Sand Flee --

[George Bokros]

Anyone have or had one? What do you think of it? Is it worthwhile in a home shop? Any other thoughts and opinons?

Here is a link to Woodpeckers, they among others sell them.

http://www.woodpeck.com/sandflee.html

Thanks

George

[Dave Zellers]

I live on the Atlantic coast and we flee from the sand fleas.

Otherwise I have no idea what a sand flee is and am as interested as you regarding others' thoughts and opinions.

Sand fleas are seriously annoying. If sand flees are a good thing, as Ross Perot said, I'm all ears.

[Dave Zellers]

Last edited by George Bokros; Today at 8:25 PM.
http://www.woodpeck.com/sandflee.html

Cool. I too am interested.

[Art Mulder]

This comes up every now and then, you can find other people in the archives doing the same search.

I have no personal experience, but I would suggest looking at the Stockroom Supply v-drum (http://www.stockroomsupply.ca/shop/drum-sanders.html), which is basically the same thing, was here first, and is cheaper... Buy it in a kit, or buy it as a completely built package.

(I've seen the stockroom v-drum at countless woodshows and it looks quite good, but I do not own one so I don't have personal experience. )

[Steve Milito]

Seems to me that you can buy a similarly sized drum sander for the about the same amount of money.

[John McClanahan]

Stockroom Supply puts on a good demo at the woodworking shows. He explains why this design is better than a drum sander. :rolleyes: I plan to build on someday...someday.

John

[Steve Milito]

Stockroom Supply puts on a good demo at the woodworking shows. He explains why this design is better than a drum sander. :rolleyes:

John

. . .and that would be?

[George Bokros]

. . .and that would be?

Yes inquiring minds would like to know!!

[John McClanahan]

He claims that a conventional drum sander sands in its own dust. The inverted sanding of a face sander (thats what these are) allows the dust to fall away so the sand paper sands wood, not dust. He also claims that a predictable amount of wood is removed, based on the grit of paper used. There are other claims, too, I don't remember them all.

What I like about this design is that I already have most of what I need to build one.

John

[Peter Kuhlman]

I have seen these at a couple work working shows. Sure worked nice for them. Remember - this type sander will not automatically keep the surfaces parallel to each other like a drum sander or planer would. It seems popular with scrollers doing veneered intarsia as it can be very gentle to the wooden surface if a very light depth of sanding is used. I would think that if you took any more than a very fine cut that you could easily get divots from the spinning drum if you don't keep the wood moving at a steady pace. Would love to hear from someone who owns one.

[Jim Finn]

I have a "V" sander I built from the kit. It works like a jointer does. As Peter says, You manually control the feed rate and need to learn to do it at an even speed or you will get a wavy finish. I use mine to sand the top and bottom edges of jewelery boxes flat after assembling the sides and before glueing on the tops and bottoms, and for sanding flat inlayed wood. I also had a thickness drum sander that worked well but it died so I scraped it. Sanding on either of these tools is quite slow because you can only sand a thin amount with each pass.

[Harry Niemann]

I built the Stockroom supply sander from a kit and am very happy with it.

[Steve Peterson]

Seems to me that you can buy a similarly sized drum sander for the about the same amount of money.


And the similarly sized drum sander will have a much larger motor. The tiny motor in the Sandflee was mentioned a lot when I was researching them. The Stockroom Supply version allows you to choose the motor size.

Steve

[George Bokros]

Thank for all the replies. I have decided that it is not something I am interested in.