Customer Reviews
Performax 10" Drum Sander Review 
2007-01-29
The machine is very well made, works great, and is a great additon to any home or hobby shop looking for a reasonably prices drum sander.
No tracking problems here. 
2006-12-11
I use mine for red oak, walnut and cherry. I have never had a problem with the tracking belt. It worked perfect right out of the box. The overload shutoff is a little test but as long as you dont try to take off too much at one time you will be fine. I have put about 1000bf of hardwood though mine in the last year with flawless results. The only reason I only give it 4 stars is because of the method used to load the paper. Its a pain in the a--.
Bigger sanders are better, spend the extra $$ 
2006-12-03
I have owned this drum sander for around two years and I am finding that I use it less and less in my shop. One of the first problems I had with it was the tracking guides for the table belt caused premature failure of the belt. They actually tore the belt. Once I removed them, I had better success with the replacement belt, but you need to watch the tracking closely.
I felt that this drum sander was under powered for its size. I had constant problems with the onboard circuit breaker activating while doing just minimum sanding. The breaker button would not reset for 5 minutes, so I finally by-passed it. That helped out a lot.
It wasn't like I was attempting to sand ΒΌ" off of a 12" wide board, sometimes the breaker would trip when I was sanding a 4" wide piece of Oak and sanding off less than 1/16". It was very frustrating.
The sanding belt itself is a trip to get on and once it's on, it is hard to keep it on until you run some pieces of wood through it. The belt needs constant attention during the wear in, or you will tear/rip it and it will be useless. It seems the belt stretches some with friction heat and you have to readjust it or it will tear.
This unit is just not worth the money in my opinion. Bigger IS better.
Good Sander--Poor Tracking 
2006-10-26
I want to say that I own several Jet machines and on balance am satisfied with quality and performance. The sander does a good job for what it was designed to do. This sander is not meant to replace industrial sanders for commercial use. For the hobbyist or woodworking centering around small projects, this does the job.
As others have stated, however, the conveyor tracking (at least on mine) leaves much to be desired. Even when you abide by the tracking procedure put forth in the manual, the conveyor belt will meander from one side to the next. After several feet of sanding, this goes from a small issue to a daily irritant. At between $500-$600 for this little sander, the quality control is lacking.
Very Good Sander - Confusing Manual 2006-10-09
I picked up my 10-20 at an in-store sale from Rockler. There isn't a lot of assembly to do, which is a good thing. But the adjustments can be a pain, and the poor manual exacerbates that pain. In order to align the drum, one must remove two trunnion bolts at the top of the sander, then rotate a knob directly under the handwheel to align the drum. The manual doesn't tell you the effect that rotating the knob counter clockwise or clockwise has on drum alignment. They instruct you to put a metal ruler or thickness gauge under the drum to check drum alignment. There are two spring-loaded tension rollers on either side of the drum which obscure view of anything you put under the main drum. You have to lift up on the roller to observe the clearance. The knob that adjusts the drum really just moves it in a horizontal arc. I'm not really sure how that ensures the drum is aligned parallel to the feed table.
The manual has instructions for each step, but then refers you to other parts of the manual to accomplish a task. For instance, it tells you to check tracking of the feed belt, but then directs you to another section to adjust tension. Performax provides a nifty "TUF" tool to help installation of the abrasive strips. The instructions direct you to insert the looped end of the tool into "the hole in the end of the take-up lever", but there's no picture of the hole or the takeup lever. Just a picture of the tool disappearing inside the drum. So you are left to imagine what they are talking about. Being an engineer with a tinkering nature, I figured it out. All the figures are photographs in black and white, and they are small. In some cases, larger drawings would have made more sense.
Another thing the manual doesn't tell you is that you can reverse the drum-side base to allow a wider stance on a tool stand. The base is an L-shaped steel that is tucked under the machine as assembled. One pic of the sander installed on the Jet base shows it in the wider base position. I used a Sears tool stand and made my own mobile base.
Another curiosity is that the packaging does not indicate what grit of abrasive comes with the machine. (It's one pre-installed 80 grit strip.) That would have been nice to know - I could have saved $25 on a package of Jet 80 grit strips.
Once together, though, the machine ran flawlessly, save some finicky adjustments on the conveyer belt tracking. Don't try using this machine with the coarser grits unless you have dust collection running. It can put out some serious dust, and without dust collection, it gets all over everthing, including inside the sander, where it's hard to vacuum out.
For the price (at least my price of $429), this was hard to pass up. It serves my purposes just fine and saves me a lot of time cleaning up after resawing veneers.
