Todays Workshop Feature is the sanding station. It contains a grinder and a sanding drum.
My dad custom made this for his workshop and it is still running today, several years later.
As you can see here, the interesting / cool part is that sanding drum is being powered by an old dryer motor of all things.
I use this on every project that I have built, especially on the fence builds. I like taking off those sharp corners and dulling down the sides. That way no matter where you grab them, it will be better to the touch.
Luckily for me, even the new sanding drum kits that you can get from your local hardware store still work great in this.
Now the part that I haven’t made time to deal with, the grinder half.
As you can see, the belt is in dire need of replacing. The couple of problems I have in doing this are that:
1. I can’t find a book that tells me how to replace the belt and
2. What belt it needs to replace it.
To make it even more amusing, the couple of places I checked that sold grinders, don’t have any that are in 2 parts like this one is. All the new ones I have found are single body without the belt.
Pretty sure the company that made this is already out of business. Which is a recurring theme with about half of dads tools. But when you are trying to use tech that is older than you are – that is par for the course.
To be fair to myself, I haven’t done a deep dive on the internet to really try to find the info I need to fix this. I figured it would be more fun to make a video and possibly get the answers from one of you. I haven’t really had the need to use the grinder part that much yet so it does seem like a perfect project for the community to help with.
The fact that it is a cart and can be moved around pretty easily is a very nice feature too.
Is there a special tool in your workshop? Let us know in the comments below.
