The Shop > Wood & Stuff
Drum/ Thickness Sander
S. Heslop:
I've started working on a drum/ thickness sander to help with making skateboards, of all things, but it'll likely come in handy for some other stuff too.
This might be a bit of a slow project since I have no money (or job!).
The plan so far. I haven't got a motor currently so I haven't dealt with that part in the plan yet.
My table saw isn't anywhere near wide enough for alot of the cuts, so i've had to do it the hard way.
Could still fit some stuff on for cross-cutting though. I'm cutting out the two boards that make the table surface.
Then used the tablesaw and bandsaw to cut out the sides of the table, using printed templates.
Grooves were routed into the sides. The table is going to have a conveyor belt on it, and the grooves are for adjusting the tension and tracking with some slides that fit in them.
The slides were also cut on the router table. I had trouble at first since I discovered that the surface of the router table is no longer anywhere near flat, so the boards raised up enough to make the channel a full millimeter wider at one end than the other. I countered this by building some push blocks so I could force the wood sit pressed against the table and re-cut the grooves.
Another problem I had was mucking up the order of operations, making it very difficult for me to drill the holes that the threaded rod (for adjustment) fits in. I routed a groove all the way across the bottom of the channels.
And fitted in some lumps of wood to fill the gap.
It also turned out that the birch plywood I was using for the sides and table wasn't flat either. I routed a groove in the surface slabs to accept a rod for pivoting (to adjust the depth of cut), which i'd positioned so that the concavity in the bow was towards the center of the two boards. Hopefully the bow in each board will cancel each other out.
When clamping it up I used two boards of actually flat plywood to hopefully encourage the table surface to remain flat once the glue dries.
With glue drying there's not alot more I can do today. Plus when it gets dark I don't have enough light in the garage to film stuff well.
mattinker:
What's wrong with of all things, making skate boards?
All the best, Matthew.
S. Heslop:
--- Quote from: mattinker on December 17, 2014, 01:17:06 PM ---What's wrong with of all things, making skate boards?
All the best, Matthew.
--- End quote ---
I got a friend who's interested in making them to sell and asked for my help. Myself I can't even stand up on a skateboard. I'm just not sure how to go about selling them though so i'm not too confident in the idea, but it should still be interesting to give it a go.
I've had a hard time sourcing maple veneer (at about 1.5mm thick) in the UK for a reasonable price, so the drum sander will be for making it myself. But with real high end skateboard decks costing £60, it's probably going to be tough keeping it profitable with the materials and labour involved. But we'll see.
My original goal was to make banjos to sell, and the drum sander will help with that too. Except to make banjos properly i'd need a big lathe, and I can't afford one and probably wont be able to for a while.
vtsteam:
This should be good! :coffee:
S. Heslop:
It's been a while. Got around to doing a bit more.
Sides of the slab weren't quite flat or parallel so I trued them up on my crappy jointer/ planer. Doing this was guaranteed to nick the knives but it wouldn't fit onto my tablesaw or my router table unfortunately.
I'm also not sure if i'd recommend buying one of these combination tools, they have alot of problems and I haven't really bothered to try sort any of them out since buying it.
I worked out that the gap between the top of the table and those channels should be about 4.3mm, so I used some 4mm brass rods and pop can shims to space the parts. I also made sure it was lined up properly horizontally by checking the steel bar that passes through for squareness.
The sides were clamped to the slab and the screw holes were drilled after it was all lined up.
And that's the sides attached.
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