One of the problems we encounter when we begin with this hobby of making DIY projects with wood is the difficulty of cutting accurately and to the exact size, mainly when making some angled cuts and cutting curves. The solution in many occasions is to use a disc sander that you can buy or make yourself, as shown by John Heisz (look for the link at the end of this article).
You have probably noticed in videos on the Internet that many people make a homemade sander disc powered with a drill for their woodworking shop. Or by recycling some kind of electric motor. And making the sanding machine with a more or less large disc, I would say around 30 centimeters in diameter, to which they glue a round sandpaper sheet. However in this case John decided to go with a smaller disc and to run the disc sander with a drill.
Other particularities of this sander is that in addition to the disc it also has a sanding belt with its own tensioning system. Both the belt and the sanding disc have a tilting table to support the pieces of wood at the vertical angle we might need. It seems to me that the possibility of using a drill instead of a motor is a great idea, since it makes manufacturing easier. And also being able to use a drill means that having respect for working with wires and electricity is no longer an excuse for not making one of these little woodworking tools.
Although there are simpler options, such as buying a sanding disc for drill. All we need is a suitable support for the drill and some kind of table that we can put in front of the disk sander. And the drill lathe kit that I bought to begin my first steps in woodturning surprised me when I discovered that apart from the horizontal drill clamp (indispensable in a drill lathe, of course), it also came with a simple table that placed in the place of the tool holder, can be used as a disc sander table when I install the sanding disc in the drill chuck.
In the video you can see the lathe I am talking about, with the sanding disc. This one is 125 millimeters in diameter and has a Velcro surface for attaching Velcro sanding discs. The sandpaper I found is 115mm in diameter but it works perfectly, and even with the sandpaper discs with holes for eccentric sanders you can sand without problems. I had never used a disc sander before and it was surprise how simple it is to use, how easy it is to follow the line to where we want to sand and the clean surface it leaves in the workpiece we sand. We only have to be careful to sand in the area of the table where the disc enters downwards the table, since in the area where the disc exits upwards we run the risk of the sandpaper catching the wood and throwing the workpiece up towards our face.
Go to the Ibuildit.ca translations page on this blog and there, at number 5, you have the link to see how John makes his disc and belt sander (exactly the one you see in the first picture of this article).
You can also see the homemade disc sander I made with some bearings and the drill.
