One of the most used pieces of equipment in my shop.
Love it, nicely done. Is the drum a hard drum or an inflatable 'soft' drum? I have rarely used the angled table on my disc sander, but is that something you have wanted or needed? I realize having/making a variable angle table is contrary to the goal of keeping the table set at 90 deg to the disk.
I doubt I'd have the wherewithal to pull this off (building that is).
Mine is used often, except I acquired a conventional belt/disk sander, rather than building something. When I acquired it I thought 'I might find use for it'; now that I have had it (for 20 years) aside from my TS it is likely among the most used pieces of equipment I have (in part because I don't have a jointer or a grinder).
I re-post ads for these sander here on NCWW when I see them because for $70-100 they are generally very worth the space they take up (at least in my shop). When breaking up my Dad's home shop I told my brother to keep Dad's rather than sell it - he didn't think he would use it. A year later he came back to me thanking me for the advice because he agreed 'that he had found many uses for it' (and price was right).
Aside from 'normal sanding' I have used this for:
- I don't have a jointer so I tend to clean up large convex curve cuts (from BS, not TS) with this sander (sometimes belt, sometimes disk, although I need a larger table in disc to do this effectively on larger pieces)
- disc sander - I remove the table and mount to sharpen lathe chisels; fingernail grind on bowl gouge with a homemade Ellsworth jig and most others freehand. I don't have a grinder (except I was gifted a Grizzly wet grinder about a year ago, and haven't sharpened chisels yet).
- when I needed many wooden disks/pucks and I didn't have a lathe, I used a circle jig on the disc sander to true the circles. This was for a Dutch game (Shoelbak sp?; Bas will know it and likely know how to spell it); it's a version of table top shuffleboard where the aim is to send the puck(s) into pockets at end of the board.
- and likely a bunch of other things I can't recall.