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Thread: Talking to my drum sander

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Dueane Hicks View Post
    I bought this overly expensive piece of equipment, thinking it was good at sanding. I bought a Supermax 25/50; mostly to sand burls for making small boxes. This darn thing gums up so easily that I have just given up even using it! I use zirconium belts, at 80,100,120 grit. They always gum up with burl, and pretty much anything but poplar and walnut. What a waste money! Now I'm trying to find the secret trick that will clean this junk off the once used sandpaper without taking it off multiple times and scrubbing it with harsh chemicals. Does anyone out there in maddening gum world know how to get this crud off the paper? Those rubber sticks do not work! I am running very light passes and going through as fast as I can.
    A couple pics.....

    Attachment 418545Attachment 418546
    I think it gumming up has more to do with the type wood and the type paper on the sander you are using. You may have better luck with a different brand of paper especially if it is rosin coated. Still, a drum sander is more likely to gum up than a belt sander. I've run heavy industrial drum sanders large enough to run a house door through and they would sometimes gum up the paper especially on pine doors.

  2. Quote Originally Posted by Stewart Lang View Post
    I've ran veneers through mine (which has H&L) just fine.
    Good to know. Just to clarify though. When you say you ran veneers through, do you mean actually re-sawing and making veneers where the re-sawed stuff might need a good bit of thicknessing or just running veneers through that are already pretty much smooth and close to the right thickness?

  3. #33
    Join Date
    Jul 2013
    Location
    Flower mound, Tx
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    514
    The OP’s frustration with his drum sander is unfortunately all too common. I have said this many times.... small drum sanders are a flawed design. Guys always jump on this saying the operator is flawed? But every month on every WW forum, there are guys posting the exact thing. Sure there are guys getting “acceptable” results but everyone has a wide definition of acceptable performance. If you have to glue velcro all over your drum to get acceptable performance, then that seems to prove the original design is flawed.
    Weather the drum is steel or aluminum really doesn't matter. Again the problem is the sandpaper over heats cuz it is in constant contact with the drum and is almost constantly in contact with the wood causing heat. The paper has no place or time to cool. If aluminum was superior to steel then Wide Belt sanders would not be using steel. The manufacturer, WoodMaster uses Steel drums citing superior cooling( checkout their website).
    High-end drum sanders, like Wide Belt sanders use steel drums covered with rubber.
    I think its great that there are guys that are happy with drum sanders. But I also know there are many Woodworkers including myself who went through a lot of disappointment and wasted money before they gave up and sold their drum sander for pennies on the dollar.

  4. #34
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Location
    NE Iowa
    Posts
    1,217
    I use a Delta 18-36 drum sander, which I hate for a wide range of reasons. As others have said, they are compromised machines by the nature of their design, and the Delta especially so.

    That said, I have one, and use it. I also have inadequate dust removal, but have found that spraying the sandpaper with teflon regularly helps enormously with dust release, so my under powered removal system can grab it. This reduces sandpaper loading, and burning.

    But after I retire and have time to actually fix things in my shop, the Delta will be free to anyone who wants to mess with it, and replaced with a wide belt, with adequate dust removal.

  5. #35
    Join Date
    Mar 2018
    Location
    Piercefield, NY
    Posts
    1,659
    For what I do, building banjos, guitars, fiddles and such, the SuperMax 19-38 has been a huge improvement. I bought mine 18 months ago, and now that I have had one I wouldn't want to be without it for the work I do. For furniture work where the pieces are much bigger and there are more of them I can easily see that it would be too slow to be productive, but for what I do it works great. I use only 80 grit for instrument work, my need is to make things very flat and consistent in thickness and it's great for that. I used to use a planer to make guitar sides and backs and half of the pieces would be torn up by the planer before they got thin enough, more if I wasn't careful about grain direction. Now i have no snipe and no tearout, and I am willing to take a little more time to accomplish that. I use the paper directly on the drum and get pretty good life, it will eventually load up and burn the wood but that's usually a sign that it's time for new paper. I bought a big roll and cut my own pieces to size, it's much cheaper that way. I have a Reliant dust collector with a 4" hose, it gets some of the dust but some falls down on to the conveyor and then falls off the back, and I vacuum it from time to time. I know a guy who is a professional cutting board maker and was disappointed when he bought a drum sander, before I had mine, because it was too slow. To get the value of finished product that he needed through his machine took a lot more time than it takes me to sand the same value of product through mine.

