Drum Sander vs. Planer.

[Steve Nouis]

I vote to get a 20" planer or bigger, spiral head is nice and a good agressive random orbit sander and a good hand belt sander. I have RBI drum sander which I gave up on. You can only take off 5 to 7 thousands per pass and you run a small knot through it still ruins the paper. It's so pathetic that after taking a pass the board heats up a little and you can't lower the head at all without burning. Maybe a dedicated drum sander with a way bigger drum and slower speed might work. Steve

[Kevin Jaynes]

Joe Von,

Thanks for reminding me I own a drum sander . . . I have a 725 but have only used it as a sander a couple of times. I haven't been doing much panel work lately (lately not much woodworking period ) but the last couple of projects I did that had panel glue-ups, I just used hit them with the Bosch 5" ROS. Man that little bugger is aggressive.

Since I have the spiral head on the 725, I don't often need a drum sander. If I ever do see a need for one and can justify the cost, I will probably get the Woodmaster 50" again. I owned one in the early 90's and loved it.

Hated to part with it, but divorces seem to have a way of liquidating an entire woodworking shop.

[J.R. Rutter]

My first sander was a 22-44 Pro. I eventually got tired of having to run it at slow speed to avoid burning and trying to juggle larger panels or doors while avoiding a gouge at the open end of the drum. I found that setting the drum level to the table resulted in it being leveraged up varying amounts depending on wood hardness and thickness. The abrasive holding system was too lightweight to prevent stretching and overlapping of seams as the wrap approached the end of its life. But it fit into my small shop and was affordable at the time.

My next sander was a 37" double drum. It could run twice as fast and by using a coarse grit up front and a finer grit in back, the paper lasted a lot longer. But trying to do wide panels like tabletops was an exercise in frustration because the glue lines would load up and burn almost immediately unless the panel could be skewed 20 degrees or more. Trying to remove more than 1/8 turn of the handwheel was a problem. But it fit into my small shop and was cheaper than a widebelt. My sander had a steel drum in front for calibrating, and a rubber drum in back for finishing. Over the time that I had it, I was able to fine tune the drums by noting where the paper had loaded up and sanding the rubber lightly in those spots each time I changed loads. For the front, I used a can of BBQ spray paint to gradually build up the spots where the wrap had not loaded up. By the time I sold it, it was pretty well dialed in.

I have a commercial shop, so I was finally able to justify a double head 43" widebelt. It works twice as fast as the double drum and gives a much better surface - a few seconds of equivalent grit ROS erases the linear scratches completely. Belt changes are fast, but grit changes do require recalibration, so I have settled on a pair that handles my needs. I use about a belt per month on each head - about $30 each. I was actually spending more than that on bulk wraps for the double drum.

As to the original question, I would make these observations:

If you go to buying lumber H&M, and S2S it yourself, you can get flatter staves to glue up with a light face joint and thickness plane pass. This should help you to get flatter panels in glue up. Yes, S2S is cheaper, but this is about controlling your quality, not your cost.

The open ended sander will work to a certain extent for tabletops, but expect it to be painfully slow, and possibly painful on your back as you try to support it properly and avoid disaster on that last pass.

If I were you, I would be tempted to look for a used wide drum sander. I would imagine that the next few months will see many shops closing up and putting a lot of good used equipment on the market. It may be easier in the long run to sand 2 halves of a tabletop glued up, then biscuit the halves together and hand sand the last center line.

[lou sansone]

for figured lumber with wide belt is a real time saver. I looked at the drum sanders and found a very nice single owner timesavers 37" wide belt for less than the drum sanders - the 20 hp motor might make for a tough time starting if you are not set up for 3 phase -