Shopsmith Forums

It’s now Wednesday evening. Most of this post was written earlier.

Here I am at the computer and I should be in the shop playing with my new SANDFLEE!:D

It arrived on Friday but today (Monday) was the first time I had an opportunity to set it up and try it out.

First I had to remove the SandFlee from the box – not a real easy process since the staples were difficult to remove (especially since the new UPS driver delivered the box to the wrong house – thank God for honest neighbors!). My neighbor even helped me put it in my pickup (although I had no real trouble getting it out of the truck by myself. It’s heavy but not to the point of needing help to lift it – more unwieldy than too heavy).

Once the staples were removed the SandFlee slid easily out of the box onto the bench. It comes with one package containing the dust collection fitting and another containing the bolts, nuts, coupler, allen screws, and the Shopsmith “dog bone”, along with two offset mounting tubes. The assembly instructions were easy to follow (and for me that’s tough since I like to just start putting stuff together – “I’m sure I know what all these parts are and where they go you know”).

Assembly was very easy – even without help. The instructions suggest you have a helper hold the SandFlee while you attach the Shopsmith “dog bone” to the bottom of the SandFlee. I did it myself without much of a problem. I think the instructions also suggest you have help to get the alignment correct for the power coupler but again I didn’t need help. I just used a scrap piece of oak to lift the SandFlee while I set and tightened the two set screws which fasten the eccentric tubes to the dog bone.

After making sure everything was aligned and tightened in place a test run proved all was well and I proceeded to the setup task. This was amazingly simple. Simply place a jointed board on the work surface, raise the top so the sanding drum doesn’t touch the wood, start the machine and lower the top until the board “just” moves slowly from being touched by the paper. At that point tighten the two knobs that hold the adjuster in place and you are ready to go. You make this adjustment with the finest grit mounted on the sanding drum (the machine comes with 320 grit paper loaded already so I just used that). No more adjustments are needed after that – COOL! – I like not having to re-adjust things.

Now, what about results? I am making a large frame for a display at church and had some of the oak left over so I used that for a test. Unfortunately for me, the SandFlee did such a great job and produced such a super surface that I’m now back to re-working the frame because I’m no longer satisfied with the surface prep I already thought I had completed. A real test is coming up soon. I have an porject for six mahogany shadow boxes. We'll see how much time the SandFlee cuts from my previous sanding methods.

Oh yes, dust collection. The dust port attaches easily with four machine screws and nylok nuts using the 1/8” allen wrench supplied with the rest of the parts. I didn’t do a scientific test of the dust collection but my initial impression is that it is the best I’ve seen on any tool without hooking up a dust collector – this thing does NOT produce a large dust cloud – at least not on the short test run I did.

As I gain more experience with this SPT I’ll try ti remember to post more information.

My initial evaluation is that it does everything the manufacturer says it will and exceeded my expectations straight out of the box.

The only shortcoming I found (and it is a minor one) is that when I used the dust collector it still left an easily visible amount of sawdust inside the SandFlee when I was finished using it. So the box still needs to be vacuumed out to prevent the sawdust from collecting moisture from the air. That’s not much of a problem in my air conditioned shop but if you live in a high humidity area it’s something to remember before leaving the shop for an extended period.

Sorry for the long post. I get wordy sometimes.

Leonard,

Except for the mis-delivery, I thought that I had written your Post! For you see, I also just took delivery of a SandFlee, and completed the setup yesterday.

I managed the complete setup, like you, by myself. The most difficult thing for me was setting up the table for "grit high only" across the entire length of the surface. I wished I had a third hand for that task, but instead used a long 2x2 to hold the table in position, freeing up my hands, while I checked the sanding roller across the entire surface for grit high only.

Once completed, I was good to go! It really is amazing just how much sanding dust is collected in the chamber! Yes, you are right ......when using the vaccum, there is still a lot of sand dust still left, requiring one to vaccum out the chamber by hand.

The Sandflee came at the right time as I am just starting to attack my "Christmas and Birthday List".

Best of Luck!
John:)

Gents,

Thanks for the reports. I lusted after a Sand Flee at the Owners Weekend visit I made in July. Couldn't come up with the bucks yet but I did make a "Sand Almost Free" a la the old reible posting. So mine has a 6" sanding drum which is about to the point that I'd want a bearing at the far end to better control a tad bit of runout. But, that being said, I do love how it works on my small wood planks. And, I would summarize the dust-control exactly the way you've described the dust control in the real Sand Flee. I will probably get the real Sand Flee in another year or so.

Hi fixit,

Just wanting to know how long you had to wait for your Sand-Flee to arrive after you ordered it.

I ordered mine a month ago (Aug. 7) and I am still waiting. I realize that it is being dropped shipped by the actual company that manufactures them (RJR Studios). That is what it said on my order slip that came with some cam clamps I ordered at the same time, and have already arrived.

Just curious about how long I can expect to wait.

Hi Woodburner,

I ordered on 15 June and it arrived on 29 August. So if it is like my order you can expect about 10 or 11 weeks. I have no idea why it takes so long. Seems like it should be simple enough to assemble.

However, if the guy who makes them is a one person operation like my shop I can understand why it could take quite a while. If he has a lot of orders he could easily get backed up and be filling them on a first come first served basis.

And like you, I received the other things in my order within days of placing it. So the holdup is with the folks at RJR Studios, NOT Shopsmith, which is nice to know.

As I'm answering this I notice my earlier post (or what I "thought" was going to be a post) hasn't shown up here. I'll add it after I send this one.

I said I'd post more once we figured out how to make the "adjustable" part of the plywood sharpening platform work. Well, it turns out to be much simpler than what we originally thought. Rather than adding parts we found that all we had to do was make the plywood platform both longer and wider than the original.

The "longer" makes it possible to turn objects as short as possible because you can reach from the left aux. table all the way to the rightmost position of the headstock on the way tubes.

The "wider" makes it possible to cut another dado closer to the sanding disk than the first one. This makes it possible to get the SS Sharpening Jig closer to the disk and sharpen chisels that have been ground down to the point where the cutting edge won't reach the sanding disk with the shapening jig at the normal distance from the disk. If that makes no sense to anyone it's OK. I'm not sure I understand it now that I've written it. We'll post some pics as soon as we can get the final product made.