We have been making slow progress on our dining table and old church pew. We needed a couple more tools to help finish it out, so we stopped working on our projects and made a late night trip to the Home Depot.

We ( I ) have been wanting a set of wood chisels for a while now, for various reasons. I ran into a point with the pew where they were needed, so I bought a 3-pack, you know, in case I needed more than one. I will try to get an update on that project next week.

As for the sanding belts, the wood for the table base required quite a bit of sanding to remove the saw marks. A belt sander can take off more material than a palm sander. My grandpa had sent me home with a belt sander during our last visit, it was collecting dust in his garage. A quick funny story my grandpa shared:

“My old neighbor, Don Whitehouse, wanted to borrow this sander to refinish the top of a coffee table. A little while later, his wife came to my grandpa and said, ‘Jimmy Dan, I need you to fix the top of this coffee table that Don started to refinish.’  Shortly after, Don brought the table and sander back to my grandpa’s garage, and I noticed Don had used the sander a lot, only he used it all in one place! It looked like Don had run the belt sander in the same place and wore down a spot a 1/4 inch deep. I fixed the top, and told Don he couldn’t borrow my belt sander again.”

So I had this belt sander, with no belt and no instruction manual. I checked the internet for a video on how to replace the belt, but the only things I found right away were videos changing belts on belt sanders that had a tension lever. Mine didn’t have a tension lever…

I had all but given up, when a vague memory hit me of my high school shop teacher, Mr. Rehmer, demonstrating how to perform this exact task.  I realized that the front roller was the tension lever.  So I researched it a little more and found out the steps to change a belt sander with a tension roller.

1. Unplug the sander

2. Push the front roller towards the center of the sander to release the tension on the belt. You should hear a snap when it is locked in place.

3. Slide the belt over both rollers. Some belts have arrows on the inside to distinguish what direction they should rotate. Refer to your old belt or the packaging for the correct direction.

4. Use a screw driver to pry the front roller forward, away from the center of the sander.  I know this doesn’t sound official, but it is what the article I found said was actually in the owner’s manual. You should hear a snap when it springs back into place

That’s it. There will be a knob to adjust on the opposite side of the sander which adjusts where the belt rides on the rollers. I held the sander in one hand and adjusted the knob with my other, so that I could watch the belt tracking while adjusting.

 

Happy Sanding!

Have any good stories from your grandparents about hobbies you both share? Let’s hear them. Don’t forget to leave comments or email questions for our Blogiversary!