Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

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Craig Bumgarner
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Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Craig Bumgarner »

Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander (like Grizzly's 12" Drum Sander) ? I've been recently using a friend's Makita 12" planer for a variety of guitar making tasks: Thinning top halves, thicknessing braces and other parts, some of them only 8" long and quite thin. Having spent a life time in woodworking, it is quite a revelation to me as I had come to believe planners could just not be safely used for this kind of thing. I had been saving up for a small drum sander but in light of using the Makita, am considering getting one of these instead of a drum sander. My friend wants his Makita back some day and I've grown accustomed to it, it fills a worthy place in the shop. My experience with stationary wide belt sanders and drum sanders has been they are fairly high maintenance, but it has been 20-30 years since I used one regularly.

What are your experiences?

CB
Clay Schaeffer
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Clay Schaeffer »

Hi Craig, the small planers can often take wood down to luthier thicknesses, and if the blades are very sharp can sometimes handle moderate amounts of wild grain. The advantage the drum sander has is in being able to thickness figured woods more reliably. I use both.
John Hamlett
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by John Hamlett »

They are different tools. If you need to reduce thickness a lot, the planer is the tool. If you need thin, figured wood, the sander is the tool. If you have a good way to reduce thickness (bandsaw with re-saw fence, for example) and if you regularly need to make veneers from figured wood, you can get by with the sander and no planer. If you regularly surface rough sawn lumber to specific thicknesses, you're better off with the planer (along with a jointer).
Craig Bumgarner
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Craig Bumgarner »

Okay, that makes sense. Is dust an issue with a sander? I'm using the Makita planer after careful dimensioning with a band saw, so the cuts are pretty light and the dust is minimal. Am I like to need a dust collection system with a drum sander? (something I've managed without so far). Any recommendations on a small drum sander for luthier applications these days?

CB
Mike Sandor
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Mike Sandor »

Craig,
Clay and John are right on with there replys. I have not had very good luck with high figure woods even on the sharpest of planers. I understand that there are planers using a helix cutting head which suposidly works very well.
When trying to plane under 1/8 " thick, I have tryed differant tricks like using a sleigh board and double back tape to attach the work to. That works but very scarry. So much so that I built a sander out of some scrap pieces of equipment.
Dust removal is EXTREMELY important unless you can do this outside. As you can see in the photo, I have dust hoods on the top of the drum and the exit of the driven belt. Unbelievable amout of dust.
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Andy Birko
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Andy Birko »

Mike, how much $$ do you have into that sander and what are you doing for height & parallel adjust? Although I have one of those jet/performax 16/32 thingies it can be a bit touchy on parallel adjust. It never dawned on me to use extrusions and linear bearings to build a drum sander.
PMoMC
Mike Sandor
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Mike Sandor »

This pictures shows a bit clearer. The sanding drum is stationary and the table and belt assembly move up or down. The entire table assembly slides on two 1 ¼” diameter shafts and brass bushings. The shafts are secured to the main machine upright supports and the bushing mounting blocks attach to the conveyor side frame. The are tied together using bevel gears and a cross shaft. I split the cross shaft and installed a type of adjustable bushing in order to set each side even and parallel to the drum surface. The handle and shaft located on the top adjust the desired height. Most of this stuff is scrap equipment parts. The most expensive items are the 80-20. Where they get you with this stuff is not the straight sections, rather the attachment pieces, corner pieces and hardware.
All obtainable on E bay , or new from McMaster. I am a real good scrounge, not afraid to dumpster dive on occasion. I actually got the dc drive and motor for the belt drive from a tension tester that a local lab tossed out. Regarding the sanding drum, that took a bit more looking but I actually found two hollow aluminum drum rollers with bearing attached. I still got one of them laying around some where. I must confess, I am fortunate in the fact that in my current job, we will obsolete some older equipment. That means quite often, this equipment gets tossed out. A real shame was goes into the dumpster at times…..
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Jeff Highland
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Jeff Highland »

Besides all the issues with thin or figured wood. a 12" planer is just not wide enough anyhow.
Even a telecaster body is 13" and an acousic, 15" up
If you buy a amall sander , make sure it is open ended
Michael Sankey
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Michael Sankey »

Don't get the makita planer. Get the steel city 13" one with the helical inserts! I use mine for everything, instead of a drum sander. It runs way smoother and quieter than regular planers, and it'll handle figured wood much better too. I've used it for sides down to 0.080" using a backing board. And if you need to remove material quickly, it'll do that too. It also has cutters for the full 13" width, so if you're careful you can do a full electric guitar blank.
Brad Heinzen
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Brad Heinzen »

I really like my little drum sander for luthiery, but those Makita planers can be pretty darn good planers. I used to work in a large cabinet shop where we had one of those right next to our big, spiral blade planer. It was amazing how many of us would use the little Makita whenever possible. The only things we did to it were to add a thin, drop-on table that helped the stock to feed smoothly, and to keep sharp blades in it. I think that particular tool may have pre-dated the current ones with reversible insert blades, but I do have one of those as well.
Steve Hamlin
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Steve Hamlin »

Dust collection essential - and go overboard with it. The better the suck, the less the paper will load up, and consumable costs are significant for these little beasts.
I use a 2 HP CamVac with my little Jet - best upgrade I've made (was tempted by 3 HP, and had I the wherewithall at the time, doubt I'd have regretted it.)
Craig Bumgarner
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Craig Bumgarner »

Michael: Thanks for the tip on the Steel City 13 with helical insert blades. We have an 8" jointer with helical insert blades and it is SO MUCH better than conventional straight blades.