Very Nice Machine 2008-03-22
I purchased this about a month ago and have use it a little. So far it has performed very well. Like another reviewer said, out of the box there is almost no assembly required(just some heavy lifting to get it out of the box). The precut sandpaper goes on easily as there are no tools required. I have had no problems with the belt tracking as of this time. The machine seems to have plenty of power as long as you don't try to remove too much material in one pass. All in all, I am really glad I bought this machine.
Just a couple of notes.
1. At the time of this review, Home Depot.com is selling this for $500 with free shipping.
2. The cheapest place I have found to buy the precut belts is Amazon.
Does the job but is really touchy 2007-12-14
After reading all the reviews, both plus and minus, I bought it. It does the job but is really touchy. As others have said, it does kick off a lot, especially if the sanding dust builds up on the drum (caused in my case by not having a stronger dust collector). The belt also wonders from side to side. I have used it for over six months and it still wonders. Not a big problem but something you have to watch. I put a piece of masking tape on each side of the belt with a arrow. When the belt wonders past the arrow I adjust the tension, which is an easy task. I would recommend this product if you are not in a hurry because you can only crank it down one quarter turn on each pass and have to run the belt at about one half spead. The drum on my unit was not level so one side sands more than another. I just turn the piece end for end and make a second pass.
I started with 80 grit sandpaper like comes on the machine but found that left scratch marks in the wood. I switched to 120 and get a better finish. The sanding belts are a little tricky to install. I tried the tool that comes with the machine but could never get it to work. You can buy the belts in long rolls from another manufactorer for a lot less.
I picked the smaller unit because I have a small shop and the price was a lot less. If I had it to do over I would buy the next size up. I have used the double pass method on wider boards and it does work OK.
The sander works great in very small pieces and on all types of woods including exotics like ebony.
I am a frequent and experienced woodworker who uses this sander a lot. Once you practise a little it does the job and saves a lot of time and money over using a random orbit sander. I would recommend you buy it if you are willing to put up with the issues I have listed above.
Jet Drum Sander 2007-12-11
After reading other reviews I was a bit reluctant to order this sander. They weren't very positive. The main complaint was the tracking of the feed belt. I did have to dial the unit in when first set up but after that I have continually made very minor adjustments as I was sanding to keep everything running smooth.
I make guitars so I use the Jet to thickness my tone woods. I can take the measurement down to under one eigth inch with no problem at all. Just a fantastic and very even finish. I'm stoked with it!!
Shane Donavan
Laguna Beach, CA
Just Okay 2007-10-19
I had a Performax 16-32 but had to downsize due to a recent move. This Jet 10-20 (They didn't send a Performax) is not the same quality as the Performax was, IMHO. The manual says that all adjustments were made at the factory but I had to adjust the tracking, conveyor belt tension, and roller position. The manual says that the trackers should be installed but they were already on the machine that I got. There are worn sections along the sides of the tracking belt which causes me to wonder if this machine is used. However, everything else looks new. The motor that runs the conveyor is quite noisy compared to my previous . This machine is heavy duty though as was the 16-32 and pretty much the same size and weight (except for the conveyor and drum). The dust port is on the back side of the drum roller rather than on the top (like the 16-32). Seems to be a better location for dust collection. I only ran a test piece of rough popular through so far and it came out okay. The paper is 80 grit. I ordered some finer grit paper but it's on backorder. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for now.
Performax 10-20 sander 2007-09-12
I've had this unit for about a year. I've run several hundred feet of wood through the machine so far. The reason why I got a drum sander is that my planer would take chunks instead of cuts of wood with switchback grain. The drum sander eliminates that problem plus the snipe is gone too. You are limited to a max thickness of 3" though. I cut thick veneers 1/8" on my bandsaw and this machine is perfect for cleaning up those pieces. I never got good results using the planer on such thin wood - again, too much tearout. I would have liked to had the 16-32, but the 10-20 fits better into my small workshop.
No faults were found in packaging, fit or finish. I've had no tracking problems and changing the belt is easy. I've used the belt tool a few times, but I don't bother with it any more. If your fingers are large, you may have difficulty with the belt change.
Using 80 grit paper and the feed rate set to ~75% I find I can consistently take off 1/64" of a 6" wide board of red oak. This is more of a finesse machine - you're not going to easily remove 1/16" at a time. I can tell when the motor will tend to overload by the sound - I just crank down the feed rate for that section. If the motor stops, I hit the drum power button, let it run through and pass it back through at a slower feed rate. That way I won't have to futz with the depth setting - handy when thicknessing many boards to the same size. I rarely have the overload breaker kick off anymore.
