Clogged up sanding belt magic

Timbuck

Timbuck

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while sanding down some nasty spruce pine in my new Jet 16-32 I ended up with my sanding belt absolutely clogged up:( the crepe rubber cleaning stick was useless and the resin in the pinewood was really gumming up the belt and I thought that it was a throw away job... Just on a whim ! I did a quick experiment with some old Acetone that I had left over from a laquer removiing job I did last year ...I rolled up the belt, placed it into a PVC fruit jar..poured in the acetone just enough to soak the belt and shook it about for about 1 minute...then I removed it from the jar and washed it in the kitchen sink under the hot water tap and to my amazement the resin and sawdust had turned to a sludge that just washed off with the warm water...It's now hanging up to dry... here are some pic's I took at the time.
Clogged up belt
IMG_1896.jpg
In the Acetone
IMG_1900.jpg
15 Minutes later
IMG_1902.jpg
 
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Crikey, that's an impressive result!

John Colter.
 
WOW. I have a bunch of belts I've been saving for just this moment. Really, I never thought i'd use them again but I'm gonna try this
 
Looks impressive but I can't help remembering a tip from the flooring guy my brother now works with.

Use sandpaper like someone else is paying for it.

Of course he was doing my floor at the time so I guess I was paying for it.
 
Good advise. I have tried all the tricks but the one that works the best is to just put a new one on. Some woods are just nasty to sand and I don't use them anymore. After all it is just sandpaper. Like lunch...you get rid of it in a few days.
 
Looks good!

I gt daily tips from Family Handyman magazine. One recent tip suggested using the heel/sole of an old sneaker/trainer to clean clogged sandpaper. With the machine running, hold the heel against the sandpaper. I've never tried it, and it seems like it would make the situation worst, but there it it. It was posted on the Internet, so it must be true. :D
 
Jerryc41 said:
Looks good!

I gt daily tips from Family Handyman magazine. One recent tip suggested using the heel/sole of an old sneaker/trainer to clean clogged sandpaper. With the machine running, hold the heel against the sandpaper. I've never tried it, and it seems like it would make the situation worst, but there it it. It was posted on the Internet, so it must be true. :D
Click to expand...
the rubber thingies are fine they work on lightly clogged sawdust belts (I have used the black rubber bushes that come off truck suspensions that have broken off and fall in the gutter) but they don't work on badly clogged ones where the resin in the wood gums up everything and makes burn marks on the workpiece.
 
Ken, if that is a new machine, I’d wonder why you have so much dust on various areas I’d the sander. I never have to clean dust off the sander, and I have a Performax. Once I saw that baffle inside the cover of the Jet, I thought of fabricating one for mine. Kinda having 2nd thoughts after seeing your sandpaper.

Last time I remember burning sandpaper like that is when I ran vacuum off a shop vac. Once I installed 6” dust collection dropped to 4” for the machines, no real issues with burning paper. But, I also run a cleaner across the sandpaper every session.
 
Kekani said:
Ken, if that is a new machine, I’d wonder why you have so much dust on various areas I’d the sander. I never have to clean dust off the sander, and I have a Performax. Once I saw that baffle inside the cover of the Jet, I thought of fabricating one for mine. Kinda having 2nd thoughts after seeing your sandpaper.

Last time I remember burning sandpaper like that is when I ran vacuum off a shop vac. Once I installed 6” dust collection dropped to 4” for the machines, no real issues with burning paper. But, I also run a cleaner across the sandpaper every session.
Click to expand...
This new sander is fitted with a device known as "Sand-smart" when the load is too great, it automatically slows down the feed belt and stops any burning...May be that was the problem and I didn't feed it through fast enough to start with thus melting the resin and gumming up the grit, causing it to slow down even more as the going got harder for it..There was no burning by the way I think the pine wood was the main problem co's when I sliced it through on the bandsaw the saw dust was sticking to the wood behind the blade instead of being sucked away by the cyclone extractor. (sticky wood :))
 
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Timbuck said:
This new sander is fitted with a device known as "Sand-smart" when the load is too great, it automatically slows down the feed belt and stops any burning...May be that was the problem and I didn't feed it through fast enough to start with thus melting the resin and gumming up the grit, causing it to slow down even more as the going got harder for it..There was no burning by the way I think the pine wood was the main problem co's when I sliced it through on the bandsaw the saw dust was sticking to the wood behind the blade instead of being sucked away by the cyclone extractor. (sticky wood :))
Click to expand...

Ahh, gumming, not burning. Yeah, Jet definitely made some upgrades from my model. I’ve found running full speed and taking lighter passes (1/8 turns), works for 90% of what I do. Takes longer, but never as long as doing it by hand.

Do you think that baffle in the cover makes a difference? Right now, I see dust coming out from the feed side, and getting pulled right back in, so maybe I shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken?
 
Kekani said:
Ahh, gumming, not burning. Yeah, Jet definitely made some upgrades from my model. I’ve found running full speed and taking lighter passes (1/8 turns), works for 90% of what I do. Takes longer, but never as long as doing it by hand.

Do you think that baffle in the cover makes a difference? Right now, I see dust coming out from the feed side, and getting pulled right back in, so maybe I shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken?
Click to expand...

The injection moulded plastic cover on this model is pretty thin material ..I think that the baffle design is mostly to make it more sturdy .. I would have prefered a die cast aluminium cover like on some of the earlier designs and on some of the more expensive sanders.

Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812.
 
Following my experiences with the clogged up belt, now cleaned..I managed to get quite a bit of thickness sanding work done with it before it started to struggle again, this was the belt that was supplied with the machine and it wasn't too bad and it was time for replacement.... So I did a bit of research and decided to try out the "Abranet Max" mesh abrasive, so I bought an 80G 76 mm X 25 M roll....From the reviews I read, I found that it had a tendancy to stretch a bit in the initial use..It arrived today and I gave it a try out, I thicknessed 24 cuban sides down from 4mm to 1.7mm in about 6 passes...I stopped the machine and re-tightened the belt a couple of times during the first 3 passes and then afterwards it remained stable till the end of the job (a bit like breaking in some new nylon strings :)) so all in all I'm pretty happy with it :music:
mesh roll.jpg
 
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Lemon scented oven cleaner.

xO0Xr94.jpg



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