Thickness Drum Sander

Woodworkers! Build your own 22" Thickness Drum Sander and save hundreds.

Note: We have suspended selling these plans until further notice.

Have you ever wondered what you will ever build from those accumulated junk parts around your shop? Our plans guide you step-by-step in building a 22" wide thickness sander from common materials. If you have an old 1-horse motor lying around, then the whole sander can be built for $100 or even less, saving you hundreds over the cost of a commercial unit. The sander is constructed mostly of wooden parts -- 2x4s and 3/4" plywood -- so the only skills you need are your basic woodworking skills; no elaborate or difficult metalwork or machining is needed. Despite its low cost and ease of construction, the sander is very precise and can even be used to sand paper-thin wood veneers.

The Moritz Designs test model sander (pictured at right) has been used almost daily for 10 (now 20!) years, and is still as precise as the day it was built.

Note that this sander is a hand-feed unit. Although our plans do not specify how to build an autofeed unit, we are certain that a commercial autofeeder could be adapted easily. We plan to try commercial autofeeders or design an easy-to-build one as time allows so that we can either recommend a good one or include it in our plans.

Sander Tips and Tricks

A thickness sander is possibly the most useful woodworking tool you can have, if you know how to use it correctly. Here are a few tips on using them, and also a few things that are just fun to do with them.

Vacuum Setup

Try to use a vacuum system with the sander. The plans for our sander include a shroud which fits over the sanding drum and can be connected to a vacuum system. Our experiences with vacuum systems have shown that some machines work well with vacuums, and others don't; but the thickness sander works GREAT-- nearly every last bit of dust is caught by the shroud and sucked away. The sander creates a bunch of fine dust -- clouds of it -- so it is best to use a vacuum system on it, even if it is just a shop-vac setup. If you don't have a vacuum, you will want to wear a mask, because, as I said, it makes lots of dust.

Feeding Stock

Our sander is a hand-feed unit, which means you have to feed the wood through it by hand, instead of letting an auto-feeder do it (be sure to read our Safety section below on this subject.) But hand-feeding does have some advantages over auto-feeding. Hand-feeding allows you to feed the stock through under the drum at a slight angle, which gives you a much smoother surface than if you feed it through straight-on. Be sure to always feed at a constant pressure so you will have as smooth a surface as possible.

Table Adjustment

The sanding thickness can be quickly set up for precise sanding. With the sander OFF, put your board to be sanded under the sanding drum, and raise the table up using the coarse adjustment to just meet the board, and clamp the table in place. Pull the board out and check if it gets too tight along the way, and loosen the table if necessary. Once the board is out of the sander, adjust the table up a little by using the fine adjustment wheel. Now, you can start sanding the board and adjust the table up a little after every or every-other pass. On your last pass, go through the sander several times at the same depth to get an extra-smooth surface on it.

Sanding Trick #1

When you are sanding a lot of narrow ( less than 10 inches) width boards or wood projects, you can set up the sander for sanding with both coarse and fine paper at the same time. Begin wrapping the sanding drum with coarse sanding paper in the normal direction as shown in the plans and tape this end down to keep it from unwinding. Cut its end flush as is shown in the plans, but do this at the midpoint of the drum. Cut a new piece of fine(r) grit paper and begin winding it in the same direction starting where the coarse paper ended, at the midpoint of the drum. Carefully tape this new piece of sandpaper down just like you did at the beginning of the coarse piece. You may also wish to add a small piece of tape to the end of the coarse piece, but not much, because this end must be able to take up any slack that may develop. Now you can sand your workpiece on the coarse side first to remove wood and flatten it, and then send it through the fine side to smooth it. You may wish to make a mark on the shroud showing where the joint is so that you won't accidentally run a piece under it later.

Sanding Trick #2

If you have a bandsaw, you can use it along with a thickness sander to create micro-thin veneers for inlaying or various other woodworking projects. Many bandsaws have a problem with cutting really straight, thus making it nearly impossible to cut thin veneers. Tuning a bandsaw is an entirely different topic, but you should try to get it to cut as straight as possible so that the sander won't have to remove a large amount of wood. Even if it does cut crooked, you can still make veneers by truing up the piece on the sander after you cut it with the bandsaw.

First, cut a thin slice off the edge of a block of wood or a board. Cut it as close as the accuracy of your bandsaw will allow, and leave it just barely thicker than needed. Adjust the table to the veneer as is described in "Table Adjustment" above. Run the veneer through the sander, using only your hand to guide it. As it comes through the back side of the sander, begin pulling it out with your other hand. After making one pass, adjust the table approximately 1/4 to 1/2 turn up and sand the opposite side. Keep making fine adjustments and sand alternating sides. If one side has deeper cut marks in it from the bandsaw, you should sand that side more often that the other until the marks are removed. When you get very close to the thickness you desire, run the piece through a few more times with the table set at the same depth. The resulting veneer is very smooth and a very consistant thickness.

If you wish to make several different veneers that should all be exactly the same thickness, it is best to cut them all out in one batch, and run them sequentially through the sander at each table setting. This way, all of the pieces will go through the same process, and when they all go through the sander the last time, they all will have identical thicknesses.

Fun stuff

One of the biggest advantages a thickness sander has over a planer is that it does not chip or tear the woodgrain when it has irregularities. The thickness sander will dimension wood with knots or burled grain just as easily and smoothly as regular straight-grained wood.

Since grain direction is not a concern with thickness sanding, you can also sand projects with wood pieces glued-up in many grain directions. A popular use for thickness sanding is flattening wooden chess or checkers game boards, which often have the grain of the "checks" alternating. Here at Moritz Designs, we have used the thickness sander extensively for sanding wooden box lids which have been made by gluing up a variety of woods in unique patterns. We also have used a lot of burl veneer and various bandings in box lids, and these are always sent through the sander to level them off and give them a mirror-smooth surface. Since thickness sanding doesn't care about grain orientation, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination, instead of your tools.

Safety Safety Safety!!!

Just like most woodworking tools, a thickness sander can be dangerous if it is used incorrectly. There are a few tips to ALWAYS observe when using your sander:

NEVER operate the thickness sander with the shroud off of it. Even if you don't have a vacuum system, you should build the shroud and keep it on when you are using it. It keeps you from accidently putting your hand under the rotating sanding drum and seriously hurting yourself.
NEVER put your hand under the sanding drum! Even with the shroud in place, it is possible to put your fingers under it, so keep your hand outside the shroud and never reach under it. If you are sanding a short piece of wood, use the push stick shown in the plans.
Keep a good grip on whatever you are pushing through the sander. If you turn loose of a piece you are sanding, it will fly back out of the sander at a fairly high rate, and could hurt you. If the piece is an odd shape which is difficult to hold on to, build a wooden support which can hold it for you and allow you to push it through safely.
Keep out of the "line of fire" of the sander. If a piece you are sanding were to slip from your grasp, it would come flying back out of the sander. Stand to the side of the sander and have the front of the sander facing a "safe" direction where there are no people or valuables. Consider the sander to be like a table saw-- hold on to the piece being cut, and be careful in case the blade binds and tries to throw the board backwards.
Unplug the thickness sander when you are working on it, as when you change the sand paper.

More Soon

Be sure to mail us any other tips or tricks you may have discovered with your sander. Also be sure to mail us if you have any questions regarding our thickness sander or our plans.

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