Time for Some Maintenance on the Drum Sander

I built my thickness about 8 years ago and though not perfect it has served me well. The other day I was thicknessing some plates and noticed a hump in the center portion of the drum. I decided it was time to tear it apart and have a look.

I've gotten into a habit of placing narrow pieces like fretboards, braces and sides etc. against the side rail of the table and run them through. After I got the velcro matting off the drum I could see a big difference where all those years of running stock through at the end of the drum had compressed the plywood discs I used to make the drum.

I needed a way to be able to re-surface the drum and make it parallel to the table. I saw a video of a guy on YT using a router to make a rolling pin sander. I did a quick mockup of the jig out of MDF and made one of those sanders. The router worked well so I decided to try the same concept on the larger drum. Again I went low budget and just used some L brackets and plywood. The sides have a groove for the modified router base to travel in. With the table level I placed some small spacers under the drum and sandwiched the sides against them and clamped everything down. It looks like it actually worked. Won’t know for sure until the new Velcro matting gets here next week. Hopefully, I can get another few years out of it anyway.

On my old home built drum sander ..I glued some sanding belt strips to a board and ran it under the spinning wooden drum to level it.

Timbuck said:

On my old home built drum sander ..I glued some sanding belt strips to a board and ran it under the spinning wooden drum to level it.

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Ken, that's how I did it when I first built the unit. I should have clarified that I needed a "better" way of doing this. Since I used plywood for the discs they sanded uneven as more material came off the softer plys than the hard plys and I ended up with a slightly wavy drum. I have no idea if it ever really affected anything or not as it worked fine up until now.

After using the router method and giving a light touch with sand paper the drum in now uniform along the entire length. After raising the table all the way up it was necessary for me to put a couple of sheet metal spacers under the pillow block on one side. Now everything looks good. Time will tell. Now just waiting on the UPS truck.

Dominator said:

Ken, that's how I did it when I first built the unit. I should have clarified that I needed a "better" way of doing this. Since I used plywood for the discs they sanded uneven as more material came off the softer plys than the hard plys and I ended up with a slightly wavy drum. I have no idea if it ever really affected anything or not as it worked fine up until now.

After using the router method and giving a light touch with sand paper the drum in now uniform along the entire length. After raising the table all the way up it was necessary for me to put a couple of sheet metal spacers under the pillow block on one side. Now everything looks good. Time will tell. Now just waiting on the UPS truck.

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Now I remember i had the same problem ..but I used MDF discs for the drum and some of the Mdf was soft type and fluffed up with sanding and made the surface uneven..to cure the problem I coated the drum with epoxy and made it thin and runny with a heat gun so it would soak into the soft stuff..and after it had cured i skimmed it in the lathe then sanded it down level again... and that fixed it.
You can see the soft discs in this pic.. they are the dark ones.

Boy, a lathe sure does come in handy. I've never had or used one.

plywood drum finishing

I made my drum with ¾” plywood also and after final sanding put several coats of polyurethane on the drum prior to applying the velcro mat. I hope this will add some hardness to the surface to prevent denting.

Some of the sandpaper I got from Woodmaster recently didn’t have the felt glued down properly. Let me know if you have another source for this.

Thanks for posting the details on your sander on your web site. I used it as a guide to make mine:
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/f...p-Built-Compact-and-Storable-Thickness-Sander

I used that method to make tapered columns for a millwork job. The router bit starts to drive the column blank so it kind of ends up working like a lathe anyway...

I'm thinking of making this one:

http://www.igull.co.uk/aeromodelling/sander.html

The site's a little hard to navigate, by you can easily get the idea.

That looks like good design..Tho it needs some guards fitting especially at the back end of the drum.

Tho: I notice the computer image has got guards.

BruceCrook said:

I made my drum with ¾” plywood also and after final sanding put several coats of polyurethane on the drum prior to applying the velcro mat. I hope this will add some hardness to the surface to prevent denting.

Some of the sandpaper I got from Woodmaster recently didn’t have the felt glued down properly. Let me know if you have another source for this.

Thanks for posting the details on your sander on your web site. I used it as a guide to make mine:
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/f...p-Built-Compact-and-Storable-Thickness-Sander

Click to expand...

The polyurethane sounds like a good idea. I've never had to buy more sandpaper as I still have plenty left from the first rolls I bought so I have not run into that issue.

Glad the details on my sander helped. That's why I posted it.

Timbuck said:

That looks like good design..Tho it needs some guards fitting especially at the back end of the drum.

Tho: I notice the computer image has got guards.

Click to expand...

I certainly hope those weren't your fingers Ken. Ouch!!