Cool Tools: Thickness Sander
When building either a dulcimer or ukulele, it is very important to be able to consistently control the thickness of the soundboard, and to get nice, smooth surfaces. The tool that we use to help us with this is our thickness sander. After we slice a piece of wood on one of our resaws (basically a band saw set to make thin slices), we smooth the surface eliminating saw marks and take the material down to the proper thickness by using our sander.
In this short video, Richard and I are sanding some blanks to make LAP-JO rims. We joined the lumber, glued it up, and are now smoothing it and taking it down to the proper thickness.
Spare belts for the sander. These belts are 3 feet across, and we use several different grits (from 60 to 120).
Here is the inside of the sander. You can see the belt held tightly over a series of spindles. One thing you can't see in the picture is that as well as spinning, the belt also oscillates slightly to make sure we don't leave sanding marks.
Here is a picture looking in just above the conveyor belt. You can see a roller that helps hold the workpiece to the conveyor belt, then the sandpaper, and another hold down roller. All of the red pieces are safety shutoffs - if we touch them, the sander will automatically stop.
