The drum sander is an integral part of the modern workshop. It is a machine that excels at treating highly figured boards and thin veneers in a way that would humble a thicknesser. Boards in dimensions approaching 2mm thick, are infinitely safer being milled in a drum sander than a thicknesser. This is a machine however, that calls to mind the old adage, “walk before you can run”. The drum sander is capable of great speed and will save countless hours in finishing boards. It is not, however, a substitute for a thicknesser. It is a fine complement to a thicknesser and is a natural progression through the milling process when preparing dimensioned timber.

One of our best tips in using a drum sander is to score the board with a pencil in a zigzag diagonal pattern before you put the board through the machine. This will allow you to evaluate how the machine is cutting. The tip of a pencil will leave a depression in microns across the surface of the board and as you remove them you will get an indication of how much material the drum sander is removing. Height adjustment has been the biggest source of frustration for drum sander operators. Try passing the board through your drum sander two or even three times before touching the height adjustment and you will find, with our pencil-scoring test, that the machine will continue to cut, unlike a thicknesser. Now, in adjusting the height mechanism, a quarter of a turn on the height adjustment of a thicknesser is acceptable. A quarter of a turn on the height adjustment mechanism of a drum sander is asking for disaster. Think again in terms of microns, and only touch your height adjustment mechanism enough to remove a fraction of the depression left by your pencil tip marking on the wood surface.

Trying to remove too much material from a piece of wood with a drum sander is the main reason that sanding belts burn, unnecessarily destroying the belt.

Some essential accessories for your drum sander are a belt cleaner and dust extraction. Do not think of operating this machine without a dust extractor! A belt cleaner will extend the life of your belts greatly. The belt cleaner is a rubber stick that is pressed against the belt while it is spinning, removing the dust, pitch, and resin that accumulates while surfacing boards. Dust extraction will remove fine dust, which, if allowed to accumulate, will also lead to burning the belt. Getting maximum usage out of your sanding belt is essential.

This leads us to the idea of using the drum sander as a finishing machine. One drawback of the drum sander is that it runs at a continuous speed. The conveyer belt speed is infinitely adjustable. The drum, however, has only one constant speed.

A random orbital sander, often used in finishing, is a variable speed machine. When you move to your finer grits, like, P240 and P320, you are able to slow the action of a random orbital sander down. As your grits get finer, the cut of the machine is more effective if it is slowed. The drum sander does not have the ability to slow down enough to use grits as fine as P320. Even at P240, you run the risk of burning your belts, depending on the timber that you are trying to finish. If you stay in the realm of ‘milling machine’, and the realm of medium grit P80 and P120, you will remain within the economical optimum that the drum sander can provide.

I can pose a scenario for you in which the drum sander is the ultimate machine for the task. Let’s just say that I have a marvellous piece of highly figured Tasmanian Myrtle. The idea is to turn it into a few small mandolins. After determining the grain direction and carefully sending the board through the thicknesser, I find that I am getting some horrific tear-out, with as much as 3mm chunks being ripped from the surface.