# Belt Sander Grinding Rest



## jeth (Aug 18, 2010)

We all need to grind and iron or chisel sometimes. I don't own a grinder and tbh it just looks rather tricky grinding a square edge on a wheel far narrower than the blade itself. I am also not convinced if I like the idea of a hollow grind, seems that particularly with a shallow grind it doesn't leave a lot of meat behind the cutting edge.

Sometimes I do remodelling/construction jobs and my chisels suffer… they are $5 chisels but I'm too tight to buy a spare set, always thinking they will be my spare set when I finally shell out for a "real" set. In fact part of the reason I have held off on buying a quality set of chisels is feeling I would rather be established and comfortable in my sharpening set up before having to brave sticking a $40 blade into fast moving grit.
So a whille back there came a moment that I could no longer leave giving some of my edges a thorough once over. At this time I urgently threw together a plywood "ramp" on a platform that overhung the end of my 4×36 stationary belt/disk sander.
This set up was less than ideal, it was tricky grinding looking down friom above the horizontal belt and the belt was travelling away from the edge so the edge tended to heat up more and be burnished by it's own amalgam.
The platform was also hastily thrown together, neither pretty or particularly stable.

So the other week there came a moment that I decided to sort this out. Like most shop projects it was a low/no budget, dig out/scavenge/adapt what I can job. I had a piece of thick(ish) aluminium right angle profile and I decided to butcher a short piece of aluminium fence extension which came wiuth my bandsaw which I hadn't found a use for. I had to buy a few nuts & bolts as after tipping out all my random nut & bolt boxes all over the bench and searching through I discovered none of what I had were just what I needed.










The tool bar itself has t track for which I may make some jigs to hold different tools. It slides back and forth in T slot on the two side brackets which are bolted through the sides of the sander platform and rotate to set the angle, locking with wing nuts. I did a simple sketchup outline of one side and used the rotate tool to work out the required movement front to back. This gives me the full range from 90 degrees to square an edge through to 15 degrees with the bar always positionable at a nice distance from the belt. The bar can be fine adjusted for height and level with the bolts/locking nutswhich are tapped into the sliding "Ls". 
I thought I may need some kind of parallel bar or stops to keep everything lined up when making adjustements as the two side brackets can move independently as can the sliding brackets which the bar is mounted on. As it happens it is all very solid and seems to want to stay aligned so I will wait and see. I probably will add some stops for re-setting the most used angles, say at 25 degrees.
I can change the band with the unit in place and the whole thing can be removed/replaced in minutes.

All in all it works well, cost me pennies and I now have all my edges back in good shape.

Here's a pic of a freshly ground edge..


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## Finn (May 26, 2010)

Pretty clever!


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## jeth (Aug 18, 2010)

CR1, yep, I've been a hunting but haven't found anything available down here other than those standard red emery/cloth bands. perhaps I will order some from your side at some point , though results are OK tbh. I usually grind with as coarse a grit as possible, 60 or 80, then I start to "hone" my secondary bevel at 240/280/320 to be sure of removing the scratches. The finer grits tend to heat up very quickly so I prefer to take a little more time and just hog off the bulk on the sander.

Actually seems there is little selection in the 4×36" bands from what I have seen. I guess this size/ type of machine is mainly built for and used by small woodwork shops more than the metalwork people.

Does the job for now anyways and I am already pondering another option.


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## Rdale (Nov 16, 2014)

Seems I find all the good ideas that were put out there YEARS (?) AGO! 
I've been struggling to figure out the exact problem for awhile. Great idea and execution!

(I'm gonna' change my name to "Better Late Than Never!)


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