This might be the ultimate upgrade for a garage or small shop. This is the Jet benchtop drum sander. I didn't know this thing existed until a few months ago. Let's go! I bought this drum sander myself with my money because I've always

wanted a drum sander in the shop. The problem is I'm in a two-car garage and a corner of that garage is taken up by my home gym, so I'm even less space than a two-car garage. But I want a drum sander and most of them are way too big. This, as

far as I know, is the only benchtop drum sander, small drum sander on the market, and this will sand up to 20 inches wide, even though it's only got a 10-inch wide base or drum. Pretty interesting. Check this out before I get into it. If

you'd like to check out this drum sander or any other tool I talk about in the video, it'll be linked in the description and the pinned comment to help you find it easier. And it can be tagged right there with that 'View Products' button as you

can shop right here on YouTube. Unboxing this, it's very well packaged. A lot of Styrofoam around it to keep it protected. One thing I will say though, it is very heavy, especially for such a small footprint on this thing. Not a lightweight tool. Fresh smell of

Styrofoam, man. This thing is beefy. It's dense. Weighs a lot, but a lot of that's coming from this big old motor here on the side. Woo, that's a heavy boy. Beast top. I want to go over the features of this drum sander and then we'll put

it to the test then we'll talk about drum sander versus planer and you can decide which one fits your shop the best before we go over the features I've got it plugged in I got to know what it's like on the first power

on, quiet, I appreciate that now there is a fine tune adjustment which we'll go over in a [Music] minute before we go over the features and put it to the test I had no idea this thing existed until a few months ago I walked into I think it was

Woodcraft in Houston, if I'm maybe it was Rockler in Nashville I don't remember but I walked in and I saw one of these on display why didn't you tell me about this y'all y'all should have told me this existed I had no idea this was in

existence and if I'm not mistaken this might be the only benchtop drum sander on the market maybe there's another one but I've searched and I can't find any that's why I wanted it small garage space I'm out of room I don't have a lot

of space for bigger tools I've used a drum sander for a very long time and so this fits my needs perfectly because of the size doesn't take up a lot of space Not only that it packs a ton of features into such a small package first it will

sand 20-in wide boards because the sander itself is 10 in you can flip the board around or your panel around and then sand the other side because it's an open-sided drum sander gives you 20 in of maximum width and 3 in of maximum

height that's a massive amount of stock that you can sand with this small little drum sander one of the main things you'll love about having a drum sander like this is being able to sand really thin stuff veneers and or just really tiny pieces that otherwise can't

go through the planer like this little thin strip of Walnut I use my digital caliper to check the size of it and then send it through you can see here that it goes through really easy and it doesn't break it it doesn't damage it in any way

it really puts a nice smooth finish on one side or two sides if you wanted to flip it over you can see it's 0.525 on one end 0.525 on the other inches this will Dimension it perfectly flat if your stock was already flat it's going to

keep it the same all the way across and it's not going to tear it up one thing is you see how much dust is coming out just barely taking off any on this little strip this is a really thin strip not even 2 inches wide about an inch and a

half wide so you don't have a whole bunch of stock here but it does create a bunch of dust so you will need to hook this up to dust collection because this is a sander and Sanders create lots of dust as far as power goes the one of the

reasons this thing is so heavy is because of this motor it is a one horsepower motor on such a small little sander which is nice one thing that Jet says is that this drum is extruded aluminum and it's made basically you can

see there's holes in through there and it's made so that it stays cool dissipates the heat and friction is the enemy of most anything with sanding and or saw blade sharpness things like that so if we can dissipate that heat better

that's awesome and there's actually two power switches here on the front This one controls the conveyor and the speed at which the conveyor is going to pull that material through under the drum right so this is also a sandpaper very rough feeling grabs that wood and then this one will actually

activate the drum itself up here this is variable speed it goes from not moving at all to barely and I mean barely moving if you can even see that at the lowest setting it's creepy crawling like it's barely moving and of course you can crank that all the way up

to pretty good pace there the conveyor is louder than the actual drum itself I'm actually a little bit surprised that you can activate the drum itself with this being open just because of safety issues I would assume or think I would think that there would be some

type of safety switch on there but there may be a reason why you would want to open that up while you're sanding I've never owned one if so let me know why I would want to open that while it's sanding or moving turning but seems like

a safety issue to me so keep it close one cool thing is it has a 4-in dust port on the top so if you have a 4-in hose on your dust collector it will attach right there to the top probably need an adapter I use this dust right

adapter has a rubber boot on it so it will fit on top of there and then my Quick Connect will fit on top of that I'll drop a link to this dust adapter in the description if you're interested another awesome thing they've added here or I like that it's on here is this

depth scale zero up to 3 in and it's fairly accurate and you can adjust it if need be just slightly but it gives you a really good gauge of about where you're at on the thickness the only assembly required out of the box is literally

just putting this handle on and tighten down that set screw and this allows you to raise and lower the drum this also includes a 5-year warranty which is pretty unheard of on power tools these days usually it's like 3 years unless you're rigid it's lifetime service

agreement not warranty all right we're going to run all kinds of wood through this drum sander to see how it performs first thing I want to do is throw some leopard wood through there leopard wood is an exotic wood that's fairly rough or

