felt polishing belts

Khukuri Monster

Khukuri Monster

Joined
Aug 4, 2004
Messages
373
Does anyone know what type of felt they use for the felt polshing belts for a belt grinder? Or felt buffing wheels?

I was suprised by how expensive the belts are, so I tried making my own by sewing felt onto a duck cloth backing. The materials cost me about $1 for a 2x72 belt. It seemed to polish up steel pretty good when I used it with a white rouge. However, it didn't work as well on woods as a loose sewn muslin buffing wheel.

The composition of the felt I was using was 35% wool and 65% rayon. I would like to know if a felt with higher wool content would work better, before I go making more of these belts.
 
Sounds like a great idea, KM. How are you closing the loop: glue or stitching? Thanks.
 
I overlap it and stitch it together. I used a zig zag stich over the seam to tie it together so there is not much of a bump. It seems to be very strong, since there is several inches of overlap.

I think the stitching doesn't effect the polishing much, but I used cotton thread, since anything else might cause it to scratch.

I can put pictures up if anyone is interested.
 
feltbelt1.jpg

feltbelt2.jpg


The first picture shows the felt side, the second the back side. I made the belt by first cutting a 4" wide strip of the backing material, folding the edges to the center, and sewing it. This way, there aren't any exposed edges to unravel. Then, I made a loop out of the backing by overlapping and sewing together. You can see the zig-zags over the area where it overlaps.

Finally I sewed the felt onto the backing, overlapping the felt so it is continuous, you have to make sure that the belt rotates in such a direction that whatever you are buffing doesn't catch on the overlaps. Hopefully this makes sense.

It actually didn't take very long to do this using a sewing machine.

I noticed that the belt still stretches a little bit, this maybe could be improved by using a stiffer backing. I just used what I had available.

On my grinder, I can take belts longer or shorter than 72" since the platen are on a tooling arm which slides in and out of the grinder chassis. So, I didn't have to be exact on my lengths, this also takes care of any stretch.
 
KM, neglected to thank you for the pictures. Showed them to my wife, and she thinks she can do that. My sander is only a 1 x 42. She also thought that a denim backing might solve the stretchiness problem. I'll keep you posted.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top