Thread: My DIY belt sander

About 20 years ago I started making knives but could not afford a decent belt sander, also the Internet was not much help back in those days so I spent several years finding the parts to build this beauty. I only made a few knives and was just getting started when I went through a divorce. My knife collecting and making days were over.

Recently with my life settled and a bit of free time my blade collecting and desire to start making them again has kicked in. Right now my lack of tooling has got me interested in just simply restoring straight razors, so I went over to my folks house and dug around, and lucky I thought it was lost forever, but my old sander is almost back in action. Eventually I will re-work it a bit with a new idler pulley and a few other design changes, but it worked "good enough". Back then it should be good for basic stuff at the moment.

So here is my questions. I know I can find some old 1/2-3/4 hp motor around to get started. But what I always wanted was a variable speed motor. Now as you can see I figured out how to build the sander so I think imcan figure out some form of cheap DIY type motor. So far I have a few ideas but not sure if they would work.

1) old treadmill motor, free.... Not sure how much HP
2) I have a very old gas generator with a bad gas motor, it probably 3500 watts or so, and I know the generator is basically a DC motor, but google turns up nothing on who to change one back to "just a motor". Any thoughts or ideas?
3). Some random item from an industrial facility?? I can't even think what item might have a large DC motor...
4). Ok thats all the ideas I have... Anyone got any?