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Seeing Hesh's post about putting his drum sander to use recently prompted me to ask what grits you all find best in working with the various woods.

I tried using 120 on an east asian rosewood back a couple of months ago, and the paper was a mess afterwards. Running it through with the grain and using that fine a grit was not a good combination. I recently ran a WRC joined top through, again with the grain and no glue clean up prior to running through, using 120 again, and found the glue heated up and was gouging the top. So I switched to 80 grit and ran it through cross grain. That seemed to work.

Curious what you find works best.

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Ken, I use 80 grit on my drum sander. I send the plates through on an angle and alternate the leading corner, not 90 degrees from the grain. The final pass, I sand parallel with the grain. Seems to work for me.

Chuck

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Anything finer than 80 for hardwoods is just too slow for me. I dont like to stand in front of a sander for hours. It only takes a couple of minutes to scrape backs or sides coming out at 80 grit.

I recently bought a used supermax 25/2, I set it up with 80 grit on the front drum and 120 or 150 on the back, and I like it A LOT.

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Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

Yep I use 120 for softwoods and 80 for hardwoods. Also, if the paper is loading up two things are prudent to check: First at least with my Performax 10-20 it is a "skim" sander and it just won't perform well if I am turning the crank more than 1/8 of a turn on every pass. Translation - .005 - .008ish of stock removal per pass.

Second loading up the paper can be symptomatic too of poor or not enough dust collection. Good dust collection on a thickness sander actually does two things which include removing the dust.... AND keeping the drum cool.

If you really have a lot of material to remove, go down to 60 grit, then to 80. Finish off with the ROS and 120 and you're good to go.

I run everything through at 80 grit, even softwoods.

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80 grit seems to be the consensus. Thanks for the input, Gents! Been sanding wood for years, but new to this drum sander business, and initially that grit just seemed too coarse. You guys talk as if that is fine grit and 60 grit is the coarse stuff!

Jordan, the Supermax 25x2 is the exact sander I picked up in December. I just installed a new conveyor belt last weekend--the old one was all frayed along one edge and warped from sitting so long. Are you running both drums at the same time? After fouling both drums with rosewood shortly after I got it, I have been hesitant to have them both cutting when working with oil or pitch-laden woods. But, back when I was running the rosewood back through, I wasn't running the wood diagonallly or cross grain.

Ken

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Most of the time i am just running the coarser front drum. With hardwoods i usually dont bother to sand any finer than 80, because i like to scrape them and it doesnt really make much difference if you are scraping 80 or 150 scratches, either way goes pretty quick.

For tops i do usually engage the finer drum.

I like the machine mostly for its power and rigidity, the sucker gets rid of wood in a hurry! The dual drum thing is nice but i could live without it.

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Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

Something you guys might want to look at for your double drum sanders.

An article by Mike Doolin. http://www.doolinguitars.com/articles/blower/ on hot rodding the dust collection and also keeping the paper cooler.

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

I use 60 for pretty well everything. It doesn't load as quickly, removes material faster, and if you leave one grit on it saves you changing paper. Cleaning up the 60 grit scratches is really no deal, so I don't see any downside.

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