Drum Sander (DUMB SANDER?) - Tool Time Tuesday 

Open Frame Drum Sander ("OFDS") I've got one in my school shop. Great machine and it becomes more versatile the longer you have it. Put any machine like this in a school shop and the students will invent uses you can't imagine. Not all of them have been terrifying but I'm awfully glad I have the kids trained to ask first before they try weird uses. You can replace the belt with a coated abrasive belt of the same size. They are readily available, and sold for the Jet and Supermax 16-32 drum sanders which are substantially the same as yours. I'd get one right away if I had your machine. You should also get the infeed and outfeed tables. You'll be glad to have them, great for staging when you have lots of small parts and also running really long ones. That oversized base starts to seem small when you are feeding through a long 4x6. Can't remember why we were cleaning up a 4x6, but glad we had the tables and the wide stance base when we did. With the open end, you can feed through long twisty snake shapes by manhandling the ends (imagine for example, laminated sides of a bentwood rocker, laminate the frame shape, thickness the laminations on the OFDS and round them off on the router table. You can also sand a 30" wide panel in two passes. Great for the signs we make on our CNC routers. The idea behind the "slippery" conveyor belt is that if you are taking a heavy pass, the work piece will slide on the conveyor instead of overloading the drum. Also makes it easier to turn and feed that weird snake shaped piece mentioned above. Still, I agree, the slippery belt is not a great idea. I passed on that option. Performax and Jet use a sensor to check the load on the drum and instead of "slipping" the work piece, they dynamically adjust the conveyor's feed rate, but you can do just as well manually, listening for motor strain and adjusting the feed rate. I run 60 grit on the drum for cleanup and thicknessing. The kids have to use the ROS or sand by hand if they want a finer finish. But 60 rapidly cleans up the salvaged wood, mostly scrap "HEM-FIR" framing lumber that makes up most of my material supply for the school. I keep a cleaning stick at the machine and clean up the drum after every operation. Go easy on "pitchy" or wet wood. We get lots of Lodge Pole Pine and Douglas Fir which clogs the drum fast if you get greedy. Dont even think of running it without dust collection!

I had no idea that there were drum sanders that small. The one I once saw was huge. Regarding the planer, well let's just say "I know what you mean". The first time I used mine was with some stabilized wood. Man, when that sumbitch came shooting out, it came with a vengeance. Took me 20 minutes to find my left testicle. That was a bad day.

Ha, the key of the music matched the note of the dust collector kicking on at 9:20 and running. Well played sir.

Someone may have already commented but for small pieces double side tape them to a larger piece. Run then through back to back. I know guitar makers who use this trick and can drum sand down to 2mm.

Damn I love Tool Time Tuesdays! Keep em coming!

Good idea to help your production. Nice looking unit.

I wish I had discovered this great little channel earlier. Great job sir, great editing and music!

yes! so glad I found your channel. I've recently inherited a bunch of tools and don't know what half of them even are.

I bought a Supermax sander that had the poly belt, I replaced it with a sandpaper belt and there is no comparison. The key to an overhead sander is proper feed speed / removal thickness. I had to play with mine a lot to get it down. I bought a digital read out for mine and I only take off maybe a quarter of a turn at a time, or about .010 per pass. You will get way better life from the sandpaper if you clean it a lot, especially with resinous woods. The finer the paper the faster it clogs. Great video!

I definitely remember you opening up the planer and running the small piece in it. I think the drum sander was a great addition for what you do. I sure could have used one last year but I don’t build cabinets everyday. When I do build them it would be nice.

I didnt know what a drum sander was untill today i learn so much from you

I bought a Jet sander that looks very similar to your unit. The belt is a abrasive material, about 80 grit and I never had a problem with wood slipping. Good luck.

"Horse Hockey" 😂

Great video. I feel your pain having spent countless days sanding. The 60g feed belt will work. For the drum i switched over from cloth-back to indasa sticky-back free cut and this is a marked improvement and cost saving. For resinous woods that tend to gum up a good trick is to rub the drum/abrasive with dry soap bar and this will prevent most glazing. For those incorrigible oily woods you can sprinkle talcum powder over the surface to be sanded and this will stop gumming. All the best.

love drum sanders, we have a dual drum sander in the shop, best tool on the planet!!!!

