Hi, I lurk here occasionally. I used to post several years ago under
paintpot. I owned a paint store for 19 years, then got out of the business
about 2 years ago & went to work for a former customer of mine, a general
contractor. I finally got on with the Missouri Division of State Parks
several months ago.

I have been woodworking most of my life, thanks to my father, who departed
when I was 20. I have a pretty complete shop, but have started to use quite
a bit of quartersawn white oak, due to several planned arts&crafts style
projects. I bought a couple hundred feet of it kiln dried, but in the
rough for (gloat) $2 a board foot. The problem is when I run it through the
planer, I get some chipping. I have changed knives, taken very light cuts
and tried wetting it before running it through at a slight angle, all to no
avail. The planer is an old Belsaw 12" 9103.

So I am considering a drum sander to do the final cleanup of the oak. The
stuff I think I would use it for would be well under 16" in most cases, but
there are times I could use a larger width ( I would like to build a
hammered dulcimer in the future, and there is always the occasional table
top). I was looking at the Performax 16-32 and Delta 18-36 models because
of their open end design which would give the extra width. But in reality,
how well do they work? I can see 2 possible problems. First, how rigid is
the open end design compared to the closed type like the Grizzly 16" drum
sander? It seems that there would be a certain amount of deflection over
the 16 - 18" width. Second, if I were to run a 30" wide table top through
one of the open end models, will there be a gouge somewhere near the center,
due to the edge of the sandpaper on the drum? The problem I see here is
that it seems that supporting the outboard material properly would be
crucial to getting a smooth top without a possible gouge mark.

The only other thing is the Grizzly has 2 drums which ( I think) you could
put different grits on to basically rough sand & finish sand in one pass,
but it doesn't have a variable feed rate. Again I don't think this would be
a big problem, since it feeds at 11 fpm, which I think should be about
right.

If any of you have experiences with either or possibly both type machine,
please give me your opinion on this.

Thanks in advance,
Festus