Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Stuart Hough

>Joe, Let me qualify my statement with the admission that I have never used or owned one, but I would have to be swayed by the fact that the Performax 16/32 has won top honors in every magazine comparo I have read over the years. It seems to be an extremely solid package. The parallelism of the drum to the platen was the "best in show" in each article. It seems to be the performance standard out there. Just my thoughts...

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Carol from AZ

>OK, I did have the Performax 22-44 for years. It is not, nor are any of them, a planer. I have one of those as well.

I used it to remove planer marks from wood before cutting wood to size. Like right off the truck! I did cut pieces to rough lengths simply because of space restrictions in the shop.

What that did for me was greatly reduce the amount of sanding I had to do after assembly. Worth every nickle!

So why don't I have it any more. Two reasons. One, when I was moving and selling off some other tools, someone asked what I wanted for the Performax. It wasn't on the selling block, but rather than tell him that, I quoted what I thought was a ridiculously high price, like 75% of a new one. He never blinked. Had cash in his pocket too! I rationalized that the footprint was really bigger than I liked. It was over ten years old, yada, yada, yada. So why did I sell it? Plain ol' greed. :(

What will I replace it with when I get a shop set up again? Don't know. Depends on the shop and floor space. One thing I do know. I never really needed more than 12" of width. That will factor in when I am ready to get another.

FWIW.

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Bill Sands

>The 16/32 is a proven design and works as advertised. I have had one for a while and use it to finish sand with good results. Once adjusted, the drum stays parallel to the table and the feed belt tracks well. My only complaint is that I feel it is underpowered. The older models came with Leeson motors and had more torque. The newer models require a lot of patience and passes to get the job done, but they work and continue to work. Woodcraft has an after market feed belt that is good quality and much cheaper than the OE belt.

I have a Powermatic dual drum sander to plane (remove a reasonable amount of wood from) panels up to 25 inches. It is not in the same class as a wide belt sander, but it didn't cost as much either. I am happy with both machines. They do what they were designed for and are low maintenance.

If finish sanding is all you need, the Performax brand 16/32 or 22/44 would be a good choice.

Bill Sands

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Barry Irby

>I have a Performax 16/32. In the love/hate catagory put me on the love side. I have a friend that has one of the big wide belt machines and the Perfomax is not in that league, but I bought mine used for $400, not $12,000 I heard some of the big boys cost.

I also agree with everything said above. It's not a planer, but it will do things my lunch box palner won't, like sand burl and curly wood to perfection. Weird, beautiful stuff the planer would just destroy and send up the dust chute. For that alone its worth it.

I can also tape a piece of homemade veneer to a piece of melamine and sand it to .02". The planer would just trash that too.

I do find it slow, but I expected that. Mine is older, so maybe I lucked out on the motor, (I need to look at it.) If I am starting with planed wood, I start with a 100 or maybe and 80 grit belt and usually go to a 120 or 150. Ocasionally to a 220, but rarely. I find the really fine belts to be REALLY slow.

Arthritic hands? Find a ROS that feels good. Some have less vibration that others. I have a Porter Cable that I like, but it does "buzz" the hands. Maybe time for a Festool. Good question to post.

Back to the Performax for a minute. I think one thing I have "learned" is to take light (really light) quick passes. Keep the stock moving as fast as it will go. The instinctual move for me is to slow the feed rate down. Not a good idea, especially with finer grits. It burns. Extremely light cuts moving faster burn less.

I also reverse nearly every piece without changing the thickness for a last pass and that knocks out any parallelism issues, even thought I have not noticed any.

The 16/32 is wide enough for me. Rarely run anything over 16, let along 32. I think some wrap around support tables would be good if you commonly run wide stuff.

You should do what I did, find someone in the "hate" catagory and buy theirs used for about half price and laugh all the way home.

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Sue McLam in Orange, VT

>Joe,

I've had the Performax 16/32 for almost 7 years. I do woodworking for a living and definitely have a love/hate relationship with this machine but I can't afford to upgrade at the moment.

Why do I hate it? Number one reason is that it's slow. And sometimes you have to stop it during a pass because the sanding belt loosens up and overlaps itself resulting in a horrible burn in the wood. If you don't stop and fix it, it can also ruin the belt. I have also overheated the motor more times than I can count. That is my fault for trying to be too aggressive with it. I have to wait 30-45 minutes for it to cool down.

