WOW! I have spent days in review hell trying to decide on a low end drum sander. Looked at scores of them, started out looking at the WEN 10" $750 one at Home Depot and ended up buying a Jet 18/36 ($1500 with casters and infeed/outfeed extension and tax). I am doing a bunch of small 1' cheese boards and small art tile frames not much bigger that any of the choices out there, including bench top, would do but that didn't help at all with the decision because I want to build out my shop to handle lots of different types of projects for probably the next 20 years or so (I've got a $99 table saw that I have been using for 35 years).

I would guess I am a pretty typical of hobby folks on this board. While I have some dough to spend it's still limits me to well made prosumer stuff and other than hand tools (plenty of those) I need all the floor stuff. I am 59 with a shop full of 'get me by' tools I have accumulated over the years for working on small re-hab projects, home repair and building a 400' building just buying the tools as I went. Now as I am nearing a time in life when I can spend a lot more time in the shop I want start picking up a few nice wish list tools I have never had and replace some that are either worn out or just plain cheap and crappy like my cheap Home Depot chop saw and table saw bought on sale when I was 25 and used to death.

This was a much harder decision than I thought it would be. In the $600-$2000 range I found so many choices it was really an overload. I've had the Supermax 19-38, Grizzly open-end 18" and Jet 22-44 all in my cart at one point with all the accessories. Size, features, cost all kept me in a constant state of indecision. The digital readout of the SupperMax almost got me and then read a review of how useless a guy thought it was on a drum sander and he made a good argument. Going big always seems like a good move but I am in a minor part of a 2 1/2 car garage that is shared with a lot of pottery equipment so space is a big deal and so space almost got me into the SuperMax because of something as minor as folding infeed/outfeed add-ons.

At the end of the day I just pulled the trigger on the one (Jet 18/36) that was the latest in my cart. I decided that being able to do finish sanding on a set of wood glue up doors for a new house next year would be my large benchmark project and theoretically this is the smallest one I could get and use for that project on a 35 3/4" door. (I know, I know a LOT of people claim the open end sanders don't work for larger than drum pieces. But I have seen lots of videos of it working

Completely exhausted. Now I have a CNC, Planner, Drum Sander nailed. On to a good band saw when I recover from this buy.

Of course I still have a weekend of putting it together. It will take me 12 hours to do what the manual says should be done in 2, sigh.