Making a Drum Sander - Part 1 - Drum

I have a lot of tropical hardwood – jataba and garapa – and it is not feasible to turn all that into knife handles and blocks. Thus I decided to make some high-end cutting boards. For that, I need a drum sander to mate glued surfaces precisely. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to buy one and even if I did, it would not fit into my workshop. So I build one.

I won't be describing the steps in the order I did them, instead, I will describe individual components. And I will begin with how I made the drum.

I do not recommend to anyone to try and imitate what I did here. I glued up a prism from black locust wood, drilled it lengthwise and I inserted an M10 threaded rod through it. From several pieces of wood and two ball bearings, I made a sort of scaffolding that allowed me to put it on my table saw and slide it along the blade. I used that to first knock off the edges and finally, to turn it slowly with a drill and turn an approximate cylinder on the saw blade.

Then I inserted a 10 mm steel rod through the cylinder, drilled 3 mm holes on both ends through it and the axis, and fixed them together with 3 mm steel wire. I also filed grooves for circlips to secure ball bearings on the axis (two bearings on each side).

I squared off both sides with the help of a hacksaw blade and handheld drill.

And to make the cylinder perfectly concentric and balanced with its rotational axis, I sanded it down with the help of a board with P60 abrasive glued on it. After that, I lightly polished it up to 320 grit for a really smooth surface.

Next week I will write about the base.