Belt Sander Conversion

I am the caretaker of a hand-me-down belt sander from my father.  It is an old Sears model with a 4" wide belt and in good working order.  It's vintage is such that requires both hands and one's undivided attention to use.  And it is heavy.  I have stripped and refinished wood floors with only this tool (although the floors were in a rental unit and admittedly, the flatness was of little concern).

Not finding the tool useful very often, I decided that its heft lent to a more stationary than hand-held use, so I mounted it in this little jig and it works pretty well.

This adds to my previous sander project, the Telex conversion.  In remodeling a medical building, I found a couple of little treasures.  First, a medical gas cylinder that was just the right size for my MIG welder, so I had it re-certified for Argon and now own my own little tank for free.  Second, there was Telex computer equipment that was obviously outdated as it was left behind by the previous tenant.  I gutted the cabinet and mounted it on casters (I mount everything on casters).  I installed a small 120V electric motor in the cabinet and sourced a roller, pulley and belt from the surplus store.  I cut a specifically sized hole in the top of the cabinet for only the top portion of the roller to fit through.  I covered the roller with adhesive backed Velcro, and bought Velcro backed rolls of various grit sandpaper.  The Velcro was astonishingly expensive.  The belt simply wraps from the pulley around the roller.  This works OK, though I will someday install a separate pulley on the roller, too--if you let the work piece rub against the belt, it sometimes will knock the belt off the roller.  With sandpaper wrapped around the roller, you have a nice surface sander, about 14" wide.  I have the exposure set up to take very slight passes so as not to dig into the wood.  It works well and the dust is trapped in the upper compartment of the machine.  I put a little removable door where the disk drive used to be so I can vacuum out the trapped dust.  I wired the switch to turn on the motor and one side of the outlet--the other side is always hot when the machine is plugged in.  This allows me to plug a shop vac that is activated when the sander is activated, or use the hot side as a convenience outlet. The original cooling fan is still installed and I wired it to come on with the switch as well, so the motor gets ventilation in the cabinet.  I still need to tune up the roller exposure with the top and brace the top better so that it is dead flat, as it takes a little more bite on one side than the other.  But in concept it works well.