Drum Sander or Helical Planer for Curly Maple Lumber

[Clarence Martinn]

Which one would better to use to finish down rough sawn Curly Maple Lumber ?

[Jim Becker]

Not the drum sander...rough sawn lumber needs to be face jointed and then thicknessed. Helical knife setups tend to have an advantage for highly figured material.

[Andrew Hughes]

Drum sanders are slow a planer is better choice.

[Christopher Herzog]

I put in fresh blades the last time I planed curly maple. Took very shallow passes. Chip out is a risk but it was fine.

My two cents,
Chris

[Mike Wilkins]

I get really smooth results from my jointer/planer Hammer machine with the Silent Power cutter head, even on highly figured lumber. The shearing cut makes the difference. Almost makes me want to get rid of my double-drum sander.
I always take light cuts.

[roger wiegand]

They serve different purposes I think, I have used both. The jointer/planer preps and dimensions the wood, but with the risk of popping out chips in highly figured wood. The segmented helical head I use now is dramatically better for this than the straight knife tools I used before. Almost all of my furniture incorporates some curly or birdseye maple, so I've dealt with it a lot. The rub comes down to the last half millimeter, where pulling a chip out is disastrous.
I recently made a small table out of curly maple where I, as a challenge to myself, finished it using only hand planes. That worked, but barely. the top ended up slightly thinner than intended due to pulling a chip out at the end. For safety and ease, sanding to final dimension is safer-- but we're talking a couple passes at 100 grit to sneak up on the final dimension, not bulk removal nor as a replacement for joining and thickness planing.

[Alex Zeller]

A drum sander is for taking thousands of an inch off of wood. Just enough to remove things like sanding marks. It's not designed for rough cut wood or even reducing the thickness of wood. If you're asking because you are thinking of buying one or the other one doesn't replace the other.

[Steve Demuth]

A drum sander is for taking thousands of an inch off of wood. Just enough to remove things like sanding marks. It's not designed for rough cut wood or even reducing the thickness of wood. If you're asking because you are thinking of buying one or the other one doesn't replace the other.

I mostly agree with this, but I do use my drum sander for final thicknessing of shop sawn veneers and thin wood for bent laminate glue ups. Just made a 6 ply piece with 4" radius curves today, for example. That meant getting the wood to .083 give or take a thousandth or so. No other tool in the shop to do that kind of precise thicknessing on wood that thin.

[roger wiegand]

A drum sander is for taking thousands of an inch off of wood. Just enough to remove things like sanding marks. It's not designed for rough cut wood or even reducing the thickness of wood. If you're asking because you are thinking of buying one or the other one doesn't replace the other.

In general I'd agree, but I find the drum sander to be incredibly useful for fine thicknessing, especially of small pieces that can't safely be put through a J/P. I doubt you'll find a luthier shop anywhere that isn't equipped with a "thicknessing sander". For pieces already too thin or short to safely put into a planer (instrument sides, shop-made veneers) it is a valuable tool. It's also useful when you need to reduce the thickness of a piece by less than the minimum bite your planer will take without leaving tracks from the drive roller in your piece.
Obviously it's not the tool of choice to remove a quarter inch of material, but it absolutely has a place, just as a hand plane does, for making small thickness adjustments.

[Randy Heinemann]

If you have a helical head planer, that is likely the best tool for the job of thicknessing. Drum sanders aren't designed to take a rough sawn 4/4 board down to 3/4" thickness for example. It can be done, but it would take a lot of time and probably more than one change of sandpaper if you have a lot of wood. Once you get the boards close to the desired thickness, then the final best surface would probably be achieved by running the boards through a drum sander for the last few passes (that is, if you have access to both). I only have a helical head jointer and, for jointing and flattening it gives results without tearout. Before I had a drum sander, I took a project to a hardwood dealer who had one and paid to have the final surface sanded flat. True, there is some cost, but the drum sander probably still results in the best, smoothest surface on figured wood.

[glenn bradley]

Helical jointer, then planer.
491305
I did drum sand the last little bit before doing the usual surface prep.

[Carl Beckett]

I hate (strong word) saying this type of thing, but ya.... you need both if you are going to work with figured wood. My experience echos Rogers directly - thicknessing is much faster on a planer - the helical head gets great reviews to minimize, but more often than not a small chip out on finish pass.

I put everything through the sander (started with drum sanders of various types before graduating to a wide belt - an essential tool imo)

A 60 or 80 grit belt on a sander will take off 1/4" without that many passes... The finer grit belts less. But I put almost everything through the drum/belt sander before hitting it with the hand sander.

[Steve Demuth]

I hate (strong word) saying this type of thing, but ya.... you need both if you are going to work with figured wood. My experience echos Rogers directly - thicknessing is much faster on a planer - the helical head gets great reviews to minimize, but more often than not a small chip out on finish pass.

I put everything through the sander (started with drum sanders of various types before graduating to a wide belt - an essential tool imo)

A 60 or 80 grit belt on a sander will take off 1/4" without that many passes... The finer grit belts less. But I put almost everything through the drum/belt sander before hitting it with the hand sander.

i think this just about sums it up, in all respects. I would add only that I've made some use of belts as aggressive as 36 grit when I really want to use the drum sander for thicknessing. One (very odd, I know) use for that was a bunch of white oak fence boards that had spent 30 years in the weather. Thicknessed down to mostly good wood, but with a generous allowance of deep cracks and pits left in the wood, I got gorgeous caramelized oak, with the equivalent of spalting for "figure." The sander did this quickly and well, ate the occassional bit of screw without damaging machine or lumber, and was easily "finished" with a final pass using 80 grit.

[Kevin Jenness]

You can grind off material with a sander but it takes far more power and belt expense for abrasive thicknessing than knife milling. 1/32" is about the maximum I would take with a 60# belt to avoid excess heat unless I had a huge cutterhead motor and rapid feed speed, so removing 1/4" is a slow proposition. A typical drum sander is not meant for surfacing roughsawn stock.