JET 10-Inch Benchtop Drum Sander, 1 HP, 115V 1Ph (Model JWDS-1020)

Excellent tabletop drum sander. Works as expected. Such a small footprint fits on the rolling cabinet with my tabletop jointer. Great to have 20 inches of sanding capacity by just flipping the piece around. Perfect for my small shop. Update: had trouble with an adjustment and after taking it in for repair, the company is replacing the machine. GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE! Got them on the phone quickly and responded with great service. Will continue to buy jet products. I wish all companies customer service was this good.

I have 1/2 of a two car garage for my wood shop, the other half has a collectable car under a car cover. My space is extremely limited for all the power tools that I use. I make small boxes not cabinets, and I have gone to a friend's in the past to sand resawn boards from my bandsaw. He has a larger drum sander and quickly spoiled me with what his sander could do. It's a hassle to go over there for a small job so I purchased the JWDS-1020 drum sander for these reasons: It needed to be small, it needed to sand short boards and it needed to sand thin boards. That's exactly what this drum sander does best. It will sand a board less than 3 inches long and it will sand a board down to veneer thickness, and it fits on my flip-top cart taking very little space. The dust collection works very well, it's a smooth running, quiet (for a power tool) and does a great job, build quality is excellent. It will also sand a board up to 20 inches wide by running the opposite side through the open end on a second pass. It does everything that my friend's larger sander does just as well as his, except it doesn't sand a 36 inch wide board that is 4 inches thick. But his doesn't sand short boards or as thin as this machine. They have different applications is all. If you don't need a big boy drum sander for cabinets or status or if you don't have room, don't hessitate to purchase this machine. The only part of the learning curve that I am getting used to is that it's a sander not a planner. Take small amounts of material off, don't turn the crank a quarter turn at a time like you do with a planner. If you do it will pop the circut breaker. That's not a defect, that's operator error. I love this machine!

It’s a solid and hefty (73 pound) unit. Packaging could be better. Like others, the motor wouldn’t run at first because the fan had been squashed during shipping. Removed 3 screws, pulled off the end cover, un-squashed the fan blades and replaced cover and screws. Works fine now. I included a 3 minute video to demo it’s use. Quiet, accurate, simple to use. Note: I bought both the recommended reducer and flip top table. Returned reducer and used a rubber reducer for 1/4 the cost. Update: I’ve been wondering why my wood joints never seem straight. Regardless of how I cut, or what tool, there were always gaps. Turns out it wasn’t my cuts, it was the cupping in the wood. By using this sander after my planner, suddenly everything is tight and closed - no gaps - even on butt joints. Definitely one of my pricier tools, and not one I thought I needed THAT much. But it’s taken my hobby to the next level. If it weren’t for the shipping damage to the fan (which Jet packing and shipping needs to address) I’d absolutely rate it the full five stars.

My wife gave this to me as a Christmas present. It was delivered by Amazon and the box was fine. The product was packaged well and I mounted it to a portable table. My first project with it was to sand some hard wood pieces that are about 2” wide and 12” long. I’ve never had a trim sander but I knew from using my surface planer that you need to go slow and take your time. I started with 1/64” increments and it bogged the conveyer belt, so I backed up to smaller increments. It worked well for a few passes, then I had a board come through with depressions in it. I look at the sand paper. It was still clipped in but had an overlap where the paper fat just a little loose. I tried to tighten the paper back up. That’s when I realized how cheap the paper holder was. I’m not real confident that the simple clips they use are ever going to hold up for future projects. I had a little problem with the conveyor belt not tracking properly, but I adjusted it and thought it would be ok, but after reading some other reviews I have my doubts. I love the concept of the drum sander and have wanted one for some time. Maybe the bigger versions are better products, but there’s no way I recommend this product to other woodworkers. I’ve boxed it up to be picked up be Amazon.

