Shop made disk sander

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1,405
Location
Villa Park, CA
I have a VERY small shop and can't fit hardly any more floor mounted tools in it. I did buy the Ridgid oscillating spindle/belt sander a while back but that still left me without a disk sander.

Someone had posted the idea of using your lathe as a disk sander. I took that idea and made a disk sander for my small shop. My lathe is a 12" so I was limited to a 12" sanding disk. I bought some 12" disk sandpaper on eBay and used scrap wood that I had around the shop.

The negative is that when I want to use the disk sander, I have to set it up, and when I want to use the lathe for something else, I have to tear it down. But in my small, one man shop, I can do that.

The rest is best described by the pictures.

The first picture shows the sander set up on the lathe. The disk is made from some composite board. The surface is a piece of scrap plywood.

The next picture is looking up on the underside of the work surface. I have two adjusting knobs so that I can adjust the surface square to the plane of the disk.

To hold the work surface in place, I made a disk and cut off the sides so that it would fit between the way. Then it is turned 90* and the locking lever is used to tighten it. See the next three pixs.

I made two sanding disks so I could have one set up as coarse sandpaper and one with a bit finer sandpaper.

Mike
 

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Looks to be very sturdy and well made.

What a great Idea. I've got a stationary belt sander with a smallish disk sander, but I've never really used them.

I imagine something larger like that could be quite useful!

:thumb::thumb::thumb:
 
One more posting to give some construction details. I used a 3" faceplate to attach the wood disk. I would have used 3/4" MDF but I didn't have any in the shop.

Once I had turned the disks round, I took a cut across the front of the disk to true up the face. Then I used sandpaper glued to a piece of MDF - make it as long as your sandpaper - to sand the face of the disk, which makes sure there weren't any ripples in the face, and that the face was flat across.

Then I put shellac on the face so the psa glue would adhere better. If you try to glue to the bare wood, they'll be some sawdust on it no matter what you do and it will keep the psa from holding well.

Mike
 

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Your locking mechanism is slicker than...well...really slick stuff. :p

I really like the way it came out and will file it in the Bright Ideas drawer. I have a seriously underpowered Sears 6" disk/4" belt sander that's about worthless. A big disk would be handy sometimes, and I'm betting the variable speed on the lathe would be very useful.
 
It might be better to use a knob to tighten that "clamp". I'm finding the cam is touchy - that is, when I turn the piece of wood under the table, it turns the bolt and sometimes then the cam doesn't lock tightly. I have to fiddle with the cam lever and the bolt to get it just tight enough to lock down.

I'll probably change it to a knob. One of those ideas that didn't work out well in practice.

Mike
 
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