Work Shop Talk - Cleaning Sanding Belts & Sanding Discs Easily

Cleaning Sanding Belts & Sanding Discs, Belt Sanders etc etc Easily refresh all your belts literally in seconds and also even refresh diamond stones like Ezy-Laps -

You can buy them for £12.88 from Axminster and sure even cheaper if searching the web. They have been around for a long time.

+1 for buying from Axminster as suggested by Derek.

Got mine on a whim years ago without any great expectations as to performance. Very pleased to discover how well it worked.

Mine is bigger and, possibly, easier to handle than the one in the video. About 150 x 80 x 20 mm now. But its worn down a bit! I don't do much woodwork so it doesn't see much use but when I am playing with the brown stuff I keep it handy and frequently touch it to the belt to clear it before serious embedment occurs. Which seriously reduces wear on the cleaning block. Much of the time it seems to pick the embedment out without actually being worn away itself.

I think Blue Heeler leaves his belt way too long between cleanings so needs pretty heavy use of the cleaning stick with inevitable significant wear.

Mine is slightly different colour too, more yellowy-cream, which may mean different composition.

Ones very like mine in size and appearance can be found from E-Bay and other online sources for £7 or £8 (ish).

Clive

One cheap trick I learned years ago as a woodworker was to use plastic bags (when they were free and you had hundreds of them spare!).

You bundle them into a really tight 'sausage' (must be as tight as you can possibly get!) and wrap it with string or whatever, so you end up with a pretty solid block. Present it to the disk or belt. Works just as good as the commercial stuff!

regards

Probably. Similarly I just wonder when someone will come out with a video to mirror Stacey Solomon's TV prog about decluuttering your house (how much instruction do you need to throw crap away?) i.e how to declutter your workshop!

2 hour video telling you to

1. Find stuff you don't need and is of no use (and not recyclable of course)

2. Put in skip

Getting off topic - I do apologise

I do that, only step 2 is subtly different - wipe it down and stack it up somewhere where it obscures access to useful stuff, leave until intolerable then repeat process from step 1.

Back on topic, the stiff plastic packing foam you get around some appliances is also good for cleaning belts - mine is blue and came off a gas cooker. NOTE - NOT polystyrene.

Rob

I'm sure I read years ago that a piece of plastic hose pipe could be used for cleaning belt sander belts.Not tried it my self as I have one of those "sticks"

I've got one of the Axminster ones which I bought for use on my drum sander. I believe it is made from raw (un-vulcanised) rubber.

Rod

Screwfix sell these latex blocks 150x76mm for £8.49. Their part reference 16210.

I expect Toolstation do too but I can’t find it in the catalogue index.

MC

No such thing as 1, and everyone knows skips are for finding stuff in, not putting stuff in...

Guess my video would be a bit shorter...

Dave

Yes it just crumbles up and doesn't get stuck to the belt grit.