Fuck it. I did not expect to have to write this.

Works were progressing nicely, I ran several tests and optimization rounds. I got the thicknesser remove material in parallel both across and lengthwise with several iterations that I won’t write about now because they are moot. It was working adequately. Also as I wrote, I did try to plane one board across the grain manually and it worked just fine. I really did not expect any significant problems. I was ronk.

Today I glued sacrificial sides to all my kitchen boards and decided to try to flatten those. The first one I tried to push under the thicknesser, removing barely 1 mm of material – BOOM. And the planer was broken. When I disassembled it I found out that for some reason the wood bent the steel knife of the planer, thus it bit into the housing. Subsequently, the propulsion shaft broke off and the aluminium cylinder for the knives got deformed too.

Apparently, planing hardwood across the grain is even more pernicious than I expected. Now I don’t have an electric planer anymore. That would not be a problem since I do not really need one. However, I still do not have a thicknesser, which I do need. And I have several glued-up boards which I cannot finish with a reasonable amount of work. This is a huge setback and I am at a loss about how to proceed.

I can buy a new hand planer but it won’t fit in the stand I built. I can’t buy the same one because it is no longer on sale and it is no longer possible to get replacement parts to fix it. Not to mention that when I removed the cover, so many metal parts were bent out of shape or broken that repair is probably not feasible. Now  I am even afraid to run these boards through any kind of thicknesser whatsoever. If I bought a thicknesser for 500,-€, and found a way to fit it into my workshop somehow and this happened, saying that I would not be happy would be an understatement of the year, I would be ruined.

I glued up seven boards and I tried to flatten them with the drum sander. At first, it always appears to progress reasonably quickly but as the boards get flatter, the abraded surface gets bigger and thus I have to slow down to not burn the wood. And when I get to an almost flat board with a few deeper spots it slows to a crawl. I was aware that this might happen and I hoped to avoid it by being diligent when gluing the boards. It did not work. One part of the problem was that I cut these with my old slightly blunt and wobbly table saw blade so they were not very precise. The other part of the problem was that no matter what I did the boards shifted while the glue was curing. Even when I tried to insert dowel rods to prevent it.

So I tried to flatten one board with my electric hand planer. It worked, just so-so. It did reduce the time needed on the drum sander later on but the surface was still way too wavy for that to be the solution. I am not very good with the hand planer, I rarely need it so I lack the experience to use it properly. I also hate it, it is heavy and the gyroscopic precession makes it unwieldy.

So, the drum sander works splendidly for perfectly flattening surfaces but I need something else to remove material more aggressively first. In other words, I need a thicknesser. I really hoped I could avoid this.

As with the drum sander, there are two obstacles to simply buying one. I am broke and none of those that I could find on the internet would fit into my shop anyways. I toyed with the idea of attempting to make a second drum for my drum sander, but I rejected it – I would need really high rpm and there’s no way I can make this thing so precise to not be dangerous when spinning really fast. My electric planer came with a jointer adapter that I never use because, despite appearances, I like having all ten fingers. However, that adapter means one thing – the planer has anchor points for fixing it somewhere permanently. So I decided to try and use those.

First I spent a few days being grumpy and thinking about how to do it. I rejected at least three ideas of my own and three that I found on the internet. There were some good solutions to be found but they all required something that I lack, usually space and versatility. I need something compact that can be set up relatively quickly and easily, I cannot store a dozen or so shims and spacers or have huge skids and guidance rod protruding on sides. I was constantly going through my scrap piles and thinking about what could be useful and how. And two days ago I finally arrived at an idea that I thought is worth trying to realize and I made a very rough sketch of the various parts that I will need.

The materials I initially gathered were: 4 pieces of angled iron, 6 black locust boards, 2 offcuts of 22 mm galvanized piping, an old spigot handle, two hammer-in M10 nuts, an M10 threaded rod, and a handful of woodscrews. I still dreaded the start of the work because I am constitutionally incapable of precise work and this does require precision.

I started by cutting all the black locust boards to size and shape and smoothing the surfaces on my belt sander.