  6. #36
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
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    SE PA - Central Bucks County
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    65,682
    Zachary, I'm glad you've had a good experience with the SuperMax 19-38 as I'm about to have one in my shop (pre-owned but very nice) for essentially the same thing you are using yours for.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  7. #37
    Join Date
    Jul 2017
    Location
    TX / LA border.. Toledo Bend
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    746
    A different angle of thought...

    If a board is Kiln dried to a high enough temp, the pitch becomes "set"

    AFAIK in general terms anyway.

    I learned this working w SY Pine boards w hand RO sanders.

    Would that "set" board reduce the paper loading problem ?

    I dunno, just throwing this out there to those that may know about this.

    Marc
    I'm pretty new here, not as as experienced as most. Please don't hesitate to correct me

  8. #38
    Join Date
    Jul 2017
    Location
    TX / LA border.. Toledo Bend
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    746
    Quote I found -

    I don't know how it applies to other wood species -

    "From Gene Wengert, forum technical advisor:
    You need to specify that the belts are "open coat", and you need to make sure that the pine has had the “pitch set” during drying."

    Marc
    I'm pretty new here, not as as experienced as most. Please don't hesitate to correct me

  9. #39
    Join Date
    Mar 2018
    Location
    Piercefield, NY
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    Zachary, I'm glad you've had a good experience with the SuperMax 19-38 as I'm about to have one in my shop (pre-owned but very nice) for essentially the same thing you are using yours for.
    I hope you'll like yours. I use mine even more than I thought I would before I bought it. For instance I cut pieces of brass dowel to use as fretboard dots and after I drill the holes and glue the dots in I run the boards through the sander again to sand the brass down level with the board. It's nice also to be able to flatten small resawn pieces like headstock overlays and fiddle sides. I'll look forward to hearing how it works for you.
    Zach

  10. #40
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
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    Thanks, Zach...I do expect it to be a useful tool...this time around. I bought a similar unit years ago but it went largely unused because of what I was making at that point in time, taking up a lot of space, etc. So I sold it to another 'Creeker and moved on. My needs have changed. While I can take big things to Bucks County Hardwoods for sanding, I've acquired a lot of interesting thin stock recently and cannot process it to uniform thickness with my planer without a high percentage of "destruction". This solves that plus will add a service I can offer to some of my CNC work clients. (I will not be able to use it for fretboards the way you do because I pre-radius them on the CNC, but that's a great idea for dealing with the brass inlays!)
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  11. #41
    Join Date
    Jun 2019
    Location
    Lower Shingletown Ca
    Posts
    172
    I should have bought a wide belt sander used instead of this thing. It is useful for several things I've had to sand (home made veneer) and leveling boxes after cutting the lids off.
    Where did I put those band aids?

  12. #42
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Location
    Fort Worth, TX
    Posts
    13
    Just feel like throwing in my two cents here.. I’ve got the SuperMax 18/36 and it started as a love/hate relationship. I gummed up a lot of sandpaper (never thought about SimpleGreen to refurbish it!!) and was second guessing my ability to use the tool correctly. My big improvements came when I centralized/upgraded my dust collection runs, started taking smaller passes, and slowed down to let the sandpaper cool off during long stretches of use. I also am sure to use different parts of the roll when working on narrow stock, which helps keep things from heating up in one spot too fast. I can go quite a while before the first pitch spot appears, and now that I know I can salvage a roll with SimpleGreen, I’m really thinking the tool was a home run buy. For a hobbyist like me, it’s truly a Ferrari.. or whatever is really good now... I drive a Toyota so what do I know about Ferraris.

  13. #43
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Location
    Wayland, MA
    Posts
    3,655
    I'm another happy Supermax 19-38 user. I use it on cherry, maple and walnut almost exclusively, 80 grit almost exclusively. There are things about it that are irritating-- like the paper clamp on the right side that's impossible to reach, but it does what I need-- final thicknessing of thin stock and dealing with highly figured woods prone to tearout. I have occasionally wrecked a belt by taking too aggressive a cut, but overall it's been a real nice addition to the shop. I used to use it to clean up the surface left by my planer, but with my new J/P that appears to be a much-diminished task-- I can go straight to a smoothing plane off the power planer.

  14. #44
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
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    65,682
    I learned the "be careful of the bite" thing the hard way last week, Rodger, with my 19-38...it was accidental, but still...
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  15. #45
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
    Location
    Kansas City, MO
    Posts
    117
    I have found these cleaning sticks to do a pretty good job of cleaning gummed up paper while it is still on my machine.

    https://www.amazon.com/Prostik-W1307...4356622&sr=8-5

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