Official Luthiers Forum!

Is anyone using that Woodtek sander that is listed in the resource section? Pros? Cons?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

John Greven has built over a 1000 guitars and he doesn't even have a thickness sander. I guess he did at one point but like Matt says,... it is slow and it was too slow for him. There are alternatives.

That said, I had the ryobi, and ended up getting a performax 16/32. No real difference although the performax does work slightly better, especially with the clips that hold the paper. It is very slow if you need to remove lots of material from tops and backs. I do however really like it to make bindings and purflings, but a smaller machine could do that. Overall a good machine for the bucks.

PS the early delta's sucked from what I heard. Lots of problems. I think they got em striaghtened out but be cautious of getting a used one.

I was looking at the wide belt sanders on Ebay. They all have absolutely Heeuuuuge motors on them. Smallest I remember seeing was 40hp. Guess that 3HP VFD (variable frequency drive) I just bought could be a little too small.

Brock, I listed the Woodtek because it is a mirror image of the General International 25" Dual Drum Sander I have and a few others do as well.

The woodtek is just the noname version of the General. Mine looks exactly like it, skirt and all, different paint and sticker on the front, but I fully believe it to be the same machine.

Comparing a drum sander to a wide belt isn't a fair fight at double the cost. The widebelt wins in all categories. Compare the Woodtek to the Grizzly 18 inch wide belt and it's almost one third the cost.

I know that for accuracy the General is about as perfect as you can get. I use it to dial in back and side thicknesses, tops and braces. I size neck blanks and all my bracing to close tolerances. The proper name for a drum sander is an abrasive planer.

Much of the time I use my sander as a planer, while slower than a planer it is very accurate. Major gripe: resinous wood, like cocobolo or resinous deep purple indian rosewood, clogs the paper something fierce. That's where a planer wins hands down over the sandpaper.

When I sanded my first dozen sets of guitar wood on my unit, it hit me. I can do this, I can build high quality guitars with a machine like this. It really felt like making one of those quantum leaps or paradigm shifts.

Thanks Bruce. This looks like a very nice machine for a good price...

Funds aside, a wide belt is not in my future... There is no way I could navigate something like that down my basement stairs.

I am seriously thinking of upgrading from the performax.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com