Drum sander

[OLDE CUTLER]

Awhile back when I was still working, I salvaged this drum from a Performax 16-32 drum sander that the customer decided he didnt want to fix. It is an aluminum drum 5 inches in diameter and 16 inches wide. These sanders were used to thickness sand boards with a power feed system that carried the board thru under this drum. Anyway, I decided to see if I had enough parts to throw something together. I ended up with this drum sander with a 1 1/2 HP motor from a junk contractors saw and it actually works good. Just the thing for hafting knives and sanding those serpentine stockman that are getting rehandled. The abrasive is a 3 inch wide strip tapered at the ends and spiral wrapped around the drum. There are spring loaded clips on the ends to grip the sandpaper and keep it taut. One thing that would be nice would be if it had more than one grit on the drum at once. Maybe I can rig something up.

[doglegg]

Congrats OC, looks like a great set up.

[orvet]

That is awesome!
I love making my own equipment. Have you read Wayne Goddard's book; $50 KNIFE SHOP? Wayne was a master of repurposing things and making them into knife making equipment. If you haven't read the book I highly recommend it, you can get it to Knife World Books.
Wayne's table was right behind mi ne at the OKCA show, his son Steve has the table now. I used to buy all sorts of small tools that Wayne had made to use in his shop, some were quite ingenious! I think he made a belt sander powered by washing machine motor. I think that's in his book.

Great job on the drum sander! I would love to see how you use that in hafting. I would like to see how you use it because I'm not envisioning how I could use it in hafting. I'm always open to learning a new method!

[glennbad]

I love to see repurposing of parts to make new equipment!

[OLDE CUTLER]

That is awesome!
I love making my own equipment. Have you read Wayne Goddard's book; $50 KNIFE SHOP? Wayne was a master of repurposing things and making them into knife making equipment. If you haven't read the book I highly recommend it, you can get it to Knife World Books.
Wayne's table was right behind mi ne at the OKCA show, his son Steve has the table now. I used to buy all sorts of small tools that Wayne had made to use in his shop, some were quite ingenious! I think he made a belt sander powered by washing machine motor. I think that's in his book.

Great job on the drum sander! I would love to see how you use that in hafting. I would like to see how you use it because I'm not envisioning how I could use it in hafting. I'm always open to learning a new method!

I have read parts of the $50 Knife Shop book. In fact every time I go in to Barnes and Noble I read some more. lol I will take some pics of the new machine in action and post them.

[rea1eye]

Very nice to use your brain to make something unique, especially for your hobby needs. Collecting
and looking at knives is only a part of this hobby.

Bob

[Tony_Wood]

Nice OC! Looks great. Very useful on shaping scales. Coke bottle profile will be easy with that drum.

Post some scale pics when you use that beast.

[FRJ]

Maybe I can rig something up.

You probably will.
Nice job on the sander.

[OLDE CUTLER]

I mounted this drum sander along with my other knife working tools on kind of a "sanding center" that I made. I bought a folding metal saw horse (yeah, I actually bought one), and I had salvaged an aluminum t-slot rail left over from an old multi spindle drilling machine. The aluminum rail held a set of air operated hold down clamps that held the workpiece while the multi spindle drill came down and drilled umpteen holes at once. The rail has t-slots all around to mount things on.

A 9 inch disc sander for flattening with a 1 1/2 HP motor.

The buffing wheels are on the left end with a 3/4 HP motor.

The 5 inch sanding drum works great for bringing the handle material down to the liners, especially on serpentine and other non-flat back knives. I have 80 grit on it now, and go from there to a finer rubber backed drum turned by a mini lathe with a drill chuck for finishing. For the last project which included making new bolsters and liners, I used the 5 inch drum to put a 45 degree bevel all around the knife to break the edges. Hand sanding blocks with progressively finer paper turn the 45 degree bevel into a rounded edge.

I don't have much in this as most of the parts are salvaged from something else, all 3 of the motors were salvaged from junked tools. As Dale mentioned, there is a book "The $50 knife shop" showing how to make many things that are useful. I ended up with this unit being the way it is because of the salvaged parts I had to start with.