Belt sander

[Nick Jonkman]

Many years ago I built me a real belt sander. The bed is 4 ft. long and 8 in. wide. The motor is 1 1/2 HP 120 Volt. Actually this was the proto type of about a half dozen I built for others. As you can see you don't have to dis-assemble any thing to replace the belt. The controls are all on the back side. The yoke supporting the movable drum slides on a shaft and a bell crank pulls it in and out via a screw and knob. Also the tracking is controlled by a single screw and knob. Back in the mid 80s I built a spoon rack with a pendulum chime clock in the center of it for my wife who passed away in 86. I swore I would not build anything like that again unless I had a decent belt sander. With this sander I can true up the edge of a board, door, panel or anything else I need sanded square or true or flat. The fence is square to the belt and the vertical cleat is also square to the belt so I can sand the end of pieces by supporting them vertically. I have used up about a 1/2 dozen belts over the years. Most of them finally let go on the joint. By the way I also have graphite cloth cemented to the platen to reduce friction on the belt. I don't know what I would have done without it all the years as I am using constantly.
You may notice that I used only 3 legs which was OK but found the the stand seemed to have jellyness to it. It would jiggle when you hit the end on the side so I added braces until that was eliminated. Subsequent versions got 2 legs spaced about 6" apart on the end and only 2 braces which solved that problem. They also received a 12 in. disc on the back side with a tilting table. Machine sits on 3 casters so it can be rolled around out of the way.
By setting the fence at an angle I can feed long boards across it and it will sort of self feed by controlling the speed it pulls on the board.
Nick