# Radial Arm Saw Drum sander



## JayArr (Sep 18, 2018)

Years ago I bought the Craftsman chuck that goes on my 12" RAS, I didn't know what I needed it for but it was inexpensive and I thought some day I'll find a use for it. Today is that day.


I mounted the chuck on the end of the motor an then put a chuck mounted drum sander from Lee Valley into it. The trouble was that it was several inches from the table and I couldn't get it down to where it would sand a 1" board. So I raised the material by building a removable sanding table/fence. It's only about 3-1/2" tall but that's enough to get the material in the range of the drum. It attaches to the RAS using the T-Tracks I have embedded in my Mr Sawdust table and I built it with enough back table to mount my board buddies. It also has a fence down the middle although that's not critical for a drum sander.


It's basically just a bunch of plywood I had lying around configured for this purpose, I even had enough scraps to build a little stand to mount on the infeed bench to hold the material level and avoid nips or gouges. 



I checked out some pro drum sanders and they run the paper on their drums around 2100 feet/min. I calculated my drum with the 3600RPM of the RAS and it comes out around 2700 feet/min so it's running fast but only 20-25%. If that becomes a problem I can go down a size on the drum and it will slow the speed but the initial tests today have it working just fine.


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