Why do I love it? There is absolutely no way I could/would take wood from the planer and then do my sanding with a ROS. I always leave my planing 1/16" over what I want for my finished thickness. Then I start with 80 grit and go up to either 180 or 220 with the 16/32. It cleans up the wood beautifully and evenly and removes any tearout from the planer. I often run pieces wider than 16" through my sander and it works fine for that. The feed belt tracks wonderfully.

You will learn little tricks as you go. Like how much to change the depth on each pass, sometimes not changing the depth at all and resand at that thickness. You'll also learn to recognize odd noises coming from the sanding belt. That will tell you if it worked itself loose or out of alignment and you just stop the machine and re-wrap the belt...no big deal.

For your needs I would recommend it. I've not used the other machines that you mentioned so I can't compare.

Sue

You can try mine

Larry in NW Ohio

>Joe it sounds that your in Ohio somewhere. If you want to travel to Northwest Ohio, just north of Lima, Your more than welcome to try out my woodmaster. I`ve had it for around 5 years, and I like it but can`t really tell since I didn`t use anything else. I would like to try the Steel City with the solid rubber rollers and two rools on them. I would make sure it has enough power to pull the double rolls without loseing to much power under load. I saw it at the Columbus show also. As I said your more than welcome to try mine, at least you`ll have a little something to go on. Larry in NW Ohio

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

Jesse in New Mexico

>Hey Joe,

FWIW, we have a performax at the school I attend. Its great for thicknessing (if thats a word...) finicky grain. Also great for smoothing wide panels.

Be sure to have good dc for it, though - it really makes the dust.

One caution I would have is that ours needs lots of maintenance, goes out of adjustment often. That might be because we have so many different people of different skill levels using it, though.

Agree with all those who say its slow, but thats just what you need to expect when you go into it.

You've gotten lots of good advice

Neal in San Jose

>I have the Delta 18-36 and use it quite a lot. Two friends have identical machines, and I used theirs a time or two until I decided I had to have one. Like everyone else has said, it is not a fast machine, but with patience it is a hard working, accurate, dependable machine. I haven't had any of the mechanical problems others have reported, but maybe I'm just lucky. Setting the machine up is easy; a little time consuming, but a once in a lifetime deal. I have found that the higher cost Delta brand sanding paper fits better than Klingspore, but both work fine. The Klingspore is just a little more fiddly to get it on straight. I bought it used from a pro that found he could load up a bunch of stock (he uses lots of Ipe), drive to a friend's that has a Time-Saver 54 inch wide belt, drive back and save time.

For my hobby use, it is just fine. Time is not a huge issue for me. Of course I'd like it to go faster, but it does such a good job that it is worth the time to me. Right now I'm surfacing about 150 bf of highly figured QS English Sycamore. The planer was hopeless; tearing out badly. The Delta is doing a great job. I just hope I live long enough to finish the job, LOL!

Be sure you have adequate dust collection. When I bought it, I had a 1 hp Delta DC and the sander completely overwhelmed it. I could only use the sander outside WITH the dust collector. I've since upgraded to a 1 1/2 hp Jet canister, and am seriously considering upgrading again to a cyclone.

All in all, it is a machine I'm glad I have in the shop and would buy again. HTH Neal

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

John Ross

>Does anyone have any experience with the General sander? Thanks.

WoodMaster.......

SanMan

>.....a little pricey, but they receive great reviews.

SM

Re: Drum sander?...thinking out loud

TONY WASSIL

>You can`t beat the 22/44 pro.No problems but you need a good DC

Lots of good input, as always.

Joe Pack

>Thanks for all the input, folks. I appreciate it. I thought some of my friends here would have experiences to share.

Thanks, too, Larry, for the offer of trying out yours. Lima is about 2+ hours away.

I like the idea of the Delta X series, but the idea that one BIG dealer dropped the item (not Delta, just the drum sander) totally warns me away. I don't have a Steel City to look at anywhere nearby, and it is "new." The Performax seems to top everyone's list, with very few complaints, so I am leaning that way if I do get one. Woodcraft has offered me a bit of a deal on either unit they carry.

Again, thanks for all the advice. I will consider it all.