If you order this sander, be aware that your first steps after unpacking it are not in the instruction manual. You guessed it, straightening a bent fan and pounding out a dented fan cover. Don't think that it won't happen to the one you order because that is what I thought and I was wrong. It is a shame that with the weight of this machine the packaging is not beefed up a little better especially after all of the complaints about it. I am updating my review from 3 to 5 stars. I work with small light pieces of wood so after running 30 or so pieces through the sander I can say that this machine will be a nice addition to my shop. It sure is a shame the packaging is not up to snuff but as long as the machine keeps working as it should then I will be happy. So on to the brighter side of things. I ran a small piece of wood through the sander a few times and it seemed to do what it is supposed to so that makes me feel better after spending that much money on it. I will give an update after I have had time to put more boards through it.

This little guy is just perfect for my small workshop. I sold my big drum sander that was always in the way and replaced it with this one. The motor overload kicks in if trying to take too much off at one pass - as it should. The dust collection is good. No issue with belt tracking straight out of the box.

I posted the information below before I discovered what was causing my conveyor belt to overload. It is not related to the reset switch and it was user error. I had mounted the sander and built a platform beyond the end of the conveyor to guide my pieces to a catch bin(10” x 3/4” x 3/4” production pieces) the platform I built was too close to the conveyor motor assembly and as it ran it warmed and caused a flexing of the frame and a thermal overload. I slightly moved the platform away from the mech and all was well. My review is now 5 stars. I left my old review for reference. It’s a good machine when it works. The conveyor belt overload was tripping all the time. A call to tech support rendered information that the thermal overload reset switch will wear out over time. I ordered some because the reset switch is not reliable ( unit is 4 months old and rarely used. Hoping this resolves the problem.

Customer support is pretty bad! This machine has the potential for a five-star review, but the quality control issues that remain unresolved make it a 2 star item. I ordered this machine for thicknessing acoustic guitar parts: back, sides and top plates. The delivery from UPS was an odyssey, but that is another story. When the machine finally arrived, after languishing in a UPS hub warehouse for a few weeks, I unpacked it and immediately found the head of a Phillips type bolt that had apparently sheared off! I found the decapitated bolt-head before the sander was halfway out of the box, suggesting that the box spent some time upside down, as the bolt head was in the top of the package. The next thing that I noticed was that the Styrofoam blocking that is supposed to protect the machine from shipping shocks, bumps, etc., was poorly formed, looking like it was hacked out with crude tools, rather than form molded around the motor case. After reading the manual, and setting up and inspecting, I found the sanding drum was hung up, unable to rotate by hand....I removed the endcap of the case that covers the motor fan, (revealing the location of the sheared bolt earlier found that was one of 3 that was supposed to hold the fan shroud in place). Once the shroud was removed, the sanding drum rotated freely, unimpeded by the bent fan blades, and the skewed fan shroud / cover. Really!!?? I am pretty handy, and can fix lots of things, but the fan blades, made of very light gauge aluminum, were pretty wrecked...This machine took some serious whacks on its journey to me, so back to the vendor we go! So, I go to Amazon website, process the return (very easy to do), and while there, I read other customer comments. Lo and behold, I am only one of a legion of customers who have had the same or very similar experience with damaged fan blade.... Why has this not yet been remedied?? This problem is easily solved by 1. improving the quality of metal in the machine bolts....probably ten cents per machine. 2. providing adequate packaging materials, maybe another dollars worth of upgrade. 3. getting rid of (firing) the mid-level managers that have left this problem unresolved for such a long period of time. This in itself will likely save JET a ton of money in the future. The quality control process at JET woodworking tools could use an overhaul, and in my opinion, that begins with getting quality control managers in place who care enough about the products to see to their duties in a responsible way. BTW, after removing the shroud cover, I ran a piece of wood through, and was impressed with the performance of the machine. Too bad the people at JET are so apathetic that they will not fix their processes to make for a better customer experience. Time is money, and between the wasted time of analyzing the defects with the machine, phone time with Amazon and JET customer service, and dealing with UPS, I figure I lost a day of my time. OH, and the call to JET to describe the experience and offer solutions... the manager who was supposed to return my call, shined me off, and never called back. LOL!! At least the folks at JETare consistent in their apathetic ineptitude!! M.Smith - St Mary's City, MD