Floored By The Price Of Drum Sanders

[Mike Shields]

I've finally been given the go ahead by my MIL to redo a large, framed wedding picture she gave as a gift. I have some absolutely beautiful, straight grained, 4/4 orangish African Paduak that will be 2.5 in wide. I'll be inlaying (slightly proud) with profiles, curly maple that has amazing grain pattern in a very small width. I cut the maple so it will be book matched.

The problem: with my current tools, I can't fully dimension the maple without tearout. No worries! I'll buy a drum sander that is just the tool for this job: then I see the prices...YIKES!

An open ended single drum (16"-ish) is the same price as my 14" bandsaw, and half the price of my new 10" tablesaw. And then, the reviews for that same sander are not even all that positive.

What the heck is is going on the tool market? Are these tools really that specialized to allow this kind of pricing, because I just don't see what can justify the high price of a motor and a big sheet of sandpaper?

So now I'll go back to just staring at the wood of (another) unfinished dream project.

Thanks for allowing me to vent.

[Loren Woirhaye]

There are other ways to accomplish the work, hand planes in particular. Drum sanders bring a host of aggravations with them anyway.

Getting optimal results in woodworking inevitable involves a lot of trial and error. It can be a frustrating craft to ascend in, but people have done it before you without power tools and you can follow their methods. Sharpening plane irons and tuning of chipbreakers are particularly useful skills.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

I love my Performax drum sander. Yes, pricey, but at least it is a 1 trick pony.

It does work for inlays. I build ukuleles, I have inlays sanded prefectly flat to the soundboards and have no chipout or tearout. And the inlay wood is perfect. Did I mention it's flat to the board? Hard wood inlays and a soft spruce soundboard. That's a challenge. I think it's the only tool that will do that. Well, a wide belt will too, but you want some sticker shock?

[John Piwaron]

A possible option is to rent time on one. Perhaps there is a cabinet shop near you that would let you use theirs. Or, like me, maybe your lumber supplier offers this kind of service. At my lumber supplier I can get boards crosscut, ripped to width or planed. And sanded. They have a 35 inch thickness sander. Yay.

Given the size you say you want to sand (2.5") there's a small drum sander available from Jet. It's model 628900. It's a 10-20 sander. Priced around $750 or so. Maybe a little more depending on your choice of supplier. This is the one I'd be likely to get if I felt I had a strong need for one.

[John Bomment]

Maybe keep your eye out for a used one.
I got mine used at a yard sale,needed some fixing up ,in the end I have $250 into it.
Absolutely love it,wish I had gotten one years ago.

[John TenEyck]

+1 for getting a used one. Hobbiest woodworkers sell them all the time, for whatever reason. I bought a Delta 18 x 36 for $500 that was as good as new. My newbie woodworker friend just bought one as well for the same price. I love the thing and can do things now that were either very difficult or required way too much time. I just finished dimensioning some birdseye maple shop sawn veneer with it. I can't imagine trying to do that with a hand plane. Well, yes, I can.

As a hobbiest, there's no good reason to buy new.

John

[Peter Quinn]

I'm only surprised that you are surprised. My drum sander was more expensive than almost every other tool in the shop save the bigger shaper and 20" bandsaw. Large precision head, precision table, rigid frame, two motors, it's at least as complicated to manufacture well as a planer and more so IMO than either a TS or BS. The only one I've heard was really bad was the old delta open ended. I like the performax models, it's not the ultimate sanding experience , but it works well within its capacity and is very accurate. Most of the bad reviews Ive read seem to come from from people thAt don't know how to use them or whose lack of experience guides them towards misguided expectations regarding speed and depth of pass. You could get a wood master and have 3 trick pony, but most machine sanders are indeed one trick ponys. Maybe a spiral head planer would help but they don't go down to veneer thickness, pretty useless below a 1/4".

