Official Luthiers Forum!

Ok, so I know we've talked about sanders almost until we're blue in the face, but I would like to hear it all again...
I'm thinking seriously of replacing my old sander, and getting something suitable for someone processing tonewoods and maybe someday coming out of retirement and building guitars again.

I know some folks swear by Generals, or Performax, or Woodmaster, or Powermatic, or Grizzly wide-belts, or whatever. Single drums, Dual drums, wide belts etc. There's not a whoile lot of variations on the theme.

I'd like to hear how you think they're built, and why you would buy them again or not.

For instance, I was noticing some use steel drums, others use aluminum. Some are coated with hard rubber, others claim it's bad. Some use velcro to attach paper, others use clips. I've also noticed that some use what appear to be better bearings than others, or at least I've seen cast iron flange housings, and I've seen stamped steel housings.

I'm limited somewhat in space and ceiling height, but would do whatever was necessary to make room for the *right* piece of equipment, at the right cost.

To me, this is serious thinking about serious equipment. While I can't afford a 24" Grizzly wide-belt at this stage of the game, there must be other things that can serve well at a lower cost.

Let the debates begin.........
Don Williams38973.3537384259

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, I've got the General 25" dual drum. It's ok but that's all. Maybe I expect more out of it that it's capible of delivering.
It does a much better job than my 16-32 did. If I put on a coarse grit on both the drums, I can hog off quite a bit of material pretty quickly (but not quick enough in my book, I want the darn thing to be a planer too).
If I were you, I'd try to stay from aluminum drums. They get really hot and that's the devil when you are sanding resinous woods.
If I had it to do over I would have saved up and gotten Grizzly's 15" open ended belt sander. Tim Mc has one. You might drop him a note to see how he likes it.
Good luck in your search.

Hey Don, I too have the General International Double Drum Sander and echo Paul's comments, it is OK. I find that when I am sanding a few sets of EIR, for example, I get the priveledge of replacing the belts before I get sand something else. Getting used to feed rates and depth of pass certainly can extend the time between changes but it does still happen. I have very nearly convinced myself that I need the Grizzly 18" Wide Belt Sander and will hopefully have one by years end. They do a much better job and for sanding lots of sets I think they are almost a must. I am only concerned with loosing the capacity of the 25" double drum in the case of doing a wider instrument than 17.5" inches but can't justify $3K more that the 24" wide belt costs for the odd time I will use it. So it will be the 18" for me. There...I just convinced myself...that was the easy part, I wonder what my wife will have to say about it!

Anyway....the 18" Grizzly is becoming the Luthier's standard, may as well become the Tonewooder's standard as well .

Shane

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Canada

Shane, yeah, I too have my questions about why the 24" sander is so much more than the 18". That makes very little sense to me. The sheet metal isn't that much more, and a longer drum and feedrollers/hold-downs aren't that much more, and certainly the rubber drive belt isn't that much more. I can see another $1000-1500 more, but we're talking more than double that. Perhaps it's the motor...

I looked at the General's bearings and saw the stamped-steel housing, and knew immediately that there were some quality issues that I would be concerned with. I know it's probably a fine machine for other people's use, but for what I want, I need speed and accuracy.

I'm really wanting a digital thickness readout too.
Don Williams38971.708900463

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Sounds like you need to talk to the wife too.... !!

The General is very similiar to a lot of Tiawanese machines, they do have a bit higher plant standards and I think are inspected a bit more rigourously but their Canadian made 8" jointer is the $3,000 US while the import is only $1,700. That tells the story. I have 6 General machines, 3 Canadian made and three import....there is a HUGE differnece in quality, fit and finish, you definately get what you pay for.

I know of other tonewood guys with the 18" Grizzly that moved up from double drum sanders and they reported to me that the wide belts are in a whole other league! Ere go, I go!

Shane

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Canada

I usually go up to Tim's when I need serious wood sanded. That 18" Wide belt is SLICK!!!