I also flattened two boards on my drum sander to get perfectly flat and parallel surfaces and I glued them into a bigger block. I would use one piece of wood but I could not find one of sufficient size.

This has shown that whilst for my sloppy work most of the blame goes on my two left hands, part of the blame was on my tools too. With a new, sharp, and thick blade suddenly my table saw was capable of cutting black locust wood to precise dimensions and at really right angles. The use of a drum sander made making two surfaces mate perfectly positively easy. After three days of work, I got to this.

I managed to fix the planer to the scaffolds and run a small board under it. That is a very tentative sign that this might actually work.

I will write more in detail about all the individual parts and the whole thing when it is finished. If it fails, I will write about it too. I won’t progress much in the next two days, however. Tomorrow I must take my father to the hospital because he injured his knee and what I will do next depends on what the diagnosis is going to be. We might need to buy new crutches, with underarm support.

 

The weather was very nice so I disassembled the drum sander, took it outside, and slathered blue paint all avo. I painted all exposed particle board surfaces because I want to make sure it does not swell and crumble if I accidentally spill a few drops of water on int in my workshop. I did not do a very neat job but from a distance, it does not look so bad.

I did not paint the tilting table because the paint there would be a hindrance and not a boon.

I also improved the inner geometry of the dust cover by gluing in two pieces of polystyrene and grinding them on the drum until there was just a small gap.

The P40 abrasive with velcro finally arrived and it is scary stuff.

Just putting it on mangled my fingers so much I had trouble logging into my phone via fingerprint recognition for a few days. I forgot to put in the safety screw on the right side as you can see in the picture. It did not appear to be a big deal, just folding the paper into the cut was enough and it run without a hitch for a few hours before I noticed the missing screw.

I was baffled at first that even with 40 grit it took me two hours to flatten four boards, i.e. with the same speed as with 80 grit. The machine was stalling all the time whenever I tried to be a bit more aggressive with it. And after two hours I realized that the leather belt stretched a bit and did not have enough tension to power the drum effectively. I knew that the belt would stretch with time so it is a tad embarrassing that it took me two hours to realize it had done so already. After I corrected the tension (by making a jig for precise cutting of the belt at an angle and shortening it), I breezed through the remaining six boards in about an hour and a half, i.e. twice as fast.

After that, I cut these boards into strips with my table saw.

I took some of these and I glued an end-grain cutting board of the biggest size  I intend to make – ca 30×50 cm – and I am currently in the process of flattening it.

This one will not be for sale since it is a learning piece. I will use it personally to see how it performs but it has some gaps and thus it will probably serve mostly as a pretty background for photographing knives.

I learned that I will have to take more time and care with the glue-up to save time when flattening the glued piece. Jatoba is extremely hard in all directions but trying to sand or plane the endgrain is truly a penance. I spent three hours today doing it and I am nowhere near finished. At least that is an assurance that if I make and sell cutting boards from this wood, they will last.

When I figure out the ins and outs of making the cutting boards I will post about it. As far as the drum sander goes, it is finished and functional. All that remains is to figure out where to store it when it is not in use

 

My brother and my sister-in-law were busy as bees and between the three of us, we managed to do all the necessary work re-painting the kitchen in just two days. On Wednesday I had to do some little cleanups and shopping and on Thursday I could continue to work on my drum sander. So I did.

After the first successful test run of the drum sander, I glued up a 50×1500 mm leather belt to drive it. For better precision, I bought an already-cut leather strip (a prefabricate for leatherworkers to make belts), cut both ends at an angle of 45°, and glued it up with special extra-strong elastic cement for shoes. I was thinking of reinforcing the seam with sewing, but so far it does not appear necessary – the glued joint can withstand all the force my hands can exert, which is significantly more than the spanning spring on the belt sander can do. I run into a minor setback here – I made the driving wheel on the drum sander with a groove as I would for running it with a rubber belt. That was a mistake, the leather jumped the low fence quite easily and when I tried to make the fence higher, it jumped the spanning wheel and the motor wheel. The best solution (which, luckily, did not take long to find out and implement) was to remove the fence on one side and to make the cylinder wider. The leather belt is not precise and needs some space to oscillate from side to side.