Hey buddy, try rubbing light candle wax on the belt. If the belt material is soft enough it will grip

I have the Jet 18-36 drum sander it's awesome, conveyor is abrasive style belt no slip ever! It has the Smart Sand feature. A real great drum sander!

When you get your new conveyor belt made if it works better? No doubting you,I’d shoot them a video and hopefully you show us your upgrade!! Happy holidays my friend

Could you add something like the disc sander adhesive you did a video on, applied on the belt to give it some grip?

I had the name brand version of that and put many hours on it at my business. We got the sandpaper belt on it, but nothing I did would get the belt tracking to be true. The replacement was no better. We only got good tracking with the belt like you have, but I agree, traction isn't great. I improved it by putting weighted caster wheels at the infeed and outfeed to put downward pressure on the wood against the belt. We also would feed items one against the next, so it would push things through. It took a lot of fine tweaking to get the drum level to the belt. A RU-vidr showed a good method of using a metal ruler with a wire connected that went through a lightbulb, battery and connected to the metal drum. That way you could detect with the two came into contact more accurately than by feel. As our need for speed increased, we switched to a 38" Woodmaster sander which has been so much nicer.

Way to convey your expertise!

Great video. I'm looking at drum sanders right now and this model appears to be available in the UK under the Aximinster brand around £500 ($650) cheaper than the Jet 1632. I'm a little concerned about the belt problem you have highlighted. Several weeks on, did you find a solution other than manually assisting the boards through? I'm looking to use it on much smaller (shorter) stock so having to manually push through could be a deal breaker. Also, snipe can be a real problem on a planer and 'could' also be a problem on a drum sander. Are you seeing any snipe? Does it fix the snip from the planer if you are planing first?

I have a Performax, which is the same design as yours, Delta and Jet's model. The inboard tensioning clamp on my drum is so strong it requires a special tool to compress it to put the tail of the paper in it. To make matters worse, while using the tool, your hand is in the way and you have to feed the end of the paper in blindly. My conveyor works well and I imagine it will fit your sander. However changing paper on mine requires an extensive library of profanity and patience.

I've got a Steel City dual drum sander. The biggest complaint I had with it is the clips NEVER held the sand paper to the roll. After a few passes, the paper would come out of the clip and wrap itself around the roll in a strange way and ruin the piece of wood going through. I eventually upgraded to Grizzly hook and loop system and it's been great! If your clips start to fail, remember you can upgrade.

For synthetic materials, you may want to check out the flatmaster sold by stockroom supply ( not an ad, just a satisfied user) because there is no pressure on the material, it doesn't heat up, so it won't gum up the sandpaper. you use it like a jointer, so it may not be efficient for the sign boards, but I love it for knife scales, cutting boards etc.

When doing your synthetic, run chalk on the drum first. But the big sidewalk chalk stick kids use and just run that over the drum. It helps keep gummy materials from sticking. Wax can also be used but is a lot messier. I have done this on belt Sanders and it works great.

I've had this same machine for almost 20 years. Mine is under the name of Accura but is identical. Don't buy cheap paper. Use Norton or Klingspor heavyweight paper and it gives little trouble. I'm still on original conveyor belt, just keep it clean

A handy machine, mine is the same but probly 20+ yrs old. Keep in mind that they are designed for finishing work not for dimensioning, larger ones 600mm capacity are capable of dimensioning but this is hard on the machine and wears out belts pretty quick. Take very light passes ,even lighter as your grit gets finer. A more grippy belt might help but be sure the seam is dead flat or you will get problems similar to sniping. Be nice to see a vid about your wifes work one day. 🍺

I agree with you on the conveyor belt, my sander using a sand paper for the conveyor belt. I also don’t care for the 2 1/2” dust collection

I have a smaller one different brand i use mine all the time like you said crappy feed belt please let me know where you get yours ty

