Official Luthiers Forum!

I’ve been looking for an 18” drum sander for a while and finally found a Craigslist ‘score.’

Put the new gear in and leveled the deck (two night project) and it seems to work ok.
Really does hog off material better than my Ryobi.

Just wondering if anyone on here has this sander and if they can make it work for a guitar shop.
The design seems pretty cantankerous. There’s lots that can go wrong.
I had thought the fixed drum would be a good thing. But am second guessing the hokey timing belt gear assembly.

And how the heck does one get the conveyor belt to track without running itself off the deck?


Looking forward to responses.

Dave

Not sure of the exact model but I run a delta and it’s fine...

Good to know. Thanks for the response

I have one. Fought with it for a few years and finally gave up and bought a Jet. The Delta (31-250) now sits in my shop gathering dust. I'd give it away if I could find someone who would take it. (Maybe someone who has one and needs spare parts).

I have one and have been happy with it.
Be sure to keep the drive for the deck clean. If it gets mucked up the chain slips and you have to re-level everything. Good dust collection really helps with this.
Conveyer is a bit tricky to adjust. I run mine a little loose and that seems to help, but it will stall of hogging off a lot of material on a wide board (think furniture, not guitar)
Can be a bit finicky to mount new paper on and get the tension right. I usually have to adjust after a couple of passes with fresh roll. I buy bulk rolls from klingspoor and cut.
I also made a new dust hood so I could connect direct to 6" line. Works much better than the stock plastic part with the 4" port.

-jd

I’ve had a 31-255x for many years. I’m very happy with it. In the first few years, I had to replace the drive motor because a nylon gear was worn out and the motor was the smallest available replacement part with the gear. The belt was quirky at first and required a bit of adjustment. After many months, I had the belt tracking dialed in. I haven’t had to touch it in years. I use the 100 grit precut strips from Klingspor—I pay extra to avoid the hassle of cutting them myself. I use the sander to thickness aides, tops, and backs as well as to prepare braces and planks for necks. I use it often. It saves me a lot of time. If it broke irreparably, I’d buy another if it were available.

I figured out how to level it.... properly so there is no binding whatsoever.
It really hogs material off. Changing paper was a cinch.

Still haven’t figured out how to keep conveyor belt on the rollers. I have to loosen the adjusters and reposition about every twenty passes with a top or back.

Any tips out there?

I kept an allen wrench next to the sander and tweaked it as I worked. Eventually, I had it dialed in. I think that the belt eventually stretching out a bit helped. It took some months before it was stable. Don’t make it any tighter than the minimum it has to be to move the wood through. A little slip is okay.

Regarding running off the track.

I have a JET 16/32. Got it about 14 years ago. Always ran off the track so that I stopped using it for years. At one point I made new brackets that hold the roller to give more adjustment room but no good. Replacement belt of the same style did not help. Eventually got a new metal roller instead of the original rubber one, and also a new kind of belt, both from JET, and all was fine. My hunch is that the diagonal seam in the original belt interacted with the rubber roller to push the belt to the side, like a diagonal snow plow. I do not know if changing only the belt or only the roller would have fixed it, because I changed both.