Considering a thickness sander. What to get?

[Peter Wilcox]

Anybody have experience with the Grizzly 10" G0716. It is $415 with $75 shipping for a new one.

Nothing else comes close. But if it is junk it will do no good.

Bob

I know nothing about it. My only comment is that I think you will be sorely disappointed by limiting your width to under 10". Much of my sanding is on bodies, tops, and backs after they've been joined, which needs an open 8" or larger sander, or preferably a 16" or larger width whether open or closed.

[Barry Daniels]

It is actually nice to have a few spare inches. It may sound weird, but I often feel cramped on my 23" wide Performax. But I do lose a couple of inches on the end of the drum where the clamps are located.

[Paul E Buerk]

I have the Delta 18", and rate it a solid "OK". The height adjustment is done via a belt, which is OK, but I do have to go back and true up the table more than I'd like. I'm considering changing the drive from a belt to a chain, but that sounds like a lot more work than i want to take on right now. Otherwise, I have no complaints with it.

As has been pointed out, you really need a dust collector for these things.

[Jason Rodgers]

I got my Jet on craigslist for $550, but it took about 4 months of checking almost daily, and I was too late on my call several times. The nice thing is, at least with the stuff I saw, was that they were little used: folks would buy em, then realize they wanted something bigger. I suppose that's a lesson. (They started showing up on craigslist with the most frequency just after Christmas and tax return time.) I sought this thing out specifically for the size, though, because my shop is small, and it has officially filled it to the brim.

If you don't need a sander right now, watch craigslist for a bit and see what you can find. I passed up a couple bigger machines because, well, they were too big, and just out of my price range.

[Simon Magennis]

A little off-topic.

How many passes/how much time does it take using a thickness sander of the types mentioned here to get from say 4.5mm to 2.5mm on spruce or indian rosewood? Assume some sort of automatic feed. I would like to keep my fingers safe.

[David King]

I'll just say for the record that the Performax 22-44 is a poor performer. The table is just too flexible to get a consistent thickness.
Simon, The removal rate varies dramatically with the type and grit of your sandpaper. With 80 grit I might try .1mm per pass so you are looking at a lot of passes. The 80 grit leaves a very rough surface with a lot of parallel lines that need to be scraped off. You can stop a few .1mms before your final dimension and switch to 120 grit and 220 grit.

[Jason Rodgers]

As a general rule, I'll start with a 1/4 turn of the height wheel, but adjust according to what I see and hear from the machine. For example, I was surfacing some big leaf maple that was burning like crazy (but smelling great, like caramel corn!), so I gave it two passes on a set height and then 1/6 turn of the wheel to advance. On some walnut, there was different densities between different grain - sapwood vs heartwood, straight vs crotch - and one piece was fine, but the next would slow down the drum, so I'd take lighter passes. Changing the feed belt speed is also a variable to play around with.

[Todd Stock]

The current iterations of the 10/20, 16/32, and 22/44 are pretty good for single drum machines, with fixes on most of the annoyances that plagued early generations. I ran a 10/20 for 10 years, and fabricated a replacement height mechanism that fixed the poor fit issue and high replacement parts cost of the original. My 16/32 has the auto adjust feed speed based on sensed load, and does a good job on the rosewoods that would wipe out the 10/20. The latest generation of the 22/44 is much better than the early ones (I had an early Performax 22/44 for a few months in the shop and agree with the assessment that it was not a mature system; the latest 22/44 and 22/44 with oscillating drum are much better machines.

If I had unlimited space, I'd keep a 10/20 set up for bindings and nuts/saddles, and a 22/44 Oocillating drum or Supermax 19/38 for the heavy stuff.

[Bob Howell]

I read several reviews of the Grizzly 710 drum sander that is available here on chaigs list. Seems it will only go down to .25" A piece of 3/4" plywood gets around that.

I used a neighbors Performax 6-7 yrs ago and don't remember that problem; rather being amazed the conveyor belt didn't clash with the drum on a 1/8" pass.

