other one. It’s 16” wide. mike

-- Mike. Profisher50@yahoo.com

Readers here might be interested in my version of the thicknessing sander.

The MDF circles worked really well for me. Perhaps I over-engineered by using a 1” spindle.

-- Res severa verum gaudium - True pleasure is a serious business.

That is neat. I’ve been thinking about something like this for awhile. I have seen video on the Sand Flea and it fascinates me. Just hard to justify spending that much money for a specialized sander. Be interested in hearing from any Sand Flea users.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

Well I got crazy – once again – I ordered the Sand Flee yesterday. Money in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing :-)). Could have saved some money and bought the do it yourself kit – but I opted for the more expensive version, but by the time I bought the materials and then bought a good motor – I’m not sure the savings would have been that great. Also the key to this type of drum sander appears to be a dead flat table top – the Sand Flee has a CNC cut Stainless Steel table – don’t know how you could get much flatter than that – and should not be a problem with seasonal movement.

I’ll do a review on the Sand Flee once I’ve got it and test it. Hopefully I’ll be a happy camper. I’ve done quite a bit of research on the web comparing the two available machines, and in my mind I made the best choice – for me. I’ll be the first to admit that it is a lot of money to spend on a simple machine that only does one task – but it apparently does it quite well. The good news is that this won’t be the first time I’ve bought an expensive tool that isn’t really a necessity – CarveWright, Ring Master, and on and on. I’m sick :-))

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

I just finished building my 30” sander kit that I got from Stock-Room Supply. My original intent was to use this sander to sand glued-up panels, like table tops. It took a little while, but it did it perfectly and much easier than doing it with a belt sander and then the random-orbital. I sanded both sides of 2 freshly glued up hickory table tops in just under 3 hours and they are perfectly flat, smooth and uniform thickness. I found that using 16 lbs bricks as weights worked well, I will probably build a tension fence to go over the table and hold the work down against the sander top.

I had trouble finding an enclosed motor that ran at the required 1725 RPM so I ended up using gear reduction and a 3450 RPM motor instead. At total cost of about $500 it sure beats the $2000 units that could only sand half the width as this one.

One note: By leaving the ends of the sand paper square as the company recommends, you lose about 3” off of each end of the drum as use-full sanding area. I am sure there is a way around this, but since my largest planned panel is only 24” I don’t see this as a limitation.

-- Rich, WNY, www.nyrockingchairs.com