Thought I'd share!
I made an attachment for the rim sander that I made from Tim McKnight's plan of a Mario Proulx design (It's getting technical now!) Since the machine spins, I thought I would use it to make the dishes.
Here is the sled I used.
First I used my belt sander to get the disc absolutely round in relation to the axis of the machine.
Then I ran my router down the sled, slowly, as the disc was turning. I used a 1/2 inch up-cut spiral bit that I use for timber framing. After I did the intial pass I did another very light pass and then a very light hand sand with 120 grit paper. It works fairly fast and efficient. You might note though, that these pictures are taken outside, that is account of all of the dust that this process makes.
Anyway, here is picture of how I join the sled to the machine. DOWELS! This is a 25 foot radius sled.
Here is picture of the dog system I made to spin the discs. I used four posts but Tim used two and works probably just as well, I just thought four would keep the thing balanced better.
This last picture shows the holes in the bottom of the dish.
After I spun two dishes (one for the sander and one for a go-bar deck) I put two coats of Varathane diamond coat on them. THis weekend I will make a sled for the 15 foot radius back dishes and spin those. Once set up the process goes fairly quick and works very well with clean and accurate dishes resulting.
Hope this inspires you to try it!
On another note, I have an associate that I told about this process and he feels that we should make this rim sander, with some modifications, overseas. If some of these specialized machines were produced commercially for a reasonable price, would there be any interest in them?
Thanks
Shane
