Thread: SCORE!!! Belt Sander

Picked one up at Crappy Tire for $35 (50% off). I could have got the 4" model for $60 but each has its own advantages and disadvantages, so I opted for the cheaper option and if this one's good enough for Jason, it's good enough for me lol.

Nice, Ilija. You're going to enjoy this thing, I'll bet. I'm still pretty euphoric about mine. That was a good price.

Lee Valley has a lot of gsood 1x30 belts. Isn't that chain based in Canada?

Looking for some good work from you in the near future...

Josh

I probably won't get to use it before I come back from NWT, which will be in late November. Until then I have to winterize the bike, paint the garage and finish the body-work on the car and do the 3 week job. I'll look into those belts when I go to pick up a lapping plate and a 1k hone @ LV. They could save me some finishing time.

Looks almost identical to mine, though mine is a Delta. LeeValley has sanding and grinding belts all the way up to 1200grit I'm pretty sure. I got a generic 220/1000 hone from LeeValley some time ago too, really cuts down on quite abit of hone work. I have the lapping plate, but never really use it; I just lap the 1k on my norton to flatten it out. If you order from the website, maybe you should try paying in american

Lee Valley has a good reputation, I don't see how you'll go wrong there.

That's a nice unit. The disk grinder is very important for getting things flat. Especially things that use a pivot. Good choice.

I wanted to get that one specifically for rough-shaping scales. Jason, how fine can you go with such a fast moving unit, before it's better to just hand-sand it? Can you still use it once you apply CA or does it remove the finish too quickly? Some of this can probably be avoided if I use truoil for finishing, but I'd like to have both options lol.

Edit: I only saw 1" belts as fine as 320 grit on the LV website. I would like to source some finer grits if they'll make a difference with a fast-moving unit (3500fpm or thereabouts). I guess it's flea-bay or google-time

Ilija,

I asked the same question a week ago. Go to LeeValey's section labeled "sharpening." In those grits they consider them honing tools.

Josh

Thanks Josh, I'll give it a quick look-see

Yeah, the really fine belts are in the sharpening section.

I only use the sander for rough shaping the scales, it just goes way to quick for anything else. You'll understand once you turn it on and notice how much sanding surface is flying by every second. I haven't tried any of the really fine belts, but at the speeds the thing goes, it just seems much too likely that it will friction burn the surface. I suppose you can use it for some of the finer work, but you'd need one hell of a feel for the machine to do it. Until I find some variable speed belt sander, I'm just going to stick to hand sanding CA.

Another option that I'm stubborn about is some sort of a voltage regulation to reduce the speed. Ofcourse I'll try it with my $5 garage-sale grinder first just to see if it'll work.