I spent today getting started on the drum sander. I've got the foundation of the sander, bearings, drum shaft, motor, pulleys and v belt all in place. The motor is an old circular saw that was no longer cutting straight for some reason. Instead of the blade, I've mounted a small pulley there. Here's the setup.
At some point, I'm going to want to replace the motor with something a bit quieter...
Cause holy cow that thing is freaking loud. A circular saw is loud enough. Did you know, that when you bolt it to something like a big piece of wood, it gets a lot louder?
Also, I'm going to put together an integrated dust collection system. I'm going to build an impeller that runs on the same shaft as the drum, a dust hood, and use some dryer hose or something to pipe air from the drum chamber to an intake manifold, through the impeller, and ultimately out a filter or collector of some kind.
Something similar to how
Matthias Wandel(freaking wood working genius) did his, except mine will run on the same shaft as the sander. At least, that's the plan. We'll see how well it works.