| Blog series by OregonWoodRat | updated 04-13-2017 04:30 AM | 4 parts | 8872 reads | 8 comments total |
Part 1: The base and rollers
Building the ShopNotes Belt Sander turned me into a Time Thief. I would steal time to work out in the shop. Sometimes it was as little as 5 minutes or just before going to church. The most time was generally on a Saturday and I would get a whole 6-8 hours in the shop. Overall it was a fun project. For the frame I used cabinet grade pine plywood from Home Depot. The plans called for the top pivot bolt to be threaded into a tapped hole but I never had much luck with that so I ...
Part 2: Pivot arm and Platen
So I decided to paint the base winter grey. The pivot arm and related parts used polyurethane. I like how the base turned out since it was old growth pine. I cut a simple 45 all around it. The pivot arm is some kind of foreign oak type of wood. It is very hard and was smoking my table sawblade. The motor I am using a 1/3 HP Ge from the 50’s. It still works great. At first I had the 3 inch pulley on the sander and the 2 inch on the motor. I found it ran too slow. Af...
Part 3: Belt Guard and Power switch
The belt guard took some figuring for me. Mine ended up taller than the plans due to I allowed the drive shaft to stick out further to allow for a different pulley in the future. The plans called for it to be 1.5 inches tall and I made mine 2.5 inches. The tool rest arm is made of the same oak as the pivot arm. So it was very hard to cut a slot in it. In the end I really like how it turned out. Someone on the internet posted a sander restore and made a wooden box for...
Part 4: Dust Cover
I originally found this guys video and could not tell very well how he built the dust cover but it gave me the idea and it is very much needed.Here is a link to his build so I can give credit where it is due.http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f13/im-building-belt-sander-46413/ He built his out of 3/4 ply. I made most of mine out of 1/4 ply. Here are what some of the parts look like before assembly. I did make it out of cardboard first so I could get the shapes correct. I assembled every...
