Shopsmith Forums

My purpose of this short note is to express appreciation for the precision of the conical disk sander. The Sawdust Sessions describe this device quite well and no need to repeat here, other than to echo the points made there.

Yesterday, I was finishing some blocks for Osage Orange (bois d'arc in Texas) wood for some mallets I'm making (following recent commentary from Paul Sellers on his website), and needed to finish the wood pieces with precision. Also, the bois d'arc wood is notoriously difficult since it so hard. After struggling with planes, I remembered the conical disk sander.

The quill feed allows precise settings and movement of the sanding disk as the process unfolds. Thus, you can control the sanding quite nicely. And the finish is great.

So, I want to encourage to remember what you have in a conical disk sander. I sometimes forget what potential exists in my Shopsmith Mark V.

I purchased a SS 520 during the winter of 2010-11 and have had a love hate relationship with the SS ever since. The more I use it the more amazed I am at the versatility. But at the same time it frustrates the dickens out of me.
During the winter of 2011-12 SWMBO decided we needed a hutch to keep the dishes and other shinny things in. About the same time I found 5 or 6 full & partial sheets of MDF at a garage sale for about 2$ a sheet. So the plan was to construct the hutch out of 100% MDF. I had not used MDF to construct anything so I made some study pieces before starting on the hutch. I found that the MDF would slip during glue up. This is when I discovered the amazing SS conical sanding disk. My solution was to make the piece oversize then use the conical sanding disk to size and finish the edge. The other 520 feature that made the build possible was that the table could be extended over 6'. this along with a sliding table made it possible to size and sand larger panels. This link shows some of the study pieces and hutch.
https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?p=136693#post136693

Hi, I'm thinking of buying my first SS. I'd like to revive this thread because this is one of those features that has left me scratching my head. I watched the Sawdust Session, but the lightbulb didn't go on. Maybe it requires familiarity with the machine to work it out.

What I'd like to know is:
1) is there a practical limit to the width of the board that can be thicknessed using this conical sander?
2) is the conical disk sander practical as a shop's primary thicknesser? I guess if you wanted to make a really radical alteration in a board you'd resaw it on the bandsaw (provided it is <6" wide). But if you routinely need to take an 1/8" or 1/4" of boards, could it be done with conical sander? The SS 12" Mark-mounted planer is $1,400 - that seems crazy expensive.

harveydunn wrote:Hi, I'm thinking of buying my first SS. I'd like to revive this thread because this is one of those features that has left me scratching my head. I watched the Sawdust Session, but the lightbulb didn't go on. Maybe it requires familiarity with the machine to work it out.

What I'd like to know is:
1) is there a practical limit to the width of the board that can be thicknessed using this conical sander?
2) is the conical disk sander practical as a shop's primary thicknesser? I guess if you wanted to make a really radical alteration in a board you'd resaw it on the bandsaw (provided it is <6" wide). But if you routinely need to take an 1/8" or 1/4" of boards, could it be done with conical sander? The SS 12" Mark-mounted planer is $1,400 - that seems crazy expensive.

Although thickness sanding can be done with a conical disc, its width limit is about 5"(maybe less). That is the width of the 'cone'. I made a jig to do what Nick demonstrated in the sawdust session, but I would use the planer unless the work piece was small. I made the jig prior to getting a planer. It does work well with small workpieces too small for the planer.

Then there is the 'dust' vs chips.

Yes it makes a good 'width' trimmer.

harveydunn wrote:Hi, I'm thinking of buying my first SS. I'd like to revive this thread because this is one of those features that has left me scratching my head. I watched the Sawdust Session, but the lightbulb didn't go on. Maybe it requires familiarity with the machine to work it out.

What I'd like to know is:
1) is there a practical limit to the width of the board that can be thicknessed using this conical sander?
2) is the conical disk sander practical as a shop's primary thicknesser? I guess if you wanted to make a really radical alteration in a board you'd resaw it on the bandsaw (provided it is <6" wide). But if you routinely need to take an 1/8" or 1/4" of boards, could it be done with conical sander? The SS 12" Mark-mounted planer is $1,400 - that seems crazy expensive.