Congratulations on your new machine. I've had a Performax 16/32 for 20 years and I love it! Your machine looks to be remarkably similar so I expect your experience will be similar, too. That said, you need to understand what these machines do well. They aren't rigid enough to hog off a lot of material in a single pass. As has been mentioned by numerous other posters the maximum depth of cut is 3/32" and my experience is that you'd better be sanding thin strips of soft wood with a quality sandpaper to make that work.When I'm sanding guitar backs, tops or sides I consider a quarter turn to be a sufficient amount of down-feed. I'm guessing that your boards are 5 1/2" wide and pine can be pretty "sappy" so you need to be careful about how much heat you create to avoid loading up the sandpaper with sap. I haven't seen your wife's signs and don't know how you're finishing them but I wonder if you might get good results if you used 150 grit paper with much finer depth of cut and kept your feed speed in the lower half of it's range of adjustment. In the part of the video where you sped up the video and showed running a bunch of pieces through the sander it appears the the whole sanding arm is deflecting which indicates to me that you are using too fast a feed, too much depth of cut, too fine a grade of paper or possibly a combination of all three. I understand your frustration with the level of grip that the conveyor has but changing out the belt is treating the symptom not the cause of the problem. I know you won't want to hear it but the conveyor belt you have works well for a machine of this size and rigidity. The sandpaper belts work well too but wear out and need replacement frequently and are often difficult to keep running true.

I use the Grizzly G0458Z, it's a very similar 18" open end thickness sander. It uses the sandpaper style belt and I can tell you it's not any better. There are a lot of complaints about the G0458Z online but for what it is it works very well, it is by no means an automatic machine. Just like yours you have to feed in and out all the stock, It's belt requires constant adjustment as it is constantly running too far to one side or the other, and it can not take deep passes as its a little underpowered. for the price, it does what I need it to I just don't expect it to do more than it is designed to do.

I was looking at possibly buying your Last Ditch Necker on your website, and in the description noticed a possible typo "acid stone-was finish". If you meant to put that I apologize, but I think you may have meant to put acid stone-wash finish. Hope this helps, just looking out for you. Your quality and craftsmanship is amazing and I want your website to be the best it can be. You deserve all this success and have inspired me and many others to give a shot at custom knife making. Hopefully next year I'll have a knife good enough to make an appearance on your viewer knive videos. Again, I hope this doesn't come across as nagging, just want to help you. Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see your next video!

I bought a used JET brand drum sander that was in almost new condition and it uses a sand paper material for their conveyor belt. The surface that grips the wood is a sand paper like material and the underneath part of the belt that slides against the table is a soft fabric type material so it slides well against the table and grips well against the wood. Great tool though, I love mine.

As someone who’s had a few back surgeries - lift with your legs, man! Watching 3:45 - 3:52 made me cringe. Good content! Thank you for taking the time to make this

I have a 24 inch grizzly twin drum sander it thickness stands and finish sands in one pass, it also has the same belt as yours, but mine has pressure rollers on the infeed and out feed to keep pressure on the work piece, works great, I think that's just a sub standard machine meant for the Hobbyist market

I imagine the little squares in the belting are there to catch the excess saw dust and remove it without it buiding high spots as a flat belt would do. I use a slim push stick with mine. I find it helps a lot. Our local mens shed (community workshop) has a big dual drum sander. Its a $4500 unit that although better, it still slips and burns out belts just as quickly as my small unit.

On small pieces use double side tape between two long boards. It's called saddling and it works great. Keeps your small pieces from being destroyed by the planer.

I have the Jet version, with an abrasive feed belt. The sandpaper holding clips are designed by a sadist. I strongly suspect that if you upgrade the feed belt you will uncover weaknesses in the sandpaper clips. Nothing like hearing one end let loose and tearing up the cover. Choice of abrasive really depends upon the job. Are you flattening? Trying for a finished surface (I rarely try for that, using it mainly for sizing or stripping). Can't recall using it on softwoods yet, just hardwoods where if the paper shifts and over laps a tad you'll get a burn stripe on the wood. Fun times. Good luck!

