Speaking of rubber wheels has anyone tried this?

[Yvsa]

:
Many years ago we had a huge buffer in a shop I worked in.
The big boss got a wild hair one day and decided to turn one side of the buffer into a belt sander.
I don't recall the length of the belts, but they were about 6" wide.
We rough and finished ground cast aluminium on it mostly.

To the good part.....

Instead of an expensive rubber mounted wheel we used several of the hard sewn buffing pads to make it 6" wide and dressed a slight crown on it.
The improvised wheel worked like a charm and had very little give to it and after it had been used for a while the grinding fines impregnated the cotton making it even harder.

Is there any chance that something like this would work on a knife belt grinder or do y'all think the 2" width would be to thin to have enough support for the belts?

Perhaps the sides could be reinforced with metal flanges to help keep the wheel from being to flexible?

If it would work it would sure save a bunch of money for the guys just starting out and a man could have pretty much whatever diameter wheel he wanted.


Opinions or comments?

 

[Eric M Ericson]

I don't know why it wouldnt work, I've never seen it on a belt sander, but a friend of mine used an old cotten drive belt to replace the tires on his band saw.

the function is the same, a crowned wheel that controls the tracking

those buffing pads get kind of expensive though, why not cut plywood disks the diameter you want. you'd have to power it up and rig a tool rest to true it up, then use electrical tape to crown it

interesting challenge, how cheep can you build a well functioning belt sander?

 

[Sylvester]

Hey Eric
You can get 8&10in contact wheels
from Grizzly for $30 & $60. I will
tell they are not best but they work.
The grinder that I`m useing now has a
8in from grizzly. The cost to build
the ginder was about $125.00