Tricky Grains

One of the things that I always had in the back of my mind when deciding if I really wanted to buy a drum sander, was all the sanding I found myself doing with a belt sander when dealing with small burls (for clocks and the like).

More recently, I had forgotten that justification, so over the weekend I wanted to see just how well it would work.  They come pretty roughly sawn, and because of the grain chaos, as well as the hardness (often) of the timber, a thicknesser is just not an option (and also the size of the small burls are way too short to consider putting through a thicknesser.)

Anyway this is was a real quick attempt with the drum sander to see what would happen.

Took it nice and slow (1/128″ passes once full contact was being made with the workpiece).  I don’t have a “just sanded” picture- once I got a result, I gave it a very quick burst with a ROS, and a wipe with some wood oil – I was too keen to see the grain in all its glory.

Burl Before and After

Beauty huh!  These are quite small burls (the 5 was the pricetag when I bought that piece – $A5).  These are destined for some desktop application – such as a pen stand (probably), or a desktop clock.