Fun with an Oscillating Spindle Sander

[Bruce Seidner]

One of the first large tools I purchased was a Grizzly 1071 oscillating spindle sander from a boat builder going out of business, and since my focus was on building frames for boats, this was a great find. Of late I have been working with things that are flat and square and thinking about building or buying a large disk sander. Wooden Gears has been featuring some pretty creative machines of late and I can't tell if it is just my enjoyment of building machines that has ignited my interest in disk sanders or if there is some other reason that I am thinking I need one of these. I have the parts around the shop to build one so cost is not an issue.

But I am thinking that building a fence, like a tall shaper fence for the spindle sander could make a disk sander redundant.

What could a 12" disk sander do that a 12" spindle with a proper shaper fence could not do?

The Grizzly is beast and has about the perfect size table for anything I have thrown at or on it. But I have a suspicion that there are things that a 12" or larger disk sander could do that is currently outside my range.

[Jeff Duncan]

Two different machines generally used for very different sanding operations. Spindles are obviously used for curved surfaces mostly. Disc sanders are often used to curve ends of boards....very tricky with a spindle. I'm not really sure what the fence is going to offer you to make it work any better? Some guys also use them to creep up on miter joints. I'm sure you'll get a lot more responses on what others do with theirs.

Now having said that if you have an edge sander., you may not need a disc sander. But the disc and spindle I consider completely different animals.

good luck,
JeffD

[Rick Potter]

As Jeff mentioned, if you decide to get a disc sander, consider an edge sander instead. You can find them on CL, like I did.

I have an OSS, and a 6"belt/12" disc sander. I still use the OSS a lot, matter of fact, just upgraded to a floor model Jet. I find that I hardly use the disc/belt unit any more, because the edge sander seems to do almost everything they do.

About the fence setup....give it a try, but I don't think you will like it. Be sure to make provision for an offset on the outfeed side, like you would set up a router table for jointing.

Hope this helps,
Rick Potter

Oh yeah, forgot. Just offhand, the first thing I think of that the OSS won't do well is square up miters or the ends of small pieces.

[Van Huskey]

Quite frankly all three sanders (edge, spindle and disc) have things they do very well. The disc sander has a machined platen so it CAN be very accurate, by that I mean a good quality version. They are great for touching up angles of miters and working with small parts especially by hand, they have the advantage of being able to change the rate material is removed by moving the part to the inside or outside of the disc.

In my mind if you need the primary function of any one of these sanders often then you need to try to get that sander, if you rarely need one of the primary functions you can get away with other methods with other sanders or buy hand. For ME I would take a quality full size (89" belt at minamum) oscillating edge sander 1st. It will do most of your "square" work AND do all your convex work and all your concave work down to the diameter of the idler roller (or drive roller if it is one that mounts the aux table on the drive end). Second an OSS, if you have a good belt sander the OSS can be a table top version since the curves smaller than the edge sander can hanlde will likely be relatively small pieces which fit well on the smaller table and don't need tons of horsepower. Obviously if space/money is less of an issue then a full size OSS is definately nice. The least useful sanders for me cost/benefit wise are the belt/disc, the disc tends to be small (you can only use half of its width) and so is the belt.

You can do the fence setup on a OSS but the drums will take a HUGE beating if you try to run anything significant through it, there is just so little sandpaper there compared to a full size edge sander and the cost of the sandpaper is SO much higher than for the edge sander per square inch. I could easily see the cost of sandpaper over the life of the machine actually paying for an economy and or used lower end edge sander.

[Jeff Miller]

I Have this one from Grizzly, got it used..........$225.00













Works good. Dust collection works good too




JEFF

[Bruce Seidner]

Well, Van, you hit the nail on the head. (Despite the fact that we mostly rely on screws these days.) I was thinking that with a proper fence that the OSS could look like an edge sander to a square short side of a plank. But there is huge difference between the real estate of a spinning spindle and a World Wrestling Association Belt of a real edge sander. Then there are the Sand Flea finish sanders but merely changing the paper on a spindle will not mimic the light touch of this species with a vertical table (perpendicular fence) over the OSS. I have some large 80/20 aluminum extrusion that I was planing on using for a band saw re-saw fence but I am intrigued with the strengths and limitations of my washing machine size OSS. It is quite an investment of shop real estate and I want to see what it can do and maximize its usefulness. But these individual machines were developed for a purpose and I have to humbly respect that such genetic diversity is not gratuitous. Intelligent design is the lowest form of intellectual apologia. But intelligently designed machines are an inspired calling to a higher purpose.

[Van Huskey]

Bruce, you idea is valid, I have seen it done, but one just has to see it for what it is. For the one off it would be useful and as long as one recognizes the limitations it makes sense and will work.