After this, It was running quite well. The crowned spanning wheel does keep the belt on track and on the motor wheel, and on the driving wheel of the drum sander, it moves a bit side-to-side when running. With that problem solved, I could move on to dust collection. Pushing the wood with one hand and vacuuming the dust with the other is neither an easy nor elegant solution.

The dust collection does not need to be especially sturdy. Its main two functions are to stop sanded-off particles flying all around the shop and to prevent me from accidentally grinding off my fingers on the drum. Thus I opted for the easiest and cheapest material to use I have available – cardboard. And it is held in place by four M6 fly screws that go into threads cut directly into beach wood.

I cut a piece of pine board to put across the drum and I glued on it fences from cardboard that slot into the grooves I pre-cut in the two pillars holding the drum. To prevent the edges from fraying, I glued strips of sturdy paper over them. To attach the vacuum cleaner I used a reduction I saved from my old hand-held circular saw when it broke.

As far as inner geometry goes, I tried to glue in two strips of paper to reduce the space between the drum and the walls. I tested it with these and without them and I think that they did help with the dust collection, but they were not very stable and had issues (dust collected behind them). I am currently in the process of finding a better and more permanent solution to getting the inside of the housing to conform to the drum better. For now, it works, albeit it can be improved.

Initially, I intended to glue the belts on the drum but rsmith’s link in the comments under the first article gave me the idea of using velcro. If I can change the belts reasonably fast, I can use the drum sander not only for material removal and flattening of surfaces but also for getting a reasonable surface finish on completed cutting boards. And I also could have a separate set of belts to flatten metals, if I need to. So I went and ordered some velcro and a set of belts. The velcro was so far the most expensive part of this whole assembly- about 30,-€! I hope it was worth it. I glued it in a spiral around the drum and I wound up a strip of abrasive around it in the same direction. On the trailing edge (left side of the drum) the velcro suffices to hold the paper in place. On the leading edge, I had to make a groove, bend the paper into it and secure it with a screw.

The next day I made a few optimizations. I improved how the whole assembly is held near the belt sander by inserting two M10 hammer-in nuts into the table. I made one of the two supporting legs adjustable in length so I could adjust it to the uneven ground of my workshop. I made two long M8 fly screws and I used them together with two hammer-in M8 nuts to attach the legs in a secure yet easy to disassemble way. And finally, I made a specialized push tool to shove the pieces through the sander without endangering my fingers and without exerting myself needlessly.

It is made from an old furniture leg and two offcuts from an old spruce board. The table height is just below my navel so I can easily brace this thing against my belly and gently but firmly push with my body weight.

And with all that done, it was Friday evening and I went to bed late. Yesterday, I ran it for about 6 hours to test it thoroughly. In those 6 hours, I managed to flatten twelve jatoba boards approximately 15×30 cm. I think I could do the job faster if I used a coarser abrasive, but unfortunately, 40 grit was not in stock and the 60 grit I ordered had not arrived yet. Thus I had to do with 80 grit. I ordered the 40 grit finally yesterday and the 60 grit should arrive on Monday. I still have some unflattened glued-up boards and I will probably wait for those to see how much faster I can do the same work.

I do consider the test to be a success. The machine ran the 6 hours (three 2-hour segments) without a single problem. The boards are not tutti flatti perfetti, but they are flaterooni accepti. As in within a few tenths of a mm over the 30 cm. That is enough for a good and practically invisible glued joint.

I learned a few things while doing this. The food-safe PVA glue does not gum up the abrasive but it does create small resin-like chunks that can attach to the wood and/or the table and make the board run unevenly. So I have to brush those off, especially at the beginning when it grinds off the glue runoffs. I also learned how to incrementally lift the table for best results and I got a few more ideas for improvements and optimizations.

That was significantly easier and quicker than I thought it would be. It is not completely finished yet and I will write about the finishing touches. However, as of now, I have a fully functional drum sander. I made it in about three weeks and so far it cost me less than 200,-€, most of which was the velcro and the abrasive belts.