Most comments mentioned waiting long time for the wood to pass through.

Still hanging out on CL.

Bob

[David King]

Bob,
While it's true a Performax can go all the way down to 0 depth, as soon as you turn on the dust collector the conveyor belt gets lifted up off the platen and hits the drum at anything below 3/16".

[Barry Daniels]

I don't usually hit my conveyor belt unless I go down to veneer thickness around .025".

[Todd Stock]

Have that happen down below .080 on the 16/32, but only the extreme edges on a stretch, worn belt. When I get that, I change the conveyer belt and it goes away.

[Bob Howell]

Today a Ryobi 16" drum sander was posted for sale for $40.

Does that model work for ANYone?

It must do something.

SOLD in 3 hrs.

[Mark Fogleman]

The Ryobi is very good for taking small cuts in wide workpieces. It's underpowered for any serious thicknessing. The drive belt rheostat needs to be disconnected from the belt switch and a toggle switch added so the drive belt can run independently from the drum for initial height adjustment. This will speed up the process and allow more precise adjustment You can shim the support for the belt to square it up with the drum. This is a great feature. Should anyone need them, Steel City Tools bought the molds to make their drum sander which is a near copy of it and had spare parts.

[David King]

Oscillating drum sanders leave a way smoother surface for a given grit. Well worth investigating and actually pretty easy to implement on many models as you don't need to move the table very far side to side to implement it, a 1/4" would do it.

[Bob Howell]

I'm giving the shop made sander another look. I've seen some simple set ups that seem to help a lot. I've got extra motors around. The conveyer is a big issue.

I going through Fine WW issues to locate the article describing one.

I know plans are here but I've got to get them printed to understand what I'm looking at.

[Bob Howell]

A 16/32 Performax Plus / now Jet is now available. I have heard bit is a good model.

[Peter Wilcox]

A 16/32 Performax Plus / now Jet is now available. I have heard bit is a good model.

I bought a used one a couple of years ago for $400 and it has been a great time saver. It's the only one I've ever used, so can't compare it to anything else except a router sled and orbital sander, and it beats that hands down. It works best with coarse grits, and you have to take off wee bits at a time (1/64") or there is burning or stalling with some woods, so it can be slow going. Fine grits (above 120) load up quickly. Sandpaper's not too expensive if you buy long rolls and cut it yourself.

Dust collection is mandatory.

[Bob Hammond]

I guess what you need will depend upon the rate that you produce. It may or may not make sense to tie up money and space in large commercially produced machine. Maybe you might be interested a shopbuilt sander that would be used for final passes after handplaning. Below is a link to one made from a treadmill. This guy could have saved himself some work if he'd used the part of the treadmill chassis that the motor & roller were mounted on. I was going to build one with a treadmill incorporating ideas that you can see in my old post in the library, but I decided that the treadmill motor would be more useful on my lathe (although I almost made a combo lathe/thickness sander by building the sander into the lathe bench).

http://www.mimf.com/old-lib/hammond_sander_lathe.htm

http://www.tdpri.com/threads/shop-built ... er.322607/

[Bob Howell]

The Ryobi is very good for taking small cuts in wide workpieces. It's underpowered for any serious thicknessing. The drive belt rheostat needs to be disconnected from the belt switch and a toggle switch added so the drive belt can run independently from the drum for initial height adjustment. This will speed up the process and allow more precise adjustment You can shim the support for the belt to square it up with the drum. This is a great feature. Should anyone need them, Steel City Tools bought the molds to make their drum sander which is a near copy of it and had spare parts.

My neighbor has returned from a long trip. I went by to use his Ryobi Drum sander 16/32. After a couple of passes the conveyor belt fell apart.

Looked up a replacement and it was $106 on some replacement site.

Reading this I looked up Steel city. It has closed up shop and sold to someone.
What is left? Where do you get parts.

$106 doesn't make sense.

Ideas on parts?

The neighbor is not using his. So I plan to buy parts. He is up in years