Drum sander for surface planing?

[rafezetter]

If you have a thicknesser, you can make one of those sleds, so it will also work as a planer.

Here's a simple one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UONmuQt_98

I've used this method very successfully to square and dimension boards, even edge jointing several boards stacked together and running through on the sled.

These breadbox thicknessers are quite reasonable and for the time and materials cost of the drum sander type jointer you propose, it may even be cheaper.

When I mentioned about drum sanders that work from above, the short feed tables on Stumpy Nub's version can just be lengthened, and a fence added.

It's not an impossible idea, just fraught with complications.

 

[Orraloon]

The belt sander gets pretty slow after a while ...
When I first got mine,it was soo fast/aggressive ...
Their should be a pot on these things to account for belt wear .
I will add, whatever bearing on the other end would probably get clogged /heat up and die...
Cant say for sure though ?
If it did work and you had unlimited sandpaper, you would need at least a 3HP cyclone dust extractor .
Why do you think that sanding is a better solution than say, at least attempting to jig up an electric hand planer until you get a proper surfacer ? Apart from the fact that, then you would have two surfacers ?
Oh , don't bother buying that drum ,even if you decide to do this ...as Its just a plastic tube filled with filler .
Have you got a hand plane ,and have you ever got the iron sharp enough to shave hair off your forearm with one swipe .this is how sharp a plane iron needs to be.

I want to be able to square up my own rough sawn boards of up to about 5ft in length (for big projects), which I'll want to be doing pretty often. If it was just a one off board, then I'd quite happly use a router sled, but doing that for each board on each new project just sounds painful. I figured I could take maybe 8 or so passes through the drum sander with a low grit, and then pass that through my thicknesser for the final pass much quicker than I could plane the surface using a router sled. It just seemed like a much easier approach to the problem until I have a jointer.

I don't think I'd be buying the drum, I'd be making it myself as per some of the videos you see online. I think I have confused people with that first image. That was just supposed to show the sanding vs planing idea, not the actual implementation.

Not a good idea to use blades on wood that has just been sanded.
Regards
John

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