Can I ask what you paid for this? And where can we see some of the finished signs? Didn't see a link here. Thanks!

Its rare to have someone with actual years of experience on something that can add to a video like this. I hope they reach out to you and not only improve your system, but improve all their tools like this. Often, they get more ideas - better ideas - from practical users like yourself than they do in a think tank in their boxed offices.

I was in the same boat about getting a drum sander, and it is the most important piece of equipment I have. I put mine on a wheeled stand and just push around where I need it.

Thanks for this. Great video, though after this I decided to go with the Jet 1632. This looks good if you can fix that belt!

Performax's belt might fit on that, it looks like a copy of them. The performax also has infeed and outfeed rollers to hold down pressure on the workpiece. I have ran a lot of oak, alder and maple through mine in the form of cabinet doors. I don't have the space for a widebelt.

Is there a way to fix the conveyor belt on that drum sander I want to get the same one but if there is no way to get a conveyor belt abrasive

Good luck with the drum sander. I have a Performax 16in drum sander purchased in the late 90's. This originally had 2 1/2in dust port which was too small to allow the airflow needed to remove the dust. I cut this out and epoxied in a 4in dust port. Performax changed the design to include 4in dust port the next year. My unit has a belt made from abrasive, which is what you need to replace the crappy belt. My biggest issue with this style of drum sander is the heat generated when sanding. The synthetics melted due to the high heat. It is so easy to get burnt resin from e.g., pine due to the heat. These marks are impossible to remove so the wrap has to be replaced. I have had wraps ruined in a single pass. Change to blue zirconia abrasive paper. More expensive, but less heat and so will last longer. I use 80 or 100 grit zirconia paper. Higher grits clog up too easily for me. Dave.

I have the same issue with the conveyor belt. It's fine with heavy cutting boards but light work is a pain

All of those machines of that design have belts like that, I took to mine with some course sandpaper to take the slickness off, it worked okay.

We've had one of these for almost 30 years, still works great. The only problem we have had is that it sands more off closer to the motor and adjusting it is not available. Ours has a feed that looks and feels like 100 grit black sand paper.

That's why I don't buy Craftex anymore. I have the supermax 19/39 drum sander. It's really sweet. The conveyor belt it just like sandpaper. No slipping at all. If you take too much of a big bite, the computer slows down the conveyor belt automatically.

i have sim this but i have broblem when i runing the slider raber going to the right side way??

From my experience with Drum Sanders the feed problems are caused by trying to make to heavy a cut or feed running to fast for the material being sanded Itis not designed to be a thicknesser

Before you start making a new feed belt try spraying the the one it came with with some Rustoleum leak seal. It should make it way gripper. Do your synthetic scales with 80, 220 and use the whole roller starting left to right. that way you won't gum up the paper as fast. 👍😃

How is the finish of the boards? Looking at how the paper is wound on the drum it looks like where it over laps would dig slightly deeper than the rest and you would end up with small ditches the length of the board. It may not be doing that but it just looks like that would happen. Might be worth running a test piece through with a little bit of an aggressive bite. Then shade the top with a pencil (making lots of side to side squiggles ) then hit it with something square and flat and as wide as the board like a card scraper or something. Just to see if there are any valleys left. Just an idea mate. Great video as always man. Just thinking out loud

I have one of the older ones that has a black conveyor that is actually another sandpaper sheet. When I first discovered the machine buried in my dads shed, and before I learned to use it, I thought it might sand both sides at once. Yeah, that was dumb, but it is sandpaper so I had a senior moment. Some hate the machine but I think it’s awesome. It beats a hand held belt sander, where my hand would go numb.

could have probably bought a helical blade for your planer for cheaper than the drum. Less MX, faster processing, and more precises.

