i've been using this homemade belt sander for five years now and in this video i'll show you
how i built it the drive pulley is gonna be eight centimeters in diameter so i'm just making a whole
bunch of circles that are plywood that side i'm gonna glue all these together on the shaft
and to keep them from spinning i want some kind of a keyway in there
now i have to cut that cylinder perfectly around i'll spin it over my table saw
it's taking quite a bit of tweaking but the shape i actually want is for this to have a bulge in the
middle and that will help the belt track in the middle i'm going to try to coat this with silicone
i made the idler drum the same way except the discs are smaller and the shaft is also smaller
i also have to slightly modify my jig for rounding it because
the diameter is smaller and the shaft was shorter
let's see if i can get those pieces of inner tube on there they still need quite a bit of stretching
these bearings are 32 millimeter outside diameter
which luckily makes for a tight fit in one and a quarter inch hole from this drill
so
these two things form the sides and then in here we have a cross brace here and another
one here and then we have this piece here and then this part fits on top of here this funny
part which pushes this part out that way and then we have the pieces here for mounting the bearings
and on top of all of that we have this part here and of course the rollers are here and here
the roller is about three millimeters higher than this piece of wood which
is about where i wanted it to be this part goes on here and that needs to be square
i start by drilling pilot holes for the screws
and then i drill a larger hole for the shank i countersink them
and then i drive them in with a drill
this cross brace goes in right about here
now this part is going to go on here and then this part goes on here and this goes
on top of here like so but to not wear the screw threads too much i'm using some screws that are
shorter and smaller than the final ones just to hold it together while i work things out
again i'm using smaller shorter screws because this is not the final assembly
the idler roller is going to mount here i just cut out some wooden bearing blocks made out of
lignin the tie and i'm going to screw these in place before i drill the hole through them
the bearing blocks need to be mounted to this part here
so that this roller is going to be about three millimeters above this surface when i first put
this together i found the bearings very hard to turn and so i put a 3 8 inch drill in there
and just sort of spun it around while tilting it to the side but it got caught so now i have
a huge hole right here but as it is i'm just going to leave it like that if those blocks were out
with this gash i can always make new ones i need something to push this out here and for that i've
got this sort of lever thing so that pushes out here like this as long as something pulls on here
and for that there's a threaded rod with a knob on it here
and a nut that goes here and to keep that nut from spinning i made this block that the nut fits into
to control the tracking i need to control side to side here which is with a threaded
rod through here so i made this funny shaped block of wood which holds the t-nut
and it keeps it from spinning
well i think i'm ready to try this with a sanding though
what i'm thinking of is a motor right about here and then a box that fits around the motor
something like this and a piece of plywood here that's going to be the base of the machine
i bought an aluminum pulley to go on here but this pulley here cost ten dollars which seems a
bit much for just a piece of aluminum so i thought i'd experiment with making a pulley out of wood
and now a nail in here to act as a key way
i want the size of that pulley to be quite smooth so it doesn't wear out the belt too quickly
where the belt touches the pulley is all end grain and that stuff is very tough
so this is how the base and the motor fit together i need to mount that motor on there
now i just gotta tension that belt by moving the motor to the side of it and then tighten it up
so this is one orientation to use a sander but
i can also use it as an edge belt sander if i just orient it like this
so
this part goes on here but to make sure the air comes in from above and not through here
there's this part here
so
my intention been when i want to use it as an edge belt sander i flip it around
but the problem with that is now the belt is moving this way which might be hard to get used to
so i figure a better method would be to just flip it down like this but that puts the
controls towards the bottom so i want to move the controls on this side because having the controls
on the back while using normally really isn't a problem
the belt tensioning mechanism works quite well and i can just flip it over to put the knob on
the other side but this tracking mechanism is actually not ideal because it has a little bit
of play in it and i always have to turn a little bit past so ideally i would have this always say
pushing in one direction so as soon as i let go of the knob a little bit it moves back i've come
up with a modified tensioning design and this is applying force asymmetrically and then i'll have
a screw that pulls it this way and that way the tracking should be much more responsive
with the belt part way on there i can figure out
where the normal position of the roller is i'll write that down
these two strips of wood are going to form my wooden belt tension spring and then we have
this part here pushes against here again with a hole in it to keep the strip from falling off and
then the tension now pulls through here this is a good position for the belt tension lever
the tracking adjust knob is going to come through here
lined up here so i'm going to have to carve a slot in here for that to go through
i had this part here to help hold this in place but i've realized if i just
put a bolt and a washer here i'll have plenty of room for adjustment right there
now with no longer having a part that goes on here i'm just going to glue a couple of
pieces of wood on here so it doesn't look like there's anything missing
i am also covering up the holes that i have on the front
so that you can't tell that the design was different at some point
just right to countersink a number four screw
with the tracking problems i've had every time the belt goes too far this way it starts grinding into
the wood and to prevent the sander from cutting itself apart i added these two metal plates to
catch the sandpaper this belt sander as a regular belt sander is just about finished but to make it
usable as an edge belt sander i need to make some sort of a base that i can tip it down on
and then this goes on here and this will bolt on in a way that can slide up and down
and then the table goes on there so i can adjust that vertically
now i need some threaded knobs like this to hold this onto here
i'll just leave these to dry like that because i can't very well clamp these pieces
so
speak
so
well i think this machine is ready for some green paint and now the sander is painted
and if i want to use it as a regular belt sander all i have to do is just flip it back up
after five years of use i don't see significant wear on the wooden bearings
and if they do wear out they'll be easy to replace
no signs of wear on the wooden pulley here i thought i had some cracks in it here
here and here but i realized that's just the glue lines attracting more of the
rubber dirt on there i have had to add tension one time by moving the motor over a little bit
now it's as far as it'll go so next time i need to add tension i'll have to actually replace the belt
the inner tube on the idler roller has held up perfectly for the
drive roller it's in good shape except for one spot right here there's a
little bit missing and i think that's because if i'm standing inside curves
i'm usually sanding right up against here so that part gets a bit more wear than the rest of it
and the wooden springs i had for the belt tensioning were a little bit too thin so i had
to replace that with a thicker one if you want to build a sander like this i also have a much
longer more detailed video series on building this i also have a set of plans for sale on my website