Open or closed end drum sander?

[Michael Arruda]

Hello all!

I have a Grizzly G1079R Double 16" drum sander. It has served me well on cabinet doors, butcherblock countertop glue ups, edging laminations to dimension, accurate thicknessing and has even been pressed into service surfacing wood and corian after spray painting for infills. It is indispensable for final surfacing when I need to remove a couple .001" after primary thicknessing in my Yates American J-180 planer.

We are planning to move to Tennessee next year, and to that end, I am downsizing my shop. To that end, I am deciding what tools to keep and what to sell. I'll be going from a 3000 sqft shop to a 2 car garage again. A drum sander, though, is of too much utility to me to be without. To that end, I just purchased a Ryobi WD1600 open ended single drum sander to replace the Grizzly. It is smaller and much lighter duty. I bought it for the ability to remove the drive motor, disassemble to stand and fit it into a small box/ crate for the move, less than half the size on the Grizzly. It will also take up less space in the new shop.

I have not used the Ryobi yet. I am starting to have buyer's remorse. For anyone who has used both Performax style open end drum sanders and closed ended drum sanders, is there that big of a difference? I've heard of people having problems with open end sanders bending under the pressure of sanding, causing the thickness over the surface to be off. Is this true? I'm accustomed to be able to take less than .010" off in one pass and have a good planar surface over the board. Second, with the single head and no pressure rollers, has anyone had problems with snipe?

So... what would you do? make the Grizz work or sell it on and use the Ryobi?

Thanks,
Michael

[Mike Cutler]

I'd personally stick with the Grizzly, but take them both if at all possible.
I currently have a Steel City 26" dual drum sander, which was an upgrade from a Performax 16-32. If I had to choose between the 16-32 and the 26 inch, I'd have to pick the 26". I have always regretted selling my Performax though,and should have kept it.
If an open ended sander is not sanding evenly across the face of the material, it either adjusted wrong, or too much of a bite is being taken. I've never seen the Ryobi version though.
You can get snipe if your technique is off,but if you're not getting it now, you probably won't with just a machine change. I ran some pretty big stock through my Performax, 14"x5/4x11' long jatoba, and it handled it with some finessing just fine.

[Loren Woirhaye]

Those Ryobis have known durability issues.

I'd keep the closed end model if I were you. I have a Performax 22/44 and find it quite fussy. I had a Woodmaster for awhile and it was not near as much trouble.

[Steve Peterson]

I have a Jet 22/44 and have never used the open end. The castings are very heavy, but the open end still appears to shake if I take too large of a bite. The powerfeed belt usually stalls out also so I have to raise the drum to finish anyway. I can only imagine that the Ryobi would be a disappointment after using a larger unit.

Regarding your question about snipe, I think that the lack of pressure rollers would prevent snipe. Planer snipe starts right where the board looses contact with one of the pressure rollers.

Steve

[Michael Arruda]

Loren- what durability issues with the Ryobi? I've not seen any complaints for durability any more or less than a performax when searching on google. Do you know of weak spots on them?

My other concern is surfacing cabinet doors to even out rails and stiles, etc. I am severely limited with the Grizzly, as it's only 16". How do these open end sanders work for flipping stock? I've read mixed reviews of how well they function in that capacity, say, surfacing a 24" cabinet door.

I do enjoy the accuracy with my grizzly. I'm wondering if the issues people get with the open end units deflecting is more a matter of them not knowing how to use one amd expecting it to act as a planer, taking too much off in one pass. The most I've ever taken in a single pass on the grizzly was 1/32" , which was, I felt, still a bit too much. I try to do 1/64 or less.

-Michael

[Loren Woirhaye]

I think it's the feed motor, a circuit board or the machine chewing up the conveyer belt that gives people the most trouble.

They did take it off the market after all. It was less pricey than the Performax. I'm not saying it's a bad machine, just that ongoing maintenance costs may be an irritant.

[John TenEyck]

I have a Delta 18 x 36 and it has been a workhorse for me, given all the limitations of an open ended machine. If set up properly, it produces parallel surfaces across the full width. I also have used it many times to sand panels over 30" wide; something I would not have been able to do with a 26" wide closed end machine. Even with a 1.5 HP motor, the Delta can only comfortably take off less than 0.010" per pass, half of that being a better number, without stalling or burning the paper. I'd love to have a closed end machine for their generally more powerful motors and rigidity, but if could have only one, I'd keep the Delta because I need to sand wide stuff. If you don't need to do that, I'd get a closed end machine.

John

[Michael Arruda]

Thanks for the reply Loren! I'll do some more research into it. From what I've read, it seems pulling it off the market was just a stupid choice by Ryobi, perhaps because it was selling for too little compared to production cost and they couldn't bring the price up easily. But, that is all hearsay from longtime owner's I've read about online, so who knows? It was an inexpensive tool, after all, and even accounting for the stupid markup from production cost on the Performax/ Jet machines, it still had to have cut corners to come out at the price point it did.

-Michael