Twelve Inch Sanding Disc

[William Young]

Finished this today . The disk is 12 1/8" diameter.
The eight inch 'faceplate' is four layers of 1/2" Baltic birch plywood. The threaded hole was made with a Beal 1 x 8 wood tap. I soaked the insides of the threads with thin CA and ran the tap though again . Repeated that two more times and the threads are shiny , smooth , and very hard.
The Disk is 1/2" Baltic birch faced up with 1/2" high density MDF.

I faced it off until I could see no light showing through under a straightedge with a light held under it. It took several trial and error attempts to get it that way between scraping and sanding.
Also kept checking with a pencil lead just barely touching it while it was spinning to find high and low areas and was not satisfied until a very light touch would leave a complete unbroken circle. .

This is the first stage of making a home built 12" lathe attached sander. I am thinking this should be as good or better than some of the thin aluminum disks I have checked out .
It has 2 coats of shellac sanding sealer followed by 4 coats of fast dry wipe on poly on the back and six on the front. I will be applying several more to the front and after several weeks of curing I expect it will be a suitable surface for PSA sanding disks.

[glen r]

That should make one nice multi-use sanding centre.

[William Young]

Originally Posted by glen r

That should make one nice multi-use sanding centre.

Yes , Glen, something like my lathe that is built like a tank.

It's probably overkill but I really can't imagine much warping happening on that one . Time will tell .

[Bellsy]

Well done William, it looks great and I'm sure it will perform well.

Mr. Dave

[Nate Davey]

Beautifully done William, I'd be afraid to use it for fear I'd knick it up. Maybe you could turn a nice foot that would thread into the end and use it to display things on it, too

[William Young]

Thanks for the responses and to all who appreciated me posting the construction of this sanding disc and if it can help anyone in any way that was proposing to make one themselves I hope my tips and ideas of how I went about it have been helpful.
If anyone has any inquiries of how or why I did certain things when making it, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer.

[William Young]

I have revived this thread because I have just recently been able to get back in my shop after the table saw kick back accident..
I made the next step of my segment sanding jig setup this afternoon. .

Here is what it looks like up close to the 12" sanding disk . The sanding disk is still running with zero run-out so I figure it will continue to do so.



A little better closeup shows that the table is 090.00 degrees to the disk.



This one shows a standard T square in the slot.



And this one shows what the hole in the end is for .



The slit in the right side in this picture is the part that faces the disk on the left side when the unit is fastened onto the lathe to correspond with the downward direction of the disk on the left side. . The theory is that if the cubic inch displacement of the slot is a little smaller than the vacuum being applied from the opposite side, that a high volume of vacuum will be created inside the "box" to remove the sanding dust. . I have not tried it yet because I wanted to show the pictures before it got dirty with use so I will know later how well the dust extraction theory works.

Next stage will be to make up the jig that Malcolm Tibbetts shows in his DVDs but first I am going to apply enough coats of polyurethane to this stage of the project until it will not absorb any more and produces a nice finish..
Heck . . . I might even get carried away and paint it instead

[Penl8the]

Nice setup William. Everything/everywhere is perpendicular to each other.

[William Young]

Have not got any dust on it yet. . :-* Will break it in after I get the segmenting jig made to go with it which was one of the purposes I have made this set-up for.
Got a coat of paint on it to match my John Deere green lathe . :-*
Nothing runs like a Deere .

Notice the hand knob I made for tightening it down to the lathe bed with to replace the little wing nut previously used. More on that later in another thread.

[William Young]

Heat was unbearable in my shop this afternoon but at least I got the last stage of the segment sanding setup finished. This is the jig as shown with instructions on how to make in one of Malcloms DVD's .

Side and top view.

[big dipper]

Nice looking rig, William! Have you given it a test run yet?

[William Young]

Originally Posted by big dipper

Nice looking rig, William! Have you given it a test run yet?

Not yet but hopefully will in the near future . It is just too hot spend much time in my little shop lately.