- Messages
- 36,056
- Location
- ABQ NM
Not as quick as I would have liked, and a little dirtier than planned, but I finally did a bit of flatwork this past weekend and slapped together a stand for my newly-acquired drum sander. I was able to put together a flip-top rolling cart for the cost of a sheet of plywood, three 2 x 4 studs, and a few bucks worth of nuts and bolts (plus a few other bits of plywood I had laying around the shop). I didn't need fancy, but I wanted stout. I didn't take a good series of progress photos, but I grabbed a few along the way.
The basic plan was for two 2 x 4 frames - one on top and one on the bottom - with 3/4" plywood sides. (The 2 x 4 studs were milled down to 3 1/4" x 1 3/8".) The bottom frame would get a skin of 3/4" ply on the bottom, and be glued and screwed to the sides. The top frame would be skinned on both sides with 3/4" ply and mounted with bolts and T-nuts to allow it to swivel and flip over. One side would have the sander and the other side would just be a flat work surface the same height as my tablesaw.
I haven't used my vertical tablesaw sled in a long while, but it sure came in handy for cutting the box joints for the frame.
I used the Freud Box Joint blade set to get perfect 1/4" wide flat-bottomed cuts, and used the Incra fence on my saw to move the sled exactly 1/2" at a time.
Gotta love the Incra fence on a tablesaw. This took me about 5 minutes to knock out, including setup time...
The obligatory glue-up in the clamps shots...
I didn't get any photos of the plywood cutting. You've seen plywood being cut, right?
Since the upper frame is a closed box, I wanted to be sure the T-nuts don't get pushed out when driving the bolts to support the top. A 3/4" sheet metal screw on the edge of each T-nut should solve that problem...
The base is very basic. As I said, it's just glued and screwed to the sides. The casters came off one of the Harbor Freight moving dollies they have on sale for $9.95 periodically. Buying those dollies is the cheapest way I know to get four 250 pound rated casters.
One tricky part was mounting the sander onto the swivel top. The base of the sander has four holes and threaded studs welded onto the backside of the channel steel that makes up the base. These studs are on the inside of the frame, hidden and out of reach. The idea is that you can simply run a bolt from underneath through a benchtop and screw it into the threaded stud. Unfortunately, a couple of these studs were broken off on this sander, so I needed a way to access the inside of the frame channels to hold a nut. To do this, I cut a couple of rough access holes in the plywood under the sander. Here's a photo of the swivel top, with the sander in the inverted position and the smooth, blank top removed. I was able to reach into those holes to hold the nuts that replaced the missing threaded studs...
Here's the stand with the flat top installed. Meet the new horizontal space in my shop to collect stuff...
And here's the top flipped over with the sander ready for action. I took the extension tables off the sander because I simply don't have the real estate in the shop for that long of a machine.
Both tops are just screwed on, so I can get back inside if I ever need to access the sander mounting bolts. (Such as to temporarily put the infeed and outfeed tables back on.)
Although I don't plan to make it a habit, it was fun doing some flatwork for a change. I even got to use a couple of my hand planes to clean up a few things and make things match up better. I'm not set up very well for cutting sheet goods accurately, but there weren't any problems I couldn't fix with a sharp plane. Since it was on plywood, I used one of my beater planes, but even so, it was sharp and it made easy work of making things fit.
So far the only finish on it is a single coat of BLO. I may get motivated to take the sander off someday and put a more durable finish on it, but I wasn't going for pretty, just functional. It should do for now, and it solves my "where do I put this sander?" dilemma.
The basic plan was for two 2 x 4 frames - one on top and one on the bottom - with 3/4" plywood sides. (The 2 x 4 studs were milled down to 3 1/4" x 1 3/8".) The bottom frame would get a skin of 3/4" ply on the bottom, and be glued and screwed to the sides. The top frame would be skinned on both sides with 3/4" ply and mounted with bolts and T-nuts to allow it to swivel and flip over. One side would have the sander and the other side would just be a flat work surface the same height as my tablesaw.
I haven't used my vertical tablesaw sled in a long while, but it sure came in handy for cutting the box joints for the frame.
I used the Freud Box Joint blade set to get perfect 1/4" wide flat-bottomed cuts, and used the Incra fence on my saw to move the sled exactly 1/2" at a time.
Gotta love the Incra fence on a tablesaw. This took me about 5 minutes to knock out, including setup time...
The obligatory glue-up in the clamps shots...
I didn't get any photos of the plywood cutting. You've seen plywood being cut, right?
Since the upper frame is a closed box, I wanted to be sure the T-nuts don't get pushed out when driving the bolts to support the top. A 3/4" sheet metal screw on the edge of each T-nut should solve that problem...
The base is very basic. As I said, it's just glued and screwed to the sides. The casters came off one of the Harbor Freight moving dollies they have on sale for $9.95 periodically. Buying those dollies is the cheapest way I know to get four 250 pound rated casters.
One tricky part was mounting the sander onto the swivel top. The base of the sander has four holes and threaded studs welded onto the backside of the channel steel that makes up the base. These studs are on the inside of the frame, hidden and out of reach. The idea is that you can simply run a bolt from underneath through a benchtop and screw it into the threaded stud. Unfortunately, a couple of these studs were broken off on this sander, so I needed a way to access the inside of the frame channels to hold a nut. To do this, I cut a couple of rough access holes in the plywood under the sander. Here's a photo of the swivel top, with the sander in the inverted position and the smooth, blank top removed. I was able to reach into those holes to hold the nuts that replaced the missing threaded studs...
Here's the stand with the flat top installed. Meet the new horizontal space in my shop to collect stuff...
And here's the top flipped over with the sander ready for action. I took the extension tables off the sander because I simply don't have the real estate in the shop for that long of a machine.
Both tops are just screwed on, so I can get back inside if I ever need to access the sander mounting bolts. (Such as to temporarily put the infeed and outfeed tables back on.)
Although I don't plan to make it a habit, it was fun doing some flatwork for a change. I even got to use a couple of my hand planes to clean up a few things and make things match up better. I'm not set up very well for cutting sheet goods accurately, but there weren't any problems I couldn't fix with a sharp plane. Since it was on plywood, I used one of my beater planes, but even so, it was sharp and it made easy work of making things fit.
So far the only finish on it is a single coat of BLO. I may get motivated to take the sander off someday and put a more durable finish on it, but I wasn't going for pretty, just functional. It should do for now, and it solves my "where do I put this sander?" dilemma.