And while I am waiting for the coarser abrasives to arrive, I will paint it.

With the drum sander being essentially functional, I could start fixing it in its working place and truing the drum. Both issues were simple but not easy, so it took me a whole day and some more to do it properly.

The first problem to solve was how to fix the drum sander besides the belt sander so it could be powered by it. Here has shown my first serious mis-measurement. I had to trim a sliver of the belt sander base because I could not position the drum sander close enough for the wheels to align properly. Then I stood in front of the problem of how to fix the drum sander in place so it does not slide around.

From the start, I wanted to do it with two M10 bolts at the back but my first attempt was a bust. You can see the results of that first attempt, those two yooge holes in the back of the base. The problem was not that it was not stable or somesuch. The problem was that the bolts would be in the way if I wanted to sand something longer than about 40 cm. What followed was about an hour of serious thinking and faffing around in the workshop and when I started to work on another solution, I accidentally found two metal angle irons with pre-drilled holes.

I undid all the work I did in the last hour, screwed these two onto the back of the belt sander base, and cut the 10 mm holes open. That way I could slide them onto the M10 rods inserted into holes in my workbench and fix them in place with winged nuts. I also had some play to slightly re-position the belt sander to align the wheels properly before tightening the nuts.

With the back of the belt sander being fixed to the table, I could run it but I also added two legs on the front just in case. They are not strictly necessary – in fact, one of them is a tad short and is not even touching the ground properly and I will have to add a screw extension – but I feel better with them.

With the belt sander standing, I could run it for real. I used an old trizact belt to power it. That works for now as an impromptu measure, I will make a proper sturdy leather belt to do the job. For now, I stood in front of it for a couple hours running a piece of particle board with 60-grid sandpaper glued to it to true the drum, holding the board in one hand and vacuuming the particles with the other.

Here you can see the drum being sanded down to being nearly, but not entirely, concentric. There are still visible gouges made by the table saw. I had to run the sandpaper under it quite a few times after each lifting of the table, and I only could lift the table about ¼ of a mm at a time. I only ran it at 20% speed at first because the drum was so unbalanced and the whole assembly vibrated violently. After a while, I could increase the speed to 40% as the cylinder became more and more concentric and thus better balanced. That is also the top speed at which I intend to use the machine since higher speeds would burn the wood and destroy the abrasives (I built the machine so the surface speed of the drum is approximately the same as the surface speed of the belt so I can transfer experience from one to the other).

Late in the evening truing the drum was finished and it was flush with the table across the whole length to within a tenth of a mm. I left a bit of a gap here so it can be seen.

With the drum being concentric and true, I could finally fix some abrasive to it. For a test, I used an old torn 40-grit belt. First I wound it around the cylinder, fixed it with rubber bands, and trimmed the edges to flush (these scissors are used for trimming abrasives and nothing else, in case you are wondering). After that, I cut grooves into the sides of the cylinders, tucked a bit of the belt in it, and fixed it in place with a screw.

It worked reasonably well as a temporary solution and I learned a few things when running it for a few hours with some testing pieces of wood. The leading edge held up fine but the trailing edge eventually tore off. It seems that at the trailing edge, the screw is completely unnecessary and a bit of double-sided adhesive tape would suffice plenty. That is good to know, but I am already looking for a better way to do it in the final version. I am ordering some velcro and abrasives with velcro.

And that’s it for now. The 40 grit did hog off material quite nicely. I flattened a seriously twisted and bent piece of jatoba that I definitively would not be able to flatten manually, ever. Although manually feeding the stock through the machine is still hard work (for me) – I did get some workouts on my back and my pecs that way. Still an order of magnitude less work than trying to flatten one of the hardest woods on the planet by hand.

There is still a lot of work to be done and I will do it and write about it. Optimize the assembly/disassembly, optimize the attachment of abrasives, optimize the legs, make dust collection attachment, make a proper and safe push tool to feed the wood through, and finally, paint job. Only I do not know when I will do all this it because I have to take about a week’s pause from this work. I have to paint the kitchen now. I hate it, but it needs to be done and it has to be done now because now my brother can come by to help with things that need four hands.