I got it fairly rough and it kind of has almost a bird's eye maple type texture to it where it has all these little leopard spots on there and those can tear out under a planer but under the drum sander you see I'm running it

through there and it comes out really nice and smooth doesn't tear anything out a really pre-sanded finish now if I wanted to use this piece I could literally just take my sander and I have skipped a major step here and knocked off that rough finish so it's going to

saves me a ton of time on woods like this. It also does a really good job with maple. Maple and bird's-eye maple both have a tendency to tear out in a planer, whereas on a drum sander you're going to get a knife-smooth finish as you see.

Here, both the regular maple, draw some pencil marks on there, you see it takes those off in just a couple of passes. And then the bird's-eye maple does a really, really good job of that as well. Now you may see some initial streaking like on

this bird's-eye maple, but I hit it with a 220-grit sandpaper for about a minute, and you can see all of that is gone. It just, it comes out beautiful, and none of that bird's-eye has been torn out. I've run this species through the planer

before, and it really will kind of make a mess, especially if you don't have a helix head or a shelix head. If you just have the straight knife version, those do tend to tear out, especially knots and anything like that, so you get a little

bit of that tear-out if you're not careful. Drum sander, no worries there. Also run some wenge through there. You see the wenge comes out really nice and smooth, as smooth as wenge is going to get. It's pretty good. Wenge is

fairly porous. You see on this one side, see this side has not been through the drum sander, has a lot of really heavy deep grain pattern in wenge. You can also see some snipe there from a previous run through a planer, and that's one thing

The drum sander you don't have to worry about is snipe too on this side. It still has that fairly heavy grain pattern, however it does sand this really really well. Does much better than if you're sending this through the planer. Now this has some limitations which we'll talk about.

But where this really shines is on cutting boards. This is Miss 731's most favorite cutting board to actually cut on. Now we got this sent to us by a viewer as a gift and she loves this cutting board. She uses it almost every day. You can see it has fairly heavy cut

marks and things like that. It hasn't been surfaced yet. This is perfect for cutting boards and charcuterie boards and things like that, not only building them initially to get you that first sand, especially if you're doing in-grain cutting boards. This will really really

cut down on your sanding time by hours. And what you may notice, this cutting board is a wee bit too wide to go through one single pass. And this is where I love this open-end design, so I can just run the board through, flip it around, run it through again and I've got

both sides sanded. Now if there is a lip there where it's sanded a little a little too much on one side versus the other, there is a dial right over here on the end that'll let you adjust that up. Once you get that set you should be good.

But you can set that to remove any inaccuracy there in the levelness of that drum that's rotating on top. That's a really cool feature and I'm glad they added that on here. This really shines for resurfacing too, so a friend of mine

made a deal with a steakhouse he goes to he makes their cutting boards all Redwood works and then he comes back every few months and collects those cutting boards and resurfaces them for them and takes them back this would be a huge help to him because he could just send

these through and get that initial sanding done get them refinished then all you have to do after that is just do your regular sanding do a sand pop the grain and then put on your favorite finish AKA Outlaw's board butter you should try it

out look how much nicer that is with the board butter versus without if you use the code DRUM2024 I'll give you 20% off any order of Outlaw's board butter go to 7301b.com store now before we get to the drum sander versus planer why you

would want either one of those let's talk about what I like and don't like about this Jet drum sander first off I love the fact that this is a benchtop style while it is a little beefy and heavy it does take up minimum minimum

space I can literally put this on some type of cart I may even throw it on my Milwaukee Packout rolling thing but it it's just takes up very very little space and I can move it around the shop and it not get in the way especially

it's not taking up a bunch of floor space which is key here second thing I like is the dust collection it works extremely well soon as you hook up your dust collector almost no dust coming out of this thing the only dust you see laying around on the top is when I was

sanding this little thin strip here, it was creating a ton of dust. After I put the dust collection on there, almost nothing. I don't know that there's anything coming out of there, it's all going into the dust collector, which is really nice. I love the fact that I can

adjust the speed of this conveyor, but there is a negative there which we'll get into. And I also like the capacity of this sander, with 20 in wide, 3 in deep, it's going to do most things for small garage shops like mine. The belt is a

tool-less change, so you don't need any special tools or anything to change out that belt, and you can buy these fairly inexpensive on Amazon or wherever you get your sanding stuff. There's a few things that I really don't care for, but