Quick idea from me: Make a sandpaper cutting stencil, you really want to use decent quality sandpaper (you can buy in a roll) and making stencil that shows you where you should cut helps a lot

This is really an off topic question but I was just wondering if you ever spoke about the Damascus friction folding knife and what happened with the project if anyone knows please let me know I'm just curious

My Performax used a large course grit sanding belt. It works well. I have never had a kickback. The one problem is that I cannot get the drive belt to track correctly

The base is set at a angle to hold the weight without being knocked over .... I know what everyone is thinking I am dumb for pointing out the obvious ...but what I am getting at is for every let's say ten pounds one buts it the air the base would taper out slightly let's say an 1/8 or even a 1/4 inch depending on height I would imagine making a cart that is squared and on locking casters would be best suited .. can wait for that vid! Keep em coming

I have the same sander, the conveyor works well on mine and I prefer it over the abrasive type belt. It seems like it wears in and gets some more grip but you have more experience with belts than I do.

Where diss you get this sander? I searched and searched but couldn’t find it anywhere. Thanks.

"had to jump onto youtube"... haha.. That's exactly what brought me here to you... I'm getting. a drum sander in the next couple of days and decided to watch some YT videos on the operation.. and came upon your channel... I'm in Edmonton.

Hello.. How do you adjust the thickness.. can you please specify

What model is this and where could I purchase it at

Hi Buddy , did you end up getting a new conveyer belt & did it make an improvement? If so may I ask what material/product did you end up using. Thank you Sir

Does the cylinder turn when the board goes thru. Mine doesnt seem to sand anything

You bought a cheap machine! I use a Delta and I use it often and it works very well. I did a lot of research before buying and did not go by price alone. The right drum sander is not dumb.

A wonderful sander!

This video is my discovery of your channel, so I'm not sure the type of woodworking you do yet, but my drum sander has been invaluable. I have a Supermax 1938 which has a sandpaper belt instead of that material of yours. I've used it way more than I expected to when I bought it. Almost every project I do, cutting boards, signs, bandsaw boxes, segmented bowls, etc, run through the drum sander. Not sure how I lived without one for so long.

did you try adjusting the tension on the pinch rollers to prevent slipping?

I wonder if the conveyor belt isn't super grippy so it prevents overworking the sand paper or the sanding wheel motor, or trying to force the peace through a pass, which could cause the depth set mechanism to go out of wack. I was looking at belt sanders recently because I was having trouble getting resawn boards to a desired thickness, similar to your problem with your scales, and found that instead just using a backer board for the planer did the trick. As far as getting a desirable finish using the thickness planer, maybe look to see if your planer will accept a helical cutter. They provide a much cleaner cut, that in some cases doesn't even need sanding afterwards, at least nothing super coarse. Also, as far as eliminating snipe from your planing, check and make sure your infeed and outfeed tables are aligned properly. they should be at the height of the center table of the planer (I don't know the technical term), and should be level with it. I corrected that on mine and snipe and gouging issues disappeared. Of course, I was mostly working with hardwoods, so that might just be an issue you have with softer woods. That's with the assumption that what you had there was pine. Great video, good luck with all of your family's projects!

I deal with horse hockey every day!!! It’s similar to bs! 🤪 It’s a very handy tool though 👍👍👍

I love mine

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it but you should mount a belt sander vertically so you can run all the edges of your sign pieces across it and all but do away with your orbital for sign creation. You can buy Sanders made to do this job. They use them extensively in cabinet shops. However, with the size of pieces it looks like you are making I would think you could use a hand held belt sander mounted 90deg to a table surface. Also that could be small enough you could possibly mount the jig above your drum sander and save the floor space.

You can buy the sandpaper type belting, I have it on my supermax sander I found a mom and pop online that sells and will make any size cheap.

Hey man! Love the videos if you will comment the measurements of the belt I will make you up a rough top belt and send it to you!

Is the inside of the belt the same as the outside maybe you can just turn it inside out

Did you look at the Jet drum sander? It got great reviews.

Good evening, do you recommend this tool? Better other brand?

