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Converting the Drill Press into a Drum Sander

Why Do I Need a Drum Sander?

If you watch any of the YouTube videos of someone making a cutting board, you'll see them use a "planer". A better name for this tool is a thickness planer (in the UK, it is called a "thicknesser"). It's purpose is to remove wood from one side of a board, reducing its thickness, using the other side of the board as a reference. Reducing the thickness may be the whole point, but often a planer is used to get rid of unevenness on one or both sides of a board and reducing the thickness is a side-effect. When making a cutting board, a planer is used at first to get all of the pieces to the same thickness (example) and again later on to even out the surface of the board after all the pieces have been glued together (example). A thickness planer is an expensive tool, with even the cheapest costing $300. And, when you've bolted your planer to a bench or stand, it sits there permanently taking up space.

Now, I'm not making cutting boards; I'm making coasters. But, I still have the same problems. Things work a lot better if I can get all the pieces to be of the same thickness, about ¼", before I glue them together. After they are all glued together, I need to get rid of dried glue on the surface and smooth out any unevenness to get a flat coaster of even thickness. I could use a planer if I wanted to spend the money on one and could find somewhere for it to live. But, there is another tool that performs the same function - a thickness sander or drum sander. This simply uses sandpaper to remove material instead of cutting blades. Drum sanders are actually more expensive than planers, perhaps because they are less common (there is no WikiPedia article on them). They also leave the surface of the wood with sanding marks, whereas a planer can leave a very smooth surface. But, a drum sander has one big advantage for me, which is that it is possible to make your own (which is not the case with planers). I'm making a drill press and many of the YouTube videos that show how this can be done also show how the result can be made into a drum (thickness) sander †. So, that's the way I'm going to go. I will streamline the making of coasters using a thickness sander so that I can spend more time thinking about the design and less time sanding by hand.

† I need here to clarify that a drum sander is not the same as a spindle sander and, unfortunately, many YouTube videos claim to be making a drum sander when they are actually making a spindle sander. A spindle sander is just a spinning drum (there's the source of the confusion) with sandpaper wrapped around it. The operator holds the workpiece up to the sandpaper and controls the pressure and position to achieve whatever result is desired (often the smoothing of inside curves cut with a bandsaw or jigsaw). A drum sander includes a means to pass the workpiece across the drum in a controlled manner so as to result in a face that is flat and parallel to the opposite face (just line a planer).

Spindle / Axle

Almost all the YouTube videos about the construction of a drum sander show a threaded rod being used as the spindle or axle (here's an exception that uses a solid rod). A solid rod would have the advantage that is has a well-defined diameter and so would fit better into support bearings. However, the idea I have for the sanding drum will really only work with a threaded rod, so that is what I will use. It will be 5/16" coarse SAE (18 threads-per-inch) from Home Depot.

Bearing Blocks

Sanding Drum