Belt sander Anyone?

Christopher Brunton · Post by **Christopher Brunton** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 6:39 pm

I don't know how many of you have belt sanders or have even tried trying to find one suitable for pipe making. It's not easy. As a fabricator/ machinist I'm always making my own tools. My current project is a two jaw setup with pins for my lathe that bolts to the faceplate. Takes less space than a normal chuck.

Anyway, beltsanders....I made one in the States, but, there it sits and here I am in Europe. So a belt sander is my next project. The following link has a lot of examples of home made belt sanders. They are for knife making, but can obviously adapted to suit our needs.

http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCKnifeMakingGrinders.htm

I might add the CNC cookbook is one hell of a webpage if you're interested in homeshop projects/machining.

Just trying to spread my very limited supply of know-it-all.

-chris

p.s. What I don't know could fill all the books ever written except for the parts of the ones I remember reading.

sethile · Post by **sethile** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:43 pm

Looks like a great site, Chris, thanks for the link! I've enjoyed customizing some tools and have made a few simple ones. This looks like a great resource!

A lot of pipe makers use flexible belt sanders, guiding the belt with one hand while manipulating the pipe with the other. I've been wanting to make one for a while now. You can see some shots on Pipedia of Barbi's home made machines, with some notes on making one, and another shot of a commercial unit in Eltang's shop: http://pipedia.org/index.php?title=Belt_Sander .

Check this thread out (much of the pipedia article came from this):
viewtopic.php?t=2449&highlight=

I thought somewhere in the archives here on the forum are pics of one Love Geiger made, but I can't come up with it. In Love's workshop tour he shows this machine that he is in the process of hooking up:

Frank · Post by **Frank** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 3:07 pm

Very useful site, Chris. Should inspire Kurt in his belt grinder project.

Scott, I've seen those pics where they support the belt while sanding the stummel. I'm assuming the belt is slightly slack, while the belt speed has to be relatively slow, or you'd burn the heck out of your hand. I wouldn't try it with my 1750 rpm belt grinder.

Olivier · Post by **Olivier** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:15 pm

Christopher, I have built myself 4 sanders based on the simplatic shown in your link. Some are interchangable with different size contact wheels or a platten and one of them modified to use small diameter wheels with a high speed bearing assembly. I built these for knifemaking but they also work well for making pipes. They are inexpensive to build and really works great. I have a full set of templates and should be able to dig up the assembly instructions if you're interrested

All my machines was built with scrap from the local junkyard.

I wouldn't dare guiding the belts on these with my fingers. Except for the smallwheel sander wich runs at 1440rpm they all run at 2800rpm. I recently bought an inverter that still needs to be fitted that will give me variable speed option from 60rpm to 2800rpm.

Some of the sanders in the other links also looks great and some of them might be better suited for pipemaking than the ones I have.