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

I have had the Grizzly Wide Belt 18" fo two years now. It replaced a
Woodmaster which replaced a Performax. The Grizzly has been a superb
machine. It does everything I ask well. Digital readout works great. I get the
belts from Klingspor and they last forever - I think it two years I have
actually only tossed one belt. I know the machine is expensive as compared
to roll type sanders but it is well worth it. If I have any complaint it is only
that I cannot do small pieces (bridges, headplates, etc.) with it and for those
jobs I kept my old Performax 16/32. If you buy ithe Grizzly 18" or any wide
belt you will not regret it!

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Sylvan
http://www.wellsguitars.com

Sylvan, how about getting sides and backs down thin? I often thin my bakes down pretty good, and I noticed the machine has a 1/8" thick limit. How do you deal with that? Backer board of some sort?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I use the Performax, and it gets the job done, but is a bit of a pain, and is slow. I don't really care for the way that the paper attaches. If it loosens, or is not tight enough to start, the layers will sometimes overlap, and cause burning at the overlap. When I can afford to buy a belt type sander, I will give someone a good deal on the performax.

Al

I use a 3/4" melamine backer board with 80 grit sticky sandpaper on the top
and bottom of the backer board. I find this eliminates slippage with the
rubber belt and the material, and, allows you to thin very precisely as thin as
you wish to go. I thin some materials routinely down to .080". Works great.

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Sylvan
http://www.wellsguitars.com

[quote]Shane, yeah, I too have my questions about why the 24" sander is so much more than the 18". [/quote]

It has to do with number of units sold and what market will bear, rather than an intrinsic value. They could very easily sell them for half the price they do and still make a profit, but that's not how business types think.

   Is a Cadillac, Mercedes, Lexus... that more expensive than a Taurus No way! Pickups used to be 1/2 the price of regular cars, not now, because people will buy them at this price! This is why it's very important to shop hard!

   Meanwhile back at the Ranch! Of what I've seen of sanders wouldn't it be better to build your own? They don't really seem that complicated. Of course, that's less building time!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Well, for one thing the 24" has a 10 hp motor. compared with the 5 hp motor of the 18". That adds several hundred in costs right there. I'm guessing the structure has to be built more solidly to accomodate the extra weight of the longer drive components too. It all adds up. My take is that the 18" was designed for luthiers on a budget (redundant, no?) and so it was made to be cheaper than the 24", not the other way around. Trucks are more expensive because so much more goes into them now in materials costs, and most have every bit as much cosmetic appeal as cars do now.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, as Billy said, why not buy the biggest electric motor you can afford and build a home made one around it, i've done it, Rod True did it also and so did Mario, it is not as hard as it seems, a sturdy table and a heavy drum, a shaft, a belt and a hinged table with lowering/lifting mechanism( read threaded rod)!

Serge,

I have a 24" sander now that is built from a kit. It is massive...heavy oak frame, the aluminum drum is 6" diameter. The shaft is either 1.25" or 1.5", and the pillow blocks are massive cast-iron things. The table raises and lowers via handcrank, and works with a 4-post chain drive system. It feeds the wood via two rubberized rollers that act as feed rollers and hold-downs, pretty close to the drum. The drive motor for that is a low-speed, high torque unit that would cost around $300 to buy new. The problems with it are that the ancient motor for the drum, is only 1.5 hp, and like I said...ancient. It bogs down and stops if I try to take off anything more than a light skimming. The table needs to be replaced, as do the drive rollers. I have to attach the paper to the drum with duct tape...a less than ideal method.
If I could inexpensively deal with the motor, the drive system (perhaps add a rubber belt) and come up with some kind of clip system to hold the paper, I would probably just do the modifications to it. Cost is a factor, as is labor and time to make all that happen. It would be more simple to sell it and buy something new with more power.

It works great for building guitars. No real problems with it for that. But for processing tonewoods, i.e. thickness sanding rough-sawn figured hardwoods, it simply is underpowered to do it in a timely manner.
As it is, I would characterize it as a "surface sander" as opposed to a "thickness sander".

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, you know your stuff better than me, forget what i wrote!

Don,
It is my opinion that the Woodmaster is the best drum sander on the
market - although, I haven't heard reviews of the Oliver and they make
pretty phenomenal tools.

