On 2/14/16 7:22 AM, Leon wrote:
On 2/14/2016 5:23 AM, dadiOH wrote:
John McCoy wrote:
"dadiOH" wrote in
:

Before you can join an edge, you must have a flat face. I can - and
do - get that with my drum sander.

OK, I'm a little confused here - how is that different from
running a board thru a planer? Seems like it would make it
smooth but not flat.

I don't have a planer, never used one but I suspect it is the same...

Run board through, concave side down to make convex side flat. Turn
over,
run through to make concave side flat (and parallel).

Leon mentioned that drum sanders are slower and I imagine so. Still,I
have
a couple of hundred feet of mahogany I have been surfacing as needed
and I
can take off 1/16 per pass with #40 paper. Fast enough for me and no
tear
out





What model drum sander do you have? I have a Performax 22-44 with a
relatively fine grit compared to 40 but wow 1/16" in a pass is pretty
aggressive by my standards. :~) And thinking I should get some 40 grit
paper. I use my 15" planer when I need to do a lot but more often than
not the drum sander is adequate for small batches.


I've got a 16/32 Performax, only 1 HP (not sure what the 22/44 has), but
with a 36 grit belt I'll cut a 1/2 turn (1/32) per pass. I would
hesitate to go deeper.
One _big_ difference between a planer and drum is the drum has
(comparatively) weaker hold down rollers and any bowing on boards longer
than 2x the sanders bed width will leave divots (snipe).

-BR