Shopsmith Forums

robinson46176 wrote:I have a friend with a custom millwork business who builds a lot of his special machines from scratch. A couple of his molding units have power feed fed through simple and fairly small riding lawnmower transmissions. Most are belt driven into the transmissions then small roller chain drive to the feed rollers. His machines are not very polished but his end products are.


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He sounds like my kind of guy Francis.

Paul M

I still think this is a great idea and something I have considered myself. A while back I found a video and read an article about a guy who built something similar to this that mounted on a table saw and swapped the saw arbor for a pulley. The principal is similar and the Shopsmith has the added advantage of two drive shafts. The idea is based on a pattern in Shopnotes Issue 86, which uses a hand-crank to advance the belt. Incidentally, here is the cutting diagram for that design.

Here is Edwin Hackleman's table saw drum sander, modified from the Shopnotes pattern. He used an external motor to drive the belt. I particularly like the height adjustment mechanism. Several people have built this drum sander, including Bills Wood blog. Here's another one from tablesaw.com I just ran across while searching for Mr. Hackleman's.

If you Google "shopnotes drum sander" you'll get quite a few hits on it. I don't have a drum sander so in my opinion, using the Shopsmith to power both the belt and the drum is a great idea. Oh, and if you have an extra headstock laying around, you could pull the sheaves and idler spring out and use it to set up variable speed pulleys. Talk about going to a lot of trouble...

Thanks for the links Dalton. As mentioned before the concept is to use the SS's potential more than just to build a drum sander. The height adjustment had to be based on the drum rather than the table because the necessary speed reduction arrangements for the feed pretty much rule out a movable table.

wannabeww, don't be holding your breath. I'm going back to my real shop in Canada in about two weeks so this wouldn't be getting on the rails before next fall at the earliest..........................and then I've got my new (old?) chevalet to play with.

Paul M

Granted, it would take either larger pulleys or another step of reduction, but you could design it so the top shaft powered the drum so you would have speed control. Just a thought.