Steve: What model Jet do you have?

Brad: What model drum sander to you have?

Jeff: 12" would be wide enough for my purposes, I'm building acoustics and don't need to thickness sand jointed plates.

CB
David Malicky
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by David Malicky »

Brad, Interesting info -- I'm shopping for a planer, and wondered what was preferred about the Makita planer over the large spiral planer?
Jason Rodgers
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Jason Rodgers »

David Malicky wrote:Brad, Interesting info -- I'm shopping for a planer, and wondered what was preferred about the Makita planer over the large spiral planer?
Or for that matter, why the Makita over the DeWalt or Rigid models at Home Depot?
-Ruining perfectly good wood, one day at a time.
Brad Heinzen
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Brad Heinzen »

I have one of the open-ended Delta drum sanders. I think it's a 31-250. They're not very serious machines, but I don't have any complaints about using them for guitar building. I use mine constantly, even though I don't ask too much from it in the way of heavy thicknessing.

I think most people preferred the little planer because it didn't snipe as bad as the big one, and the cut quality was better on the little one. We'd use the large machine for for big milling jobs, but everyone liked the little one better for those quick finish cuts that always come up during cabinet building.

I've used the DeWalt and the Makita both quite a bit, and I really prefer the Makita. I'm not a fan of the feed roller drive assembly on the DeWalt. The one I use at work has constant problems, and we've replaced the drive gear numerous times due to the chain jumping teeth and locking up, shearing the shaft key that's forged into the drive gear. The chain tensioner is kind of weenie, and the gears are mounted a ways out from the shaft bearing, allowing the shaft to flex quite a bit under load. I don't know about the Rigid - I've never used one.
Steve Hamlin
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Steve Hamlin »

Craig Bumgarner wrote:Steve: What model Jet do you have?
Hi Craig
I've the 16-32
As noted, setup is a bit of a faff, but I've found it a good little workhorse.
Clay Schaeffer
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Clay Schaeffer »

The portable planer I have is a DeWalt. I bought it used from the cabinet shop I worked in. It developed the problems Brad mentioned above, and they didn't want to repair it. A few new parts and it works fine, but it is definitely a light duty machine, and wouldn't hold up to cabinet shop use (abuse <g>).
I have an older Makita 16 inch planer that had urethane rollers. After several years they deteriorated and turned to a wax like consistency and ceased to work. Until that happened the planer worked very well and left an excellent finish on the wood.
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Ryan Mazzocco
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Ryan Mazzocco »

My dad and I just had this discussion. We have a woodmaster 18" planer/moulder in our shop. We put the sanding drum attachment on to sand our guitar sides and found that no matter how fast or slow we go the paper just doesn't last very long. Now it should be noted that this is on a 3" drum so the heat has virtually no time to dissipate before coming back around, but it just wasn't working no matter what we tried. We've decided to just go with the planer head and take the sanding head completely out of the equation. Here's the logic: we're not finish sanding these things anyway. Once we get them surfaced and thicknessed we're going to be sanding on them every step of the way during construction. But that's just one little shop's opinion.
Clay Schaeffer
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Clay Schaeffer »

Hi Ryan,
Is the paper getting dull or is it clogging up? Dust collection is the biggest problem with drum sanders. Coarser grit is less prone to clogging, but of course leaves a rougher surface.
For many woods the planer head will work fine, but if you plane curly woods you may have problems.
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Ryan Mazzocco
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Re: Makita 12" Planer vs. a small Drum Sander

Post by Ryan Mazzocco »

Yes Clay you are right about that. We were using 120 this last time, but that's only because we already blew through all of our 80. There's no question we were trying to do too much with the 120. but to answer your question, no it doesn't seem to get clogged. We have 2 dust collectors hooked up to it: a big 'ol grizzly and a cheapo delta, and it didn't seem like there was much dust being left inside. we were even careful to run it through in different places to be sure not to wear too much in one spot, but we would get two or three passes and then we'd see the black mark of death. after a couple more passes we run out of places to run the stock. if we were to keep going it would eventually blow up throwing paper all over the inside of the machine.
I know a good drum sander has it's place in a guitar shop, but I just don't' think that's what we've got. We have a good planer/moulder with a sub-par sanding attachment. I would love to have a stand-alone surface sander but it's just not in the budget right now.
For planing I like the woodmaster. It's the 18" model so there's plenty of room to run your glued up plates, and the feeder is variable speed. it can run at 16fpm or slow it down to barely a crawl.
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