Shaping with an Inflatable Sander

When I'm making an knife like this one here that I've already got done, I'm looking for a great and easy way to shape the handle. One of the things I've found works really really well, it's what's called an inflatable drum sander. This is a pretty cool product. There's a drum inside here that's inflatable. So once I put the sanding sleeve on, I can put air into the end, as much or as little as I want, if you really jam it full of air, it's gonna be very hard, just like a conventional drum sander.

If you let a little bit of air out it's soft, that's the way I want it for this project because that way it will conform to the handle, make it very very easy to round the corners. You can get these mounted a couple different ways. This one is currently set up to go on the lathe here, so I can show that to you. You can also get them where they've got a spindle here that'll go on a drill chuck, and then an end here that goes into a support that you put on the drill press table so you could use these on a drill press. Here on the lathe, this is gonna go into the drive end, just like a spindle would.

On the tail stock end, there's a hole there, that my tail stock can align with. Get a little bit of pressure on that. I'm gonna run this at about 800 RPM, have the tool rest out of the way. In the case of making a knife, like I am here, I've got the blade taped off so that I can't accidentally cut myself on that blade. And I'm ready to go ahead and start shaping this handle.

What's nice here is that as I push that against the drum, the drum flexes, and then it's leaving behind that rounded corner in this rosewood handle I'm working on on this knife. Made pretty good progress so far, a standard variety of grits is available for this inflatable sander. I've seen people use it on carvings, on furniture legs, like cabriole legs, in order to get a good three dimensional shape on those. It's a great thing to know about in case you ever run against a project like this.