Turn Your Table Saw Into A Disk Sander
By Benjamen Johnson
A ten inch disk sander’ll lighten your wallet at least $150. So why not turn your table saw into a disk sander for under $35 instead with CMT’s balance blade and sanding disk? Their disk mounts to saws with a standard 5/8 inch arbor and utilizes standard self-stick sanding disks. Sounds to me like a great way to pocket over a hundred bucks and gain valuable shop space.
CMT also markets this blade as a solution for squaring your table saw, but let’s be honest: it’s just as easy to square your table saw with a normal blade. There’s no reason to go through the extra step of mounting this blade to square the saw and then replacing it with the blade you are going to use.
The balance blade and sanding disk comes in eight and ten inch sizes. And if you look around, you can find the the eight inch version for about $20 and the ten inch one for $30. Self-stick sanding disks are not included.
CMT Blade Sanding Disk [Manufacturer]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
8″ Via Amazon
10″ Via Amazon
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:11 am
Possibly a silly question: Wouldn’t putting side pressure on your saw blade put it out of true? I know some people (I’m not one of them) that spend a great deal of time making sure that everything has fault tolerances into the billionth of an inch (I usually round to the nearest eighth
) and it seems pushing on the side of a saw blade will likely knock it out of alignment a bit.
Or is that crazy talk?
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:20 am
I was thinking the same thing. Are arbors & bearings designed to have that sort of constant sideways pressure put on them? No, probably not. Then again, doesn’t really matter for that cheap worksite saw.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:17 am
I’d be interested in more comments on these sideways pressure comments. i mean, I’ve been in lots of situations where something I’m cutting like 3/4″ ply puts sideways pressure on the blade (mainly because I shouldn’t be using the table saw to cut such a big piece). But it does not seem to throw my blade out of alingment…and I suspect a disk sander does not really get that much stress from pushing on it with whatever wood you’re sanding. It’s not usually about pressure.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 am
I first saw something like this a few years ago in a book called Table Saw Techniques by Roger W. Cliffe, but I had never seen anything for sale until I found this. Mr Cliffe mentions nothing about the problem of putting sideways pressure on the saw arbor.
More commonly done, cutting coves on a table saw involves running a board along an angled fence into the saw blade to create a hollow. This must put some sideways pressure on the arbor also, but I’ve never seen any problems with that mentioned either.
I suspect that if you really need to use a disk sander everyday, you should probably buy one, but for people who may need one every once in a while, it probably works OK. I would definitely check my saw alignment after using it though.
Then again maybe this is why CMT sells this as a balancing blade first, or they just got their marketing copy reversed — Sand with it first, then use it to check alignment.
October 4th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I was taught to do this in shop class 20 years ago and have never had a trouble with blade alignment. The blade will flex long before you can do any bearing damage. Also if you are using it correctly, there shouldn’t be that much pressure on the side of the blade. Press too hard and you will burn the wood. A disk sander can remove a LOT of material very quickly. Just use a slight, even pressure and let the sandpaper do it’s work.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
I’ve had one quite similar to this for 12 yrs. or so. Works great, you shouldn’t use that much pressure anyway - as TL says, a 10 in disk sander
can remove a LOT of material quickly. Using the same miter gauge for cutting and sanding is good, too.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Sounds like the answer to my question is that the sideways pressure isn’t anything to worry about.