Hi Y'all,
In luv2dive's post about the gun I made for him the subject of a "mop" sander came up, and it was suggested that I start a separate thread about the one I built. I made it for finishing the occasional piece of furniture I build, but used it on the last gun I made with suprising results, so I thought I would share it with everyone.
Dan, I wasn't sure where this post would belong, so if you need to move it to a more suitable place, please feel free.
I wanted what was basicly a large cabinet with a flat surface since I wanted to finish sand large pieces like the panels on the ends of beds and bookcases, or panel doors. The open drum lets me put any size object on the table, and the "moulding" sander let's me sand the shapes on the panels, or the shapes of mouldings, hence the name. The large cabinet also allows me to store stuff like sanding belts, saw blades, router bits, etc.
For spearos the moulding sander is fantastic since it sands the curves on a speargun without losing the crisp definition. The drum takes different grits of cloth backed sandpaper, and is a solution for guys who want to taper blanks but don't have a long bed joiner. I'll do several posts showing the one I built, and share some other options and material sources if anyone wants to build one. The one I built has a big footprint for the reasons I mentioned, but in the process of designing and building it, I came up with better, faster, and cheaper ways, so y'all will benefit from my " research" ("screwups" sounds so harsh!:D).
Here are some pics of the "as built" version. As you can see, it still lacks things like drawer handles, which I deem to be less important than building spearguns.
The "moulding" sander is made up of strips of 1-1/2" wide sanding cloth but is available already cut from a website I'll provide. It's an arbor supported by two pillow block bearings. I have a sliding piece of aluminum that elevates the arbor so the sanding surface rises above the table level by whatever amount you want. After I did this I came up with a much simpler way of elevating the arbor, which I'll share later as well.
The drum itself is more difficult to build, but much simpler to install. They also can be bought on a website I'll share, but what's the fun in that?:D. I'll go into more detail in the next post.