I understand why they're there. Kind of first, I would really like if I could set the belt speed and the power on to come on and off at the same time. Currently, they're independent of each other, so I understand why they did that, but also I

wish I could lock them together so that if I had the speed set and I'm working on the same things over and over, I can just turn one switch off and one switch on, and have to do both a few times during this test. I forgot to turn off

the belt more than once. I wish it wasn't so heavy, but I also understand you got a big one horsepower motor on there. But with that one horsepower motor, I think they've got it limited just a small amount. But also, think you have to set your expectations here. A few times I

tried to take off too much material and there is a circuit breaker built in to protect the motor as it says in the manual you should read the manual I probably will read the manual on this one but it does trip fairly easy if you get too aggressive

what I noticed easy fix take less off with each pass and slow the belt down if the belt's too fast it can trip that breaker if you're taking too much material off at one time you just raise it up just a smidge about a half turn

you should or even a quarter turn and it really does help out without tripping that breaker it's not a big deal when it does trip you literally just turn the thing off turn it back on or push the button and then turn it back on and

you're back in business but I do wish it was a little more forgiving on that I wish it had a little more I wish it was less sensitive I guess you'd say the main thing I love about this I think this is a game changer in a shop like a

garage or a small shop where space is a premium and you're making a whole bunch of cutting boards  shury boards this will literally save you hours and hours of time this will pay for itself in just a few projects simply because of the time

savings in sanding and if you hate sanding this is the tool for you even though it is a fairly heavy price on something like this most drum sanders are expensive all drum sanders are expensive so you know you're making an investment in there but you're going to

reap those rewards. Back in time savings, I'm talking hours and hours and hours of standing here moving back and forth. Standing will be saved by just running the board a few passes through this, especially if you're doing edge grain or in-grain cutting boards. Your life's going

to be different after you buy this, or if you're saying veneers, thin stock, and more sensitive woods like maple, bird's-eye maple, things like that, this will really, really help you out. Basically, basically you're using this to do the initial sanding to get that first sand out of

the way, which usually takes the longest, then you can step through the sanding grits to get your final sand. Again, game changer. Now, drum sander versus a planer, why would you buy this or a planer? Which one would you go with first if you don't

have a well, it just depends on what you're making honestly. If you need to thickness Woods, then you're going to get a planer, because a planer is taking fractions of an inch off, so 1/16th of an inch off of the wood, 1/8th inch off the

wood. This is taking fractions of a millimeter off. You're taking tiny bits off at a time, and that's where this shines. This is a sander. Think of this sander as being just basically 10 inches wide. You're taking 10-inch passes each time.

You're not taking off 1/8th or 1/16th of an inch each pass. You're taking minor bits off, that's what this sander is doing. If you're wanting to make boards thinner faster, then you're going to go with something like a planer. I love the

DW735X, I think it's the best benchtop planer on the market. I've also tested a few others, but I think this one is the best for most people if you can budget it. There's also a Craftsman level one if you're on a stricter budget, but if you

have the money, the DWS 735X is the way to go. And if you do have the extra budget, the shelix head is absolutely amazing, but it is a very expensive upgrade, so most people should probably just get the three-knife version.

Another thing a planer can't do is go down super thin. If you run this thin strip through a planer, all it's going to do is break it and chip it up. So veneers and things are out of the question, you can't do that. And a planer like the

DW735X is limited to 13 inches wide. Some are limited to 12 and a half inches wide, but this one you can get up to 20 inches wide, 10 per pass, 20 inches max. So you're getting a whole lot more width, but again, you're taking off

minor amounts, not thicker amounts. I'm not saying you should do this because it's a little top-heavy, but this Milwaukee Packout rolling toolbox with that top on it, like it fits perfect. It's perfect, it's perfect. Don't try this at home, but it

feels perfect. The problem with putting it on the Packout cart is it's a little top-heavy, and you don't have it bolted down, so I really wouldn't recommend it. But I'm sure there's rolling carts out there. If there are, comment below, let me

know what they are and I'll check into them, but for now I'm going to leave it on the Milwaukee C. If you like this video, check out the DW735X with the Bird Shelix upgrade, amazing! Got to check that out, click in that box, get you the big

I Found an INCREDIBLE Woodworking Tool for SMALL SHOPS!

I Found an INCREDIBLE Woodworking Tool for SMALL SHOPS!

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