Make or purchase a sanding drum for grinder or drillpress?

[Jack Gaskins]

I am looking for ideas on either making or buying a sanding drum you can attach to either a grinder or my lathe. The internet is full of photos on homemade or ones you can purchase. Any creekers ever made their own small drums and if so I am wondering how to best stick the sand paper on? Or if you purchased some drums where would you suggest purchasing them and what type? Hard Rubber or Pnuematic? My use for sanding drums is to smooth the flats of some spatulas I wont to turn on my lathe and will need to get the bandsaw marks out. The widest/longest drum I would need would be say 2-4 inches in dia by 4-6 inches in length. I already have a small variable speed Delta lathe so I could use that or I have an old motor with a 1/2inch shaft I could also use but it only spins at 1750 ish were as my lathe goes from 250 to 3000.

Thanks,
Jack

[Matt Meiser]

I made one by buying a drum for a Delta BOSS since they were readily available at Lowes at the time. Then I bought a long enough bolt to go through the drum and leave about 1-1/2 to 2" sticking out and cut the head off. At the top where the bolt shank wasn't threaded I drilled out a nut to slip over. then cross drilled that and installed a roll pin. Then a washer, the drum, another washer and a nut. The advantage was that I could buy readily available sleeves.

But even a cheap OSS works better from my experience. Menards has (had?) a Performax branded one that worked OK other than being noisy and could be had for not much over $100.