[glenn bradley]

I agree that these do not seem to hold their value and used prices can be quite attractive. As mentioned this is not a tool that can be "just OK". Like a jointer or a planer (or others) it has to do its job correctly and consistently or it is pretty much a waste of time and space. I went for a new Supermax 19-38 and have not been sorry. If I were to do it again I would cough up the extra for an oscillating drum.

The price is painful and renting is certainly something I would look into if this tool will not be integral to your woodworking going forward. A bedded sander that is reliable and repeatable is quite a benefit to me. I didn't bother with the DRO (although I have them on other tools) as the variance in abrasives makes them rather superfluous for anything requiring a reasonable accuracy IMHO. The footprint on these things is huge. I tried to buy it without the stand but, that was not an option so I built a mobile drawer unit that, while generous, is still smaller than the actual footprint of the machine. I use it to store the bulk of my abrasives, for the machine and otherwise.

19-38-stand(25).jpg

[Bruce Page]

Buying used can save you quite a bit of money. I picked up my like-new Woodmaster for less than 50% of Woodmaster's sale price.

[Julian Tracy]

For such a small width, seems like you can accomplish the task with a spindle sander with a custom fence setup. You caould even use a sanding drum on a drill press with said fence to allow the stock to pass thru until your inlay was flush with the surface of the surrounding wood.

As an alternative, that's narrow enough to where you could prepare the body wood a bit thicker, set your inlay in a bit proud and run the combined stock through the table saw and hand sand the resulting composite for finishing.

I could be mis-reading the goal of the op though...

JT

[Julian Tracy]

To the OP's point of hig-priced machinery these days, I too was thinking the same thing as I browsed my local dealer and was thinking why would anyone buy ANYTHING new? I mean, $900-1200 for a 14" bandsaw??! $800-1000 for a 6" jointer??!

Fit and finish on most of these new tools, even the "good" brands is horrible. The new Powermatic 14" bandsaw I looked at seemed very lightly built and flimsy - certainly nothing I'd spend $1000+ on. The new Steel City jointers, aside from having tacky looking stands, were a few steps down in the fit and finish than the Jet right next to it. That was a surprise as the Steel City deluxe 14" bandsaw from a few years back I own now is quite impressive in most respects and has the feel of a company trying to produce a quality tool at the given price.

Picking up Steel Citiy's latest catalog though seems to indicate they're now chasing at the low-buck, low-value market and have even introduced a Blue-line that's even cheaper and probably no better than any of the Porter Cable branded woodworker's tools that Lowes is hawking, which themselves are an embarrassment to witness.

I don't think there's a single tool I'd buy new these days. That certainly does not relegate me to restoring tools either, there's plenty of late model great deals on CL that require no more tweaking than a new tool would require in un-boxing and setting up. Tablesaws maybe, as riving knives have only now become a base feature of newer saws...

Even those darn 10-20 sanders are about $800 new!

JT

[Mark Andrew]

Well I'll speak up in defense of them. I've got a Jet 22-44 ODS. Yes, it was pricey. But it saves so much time, and also makes usable wood out of what I'd previously have thrown away or burned.

If for some reason I had to sell my machines, and in the future build a new shop, a drum sander would be high on the list. I think I'd look at a Woodmaster though, and get a planer/molder built in.

It's a classic case of price vs value to me.

[Craig Behnke]

i don't fully understand how a US company hasn't competed in the high quality machine segment (quality like mini max, felder, hammer, agazzani, etc). european labor costs are extremely high and shipping to the US is an additional cost. how on earth has a US manufacturer not competed in the current market for high quality tools? I know unit volumes would be extremely low, but if the europeans can still make decent profits doing it, why can't a US company do the same? just a rant.

[Mark Andrew]

If you count Delta, they're making Unisaws in South Carolina. They seem to get good reviews.

Although they're Chinese owned.

[johnny means]

How much do you fellas think stuff should cost? I'm reminded of some of my wives elderly clients who would be shocked when they saw the price of a hamburger. They seemed to have warped back into the forties and thought a nickel was enough for a meal.