I wonder if you took two sheets of sandpaper and spray glued them back to back and put that under the stock if that might be a low tech solution to the feed belt problem

Seems to me a Stroke sander would suit you better. At 80 grit it cuts fast and finer than a drum sander, almost ready for finish. I'd put 40 or 60 grit in your drum sander rather than feed through several times with a finer one because Pine is sticky stuff. One pass with that and one with finish grit should suffice. To be frank I wouldn't use a drum sander for anything other than reclaimed wood or veneers. Once I've touched sand to a piece of wood I am reluctant to wear out my edge tools on it. About tearout and curvy fiber around knots and such, there are thicknessers where the cutter runs with the feed direction, thus eliminating tearout. But I think it's mainly an industrial thing, I haven't actually seen one, just the boards it made. It needs to hold the workpiece very securely.

Your video was a while ago but I've just seen it. Might I ask what were you trying to accomplish with that drum sander? Straight up, that's my question but with the following rationale - a helical head thicknesser or even a planer blade thicknesser kept sharp will give you a paintable finish. We only used drums for flattening a m&t frame where 1/32" or .5mm was required to make good on the wanker who set up the m&t- spindle molder & mortiser. It's useful for that and maybe (not tried yet) good on de-nibbing after any initial substrate application ie 1st coats of what have you. Can't fathom..

Got the Steel City version. Getting - and keeping - the belt on is a real pain. Rips. Won't clip in place easily. Clips don't hold well and requires constant adjustment.

Could you run two (or more) boards through side by side at the same time? Looks promising, great video man!

Check out Festool random orbital sanders for the vibration. They are expensive but very little vibration transfers to your hand. They also stop instantly and with a dust collector there is practically no dust.

Our Mens Shed has a dual drum sander. It has two drums on which two different grades of sandpaper is used. The first drum which is on the input side has 80 grit paper, while the second drum behind the first has a 220 grit. It gives great results in one pass. The biggest enemy of drum sanders is excessive glue on boards you are sanding, the friction melts it and the only place it can go is on the expensive belt. Hope this helps...

Performax has a belt that you can retrofit

Just a quick idea if you want to try to salvage the original belt: there are sprays you can get to make surfaces more tacky.

is the sandpaper precut for the roller

Did you ever change out that conveyor belt? If so, with what ? I'm looking at buying one. I found a really good deal, but I don't want to be slowed down by this sub-par belt. please give us an update, thanks.

there is no free lunch, one gets what they pay for. The sander I use in my shop has a 36" wide feed capacity, and was over $15,000 performing flawless. Much larger scale I know, but I have seen other shops with the same wide capacity that are about good enough for a huge paper weight, costing a whole lot less. Its unfortunate but quality has a huge price tag

Try a spiral head on the planer, that drum sander is going to gum up really quick running pine

You should also use a joiner for cups in bows and your planer to run it parallel, or spend the money on better lumber, you don't have to spend time finishing with expensive tools, and replacement cost of paper and blades, of course if you had a spiral cutter you wouldn't have to worry about maintenance to much. I accidentally ran something through with a screw head in it, planed it right off and didn't phase it at all the next boards still came out perfect and it cut no different.

Man you and my father could tell each other some stories. My father retired from the Siemons Dematiq company formally known as Rapistan. He built huge conveyor belts for Large airports. I remember a huge job he worked on for the Frito Lay company when I was a child, I'm 35 now. He also did a lot of the computer management boxes that ran the conveyor. I thought that sounded so much like what you used too work at.

I had that sander demoed and it is useless......I bought the 19-38 Super Max and its awesome. The conveyor never slips even on small 3" x 3/16 crafts. So worth it!

Must use a dust extractor. Mark a pencil line every inch or so along the length of the board to see where yoiu need to work. I have an Excalibur and it has a drive system. I use mostly 60 or 80 grit and finish with a random orbit.

I agree, I have exactly the same machine and the footprint of the base is a tripping hazard for sure, just too wide at the floor. The other more frustrating thing is the slippery belt. I nearly sent in back but learnt to be less aggressive with my cut. Did you ever up grade yours, I would love to know your outcome. Cheers Paul.

I'm sure you can change the feed rate, but can you change the drum speed? maybe that other synthetic material won't gum up as badly. Also is it possible to use those big sanding belt cleaners on these things? Maybe one of those tasks you do when the safety police are not looking your way.

If you do Birdseye Maple you will love it, it never pulls an eye out like a planer does.