The main reason the Woodmaster outperforms the competition is due to
its dust collection and large diameter drum. The dust inlet is place right
at the bottom of the drum head and does a great job. I have it hooked up
to a 3hp Grizzly cyclone and I RARELY ever need to clean the paper. Also
the surface quality is every bit equal to wide-belts with platens.

It isn't a wide-belt and cannot take off nearly as much on one pass. But it
can easily sand most oily woods 0.015" to 0.030" with no problems at all
and no loading. So for sanding tops, backs, and side, -- in two or three
passes you can be at your final thickness.   I had a Performax 22-44" and
I certainly never got results like that.

So there are times when a wide-belt is more useful, but for a guitar
builder it is the ideal machine. If for nothing else, go see a local one in
action. SimonF38973.032025463

[QUOTE]I have to attach the paper to the drum with duct tape...a less than ideal method. [/QUOTE]

That actually works?

   Yea! It might be better to drop and run, but, I'm a tinkerer, so I'm biased!

Billy Dean

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Of course duct tape really works, Billy Dean! It's one of the few things you can count on.

I have nothing to add here that I haven't added to a bunch of other conversations, but I would like it if someone who knows what he or she is talking about can clarify something. Which sands cooler: the metal drum because it acts as a heat sink and draws heat away from the contact area, or the rubber drum because it doesn' get so hot and stay hot? I find that logic and intuition part ways on this.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Howard,

That's an interesting question. Some folks claim steel is better, others aluminum. I've noticed that Grizzly makes the claim that they don't use rubber on their drum sanders because they feel it's too soft a material to use.
To Quote:
"Customers have asked us why our drums are not rubber coated. Rubber-coated drums become "spongy" and do not sand evenly or parallel to the ends."
And yet, (unless I'm out to lunch) it looks like they have a rubberized drum on their wide-belt sanders.
So I ask, if rubber is a bad material, why is it on their most expensive products? Hmmm....
I've noticed that Powermatic has a dual drum sander for around $2K that has rubberized steel drums. I tend to think that if Powermatic is using something, it can't be all that bad. In fact, their dual-drum sander seems to have it all over the General and other Taiwanese imports, if pictures I've seen tell the true story. It appears to have better bearings, an independently adjustable rear drum, and a few other things. that seem to speak of better quality.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

[QUOTE=Don Williams] ... I've noticed that Grizzly makes the claim that they don't use rubber on their drum sanders because they feel it's too soft a material to use.
To Quote:
"Customers have asked us why our drums are not rubber coated. Rubber-coated drums become "spongy" and do not sand evenly or parallel to the ends."
And yet, (unless I'm out to lunch) it looks like they have a rubberized drum on their wide-belt sanders.
So I ask, if rubber is a bad material, why is it on their most expensive products? Hmmm....

[/QUOTE]
I think that in the drum sanders, the (sandpaper covered) drum makes contact with the wood; in the wide belt sanders, the sandpaper between the drums is the contact surface. So the wide belt sanders use rubber coated drums more as big roller bearings and need to grip the paper, thus the need for rubber.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

That makes sense for a platten type of unit, but most of their wide-belts don't use plattens, from what I understand.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hey Don,

The other sanders have the same things as the Powermatic. The General I have has good bearings and the rear drum is adjustable AND the Powermatic is also made in Tiawan (thats why they look the same, excluding the paint job...probably same plant even!). Recent reviews is some woodworking journals placed the General in front of the others in a similiar class.

Still, my experience has lead me to the Grizzly wide belt and I am planning on it for the very same reason you are, lots of wood to sand, very little time to sand it! I was going to sell my double drum but I will wait now since Sylvan expressed concerns about sanding headplates and bridge plates....I might end up wth two sanders in my massive 350 sq ft of workspace!

Shane

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Canada

Fat fingers and impatience resulted in the previous posted twice...sorry

ShaneShane Neifer38973.6018981481

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Canada

Anyone know how to get "PapaGrizzly" to peek into our forum, as he does
from time to time at WoodNet? He is a luthier, after all. It would be great to
have him give us some insight into the design and construction of sanders
for the purpose of sanding tonewood.

Hesh, I would think you are right about aluminum... as I sit here typing on
my all aluminum PowerBook G4. I'm off Zeeb, by the way. Where are you?