doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Disk Sander for Recoil Pad Fitting

What size disk sander do you guys use to grind pads? I can pick up a cheapy 6” sander for short money. Is a 6” disk enough? Thanks

I far prefer a belt sander, I grind all my pads in place. I understand why others do it differently but that is how I was taught to do it and how I have done them for the last 20+ years.

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I have used a 12" disc sander for 45 years in the trade. with a pad jig.
)the 12" allows you to sand the entire butt area across a constant traveling surface. with smaller disc, your stock is half on each side (opposing travel and can make for some interesting movement .
having an almost 6" surface all moving in same direction gives much more uniform and flatter surface. I also use a B-Square recoil pad jig (still available on Ebay) JM.02

Brian;

I too have used a 12 inch disc for decades and the detail work that can be done is significant as you discuss. The detail fine finish work on the modern soft recoil pads such as the de-acelerator pads can be problematic for some. My 12 inch disc is one of the older cast iron discs and when I bought the disc sander it's balance and runout was not to my liking and I took it to the lathe and turned the disc to zero runout and then I balanced it on the motor armature shaft. Like you I favor the B-square jig and it is a must to my way of thinking on using a disc sander as secondly a must is an adjustable table on the sander to get the correct angle of the pad (front-to-back).

In regard to the fine detail finish on modern recoil pads (yes the formula of the "rubber" has changed as well as the quality of the pad--right out of the factory carton). For ultra finish in the last steps of finishing the pad surface I do this: I turn on the sander and when it get to full speed I turn it off and let it coast down to about 1/2 speed and then sand the pad for fine finish. Sometimes I will have to do this 5-6 times, but with a cast iron disc it coast down for a long time.

Now, in the decades that have passed I think that it is likely that some of the new expensive long-belt sanders that have variable speed motors may be a better tool, although I have thought that I could built a 12 disc sander with a variable speed motor that would work just as well, without spending a couple of thousand bucks on a variable speed belt sander.

Steve says he uses a belt sander which is what he learned on. And I think that is good as when you learn how to do a task well changing to something else usually does not bode well.

Regards;
Stephen Howell

I also buy aluminum oxide rolls and use the 1" wide in about 8-10" long strips in the various grades and use WD40 to lubricate and see saw the sides of the pad that is at its final state. this smooths the rubber and the base. If you want you can use a piece of wood or tongue depressor to back it as needed

I use this disc sander and a jig.. They have served me very well for many years on many pads. i recently did a Decelerator, for a friend, using it. It is a beast, as far as weight, power and smoothness of operation. I have to move it to my workbench, where there is ample lighting, each time I use it, and connect it to a ShopVac to catch most of the rubber grindings. At about 60 lbs. I don't move it any more than i have to. Never used it for anything other than grinding recoil pads. Very smooth running.

As far as the difference between it and a belt sander I can't see where it would much matter. I use the "down side" of the disc (left side) to do the pad grinding, much as a belt sander would be, as the belt would be going down to do the grinding/sanding. I always finish up by hand sanding.

https://www.harborfreight.com/12-in-1-14-hp-disc-sander-58862.html

I have a Shopsmith MARK V with a big sanding disc. The machine has variable speed so I experiment with speed on each pad and I always finish up at low speed.

I have a Delta combination 12" disc / 6" x 48" belt sander. It's a nice smooth running and powerful machine. What I really like is that you can change the belt in only a couple minutes. The Jet 12" Disc/ 6" x 48" belt sander we have in the shop at work takes at least 20-25 minutes to replace a belt. Consequently, a lot of guys will just walk away after tearing up a belt. I also have a Grizzly 12" Disc sander only that I bought recently, but have not tried using it to grind a pad yet.


The Pachmayr Decelerator or other Sorbothane pads and soft rubber pads grind much nicer if you can keep them as cold as possible while sanding.

I have done a lot of pads for my own use and have used both. I have a 4" and a 6" long. I also have a 12" disk. I used the belts for years and had many "adventures". It is doable with a lot of practice but you are always working blind by the geometry of the beast. I would never do it any more on a pad for a finished gun. It is still the best for the rough mating to a new stock due to speed of cutting but extreme vigilance is need. I now use a 12" Delta disc for most of the work. Finding the right holding fixture is the key.

I use a third type of sander a lot and that is the pneumatic drum. I purchased a couple of NOS drums for a Delta floor model machine. They are about 3 or 4 inches in diameter and about 8 or 9 inches long. I have a small Rikon wood lathe with a variable speed drive. The axle of the sander will chuck up in a 3 jaw chuck on the headstock and a 60 Deg ball bearing tailstock. I put it in, tighten the chuck and then tighten the tailstock wheel and lock it. Once you use it and get comfortable with setting the bladder pressure it is a dream sander. For building gun stocks or musical instrument necks there is nothing like it. With the proper pressure you can hand stand just about any convex or concave curve, even compound ones. By its nature it will not cut huge amounts at a time, but that is generally an advantage. Think grip of a gun or neck of a guitar. If you first rough it out by carving and rasping, most curves resemble a series of micro flats. The pneumatic disc conforms to the overall shape and quickly cuts all those ridges down to the curve, but once it contacts the entire surface, it slows down drastically so that the pressure is spread over a lot larger area and slow down. The best thing is that you can do this with the stock place perpendicular to the drum and rotate the stock back and forth across the drum while you slide it along the drum. I have never seen it cut a dip or groove in a stock.

For tighter curves, I also have a set of drums from 3/4" to 1-1/2" and a 2" to 3" long. These are made to chuck into a drill press but I prefer to chuck them into a die grinder and hold the speed down. They can essentially final shape and finish a grip with just swapping to sleeves of a different grit. They also work for final sanding a new of replacement pad on a finished stock by taping off the finish. You can carefully sand the pad while looking at the stock. The flexible drum eliminates about 80% of the hand sanding if you go up to 220 to 320 grit.

The bad thing is that the pneumatics are ideally suited to a new stock (or a stock refinish). For a simple pad, I believe the disk is still the best.