The conical disc sander is cool but there are better choices for thicknessing. If the Shopsmith planer is too pricey (and for many of us it was) there is the excellent Dewalt DW735 which can be had new for around $500 and sometimes less at the box stores.

The disk is limited to a 4" strip of sanding.

While shopsmith claims that you can take an 1/8" off at time with 60 git paper I sure wouldn't do that. That would be a lot of dust!

Dimensioning stock is best done by tools that cut. Sanding is more of finishing operation.

It's just another tool to have, it works better for certain operations and not at all for others. You would not want that as your primary jointing or surfacing tool.

Ed

harveydunn wrote:Hi, I'm thinking of buying my first SS. I'd like to revive this thread because this is one of those features that has left me scratching my head. I watched the Sawdust Session, but the lightbulb didn't go on. Maybe it requires familiarity with the machine to work it out.

What I'd like to know is:
1) is there a practical limit to the width of the board that can be thicknessed using this conical sander?
2) is the conical disk sander practical as a shop's primary thicknesser? I guess if you wanted to make a really radical alteration in a board you'd resaw it on the bandsaw (provided it is <6" wide). But if you routinely need to take an 1/8" or 1/4" of boards, could it be done with conical sander? The SS 12" Mark-mounted planer is $1,400 - that seems crazy expensive.

I've found that the ability to thickness what you have, into what you need, is incredibly valuable. The projects move forward more quickly, and that ugly scrap-lumber pile just melts away.

I'll second the opinion that the disk sander is great for finishing and edging, but would generate too much dust (and consume too much expensive sandpaper) if used for serious thicknessing.

Here in Ohio, there is usually a good used SS "Pro Planer" (the stand-mounted version) available for $500 or less. With patience and daily monitoring of Craigslist, sometimes much less. It took a while, but I finally scored a great bargain, and I've seen a couple others since.

The DW735 also gets great reviews. I've looked at them (and lifted them -- they weigh a ton), but never used one. The major SS advantages appear to be a generous one-piece fixed infeed/outfeed table standard, and a very quiet induction-motor drive. The DW735 scores points with an amazing chip/dust collection ability. To level the playing field, you need to add in the cost of a stand to the DW735. Personally, I would want casters in either case.

I have used the conical sander for finish thicknessing of resawn thin stock. Worked great for some 1/8 x 4 inch stuff that I had done a bad resaw job on. (Wrong type blade.) had to tape it to a piece of MDF to properly control it.
It will do great for cleanup of wild grain and plywood edges. Most of the dust can be controlled with the lower saw guard and a dust collector.

Reviving this thread. I am thinking of using the conical sander on some glued up walnut pieces, which will become legs for one of the slabs I have been working on for a table.

Pieces are around 2 1/4" in width. The legs are about 30" in length.

A few questions:

1. Do you think the Conical disk will work well for finishing the legs of those dimensions? I'd probably get them down to 2 to 2 1/8".

2. Do I need to scrape off the glue from glue up or just run the legs through without glue cleanup?

3. I have two conical disks that have no sandpaper yet on them, would you suggest the two higher grit sandpapers on each disk? From another thread, it seems that removing sandpaper from the disks is akin to an act of congress

I have the shopsmith jointer and the shopsmith pro planer so those are options, but I'd like to keep the glued boards away from my jointer and planer knives if it is avoidable.

This is a picture of the boards prior to glue-up.



Cheers,
John

Since I received no response, I just went for it! I stuck the 80 grit on one of my conical sanding discs and the 150 on the other and I really liked the results.

I will say that it is a bit tiring to keep pressure to push through the sanding especially for the thinner pieces.

Worked really well and I was quite happy with the results. I just took off the major glue up blobs off with a heavy duty putty knife and then hit the conical sander with the pieces.

I feel going with the 50 grit, you probably could dimensionalize down 1/8-1/2" without too much difficulty over multiple passes. The limiting factor is how tired your fingers and hands will be after the sanding given the constant pressure you need to exert on the piece to keep it moving forward.

I lightly grazed my left top knuckle and lost a bit of skin so be wary of even light grazes against the disc. I put some thin nylon gloves afterwards to give me a little bit of protection just in case I grazed again.

Here are the results.







Cheers,
John