wide belt sanders minimum thickness

[Cali Hackmann]

This is my first post to this forum. Please bear with me. We (my husband and I) run a small musical instrument building (luthiery) shop. We are looking into a wide belt sander. We currently have a Performax and are familiar with all its pluses and minuses. My question is regarding minimum thickness. Most of my stock needs to finish at 3/32. All of the wide belts are maxing out at 1/8. How do you deal with this?

[Eddie Darby]

Two way tape the wood onto a thicker base that is flat, and then run it through.

[Richard Wolf]

I like to use a thicker piece of ply as a sled also, but I glue a piece of the same veneer across the bottom edge to act as a heel. I use instant glue, and it works well.

Richard

[John Renzetti]

hi Cali, Welcome to SMC. There's a guy who visits this forum often who is not only a premiere instrument maker but also uses the machines that his company imports and sells in the USA. It's Shiraz Baiola (sic) the owner of Grizzly. If he sees this I'm sure he can give some truthful first hand info on the capabilities of his 16" open ended wide belt for your specialized application. I don't own the Grizzly widebelt I own the one similar to the PM but imported by Leneave of NC under the Northstate brand, but I doubt anyone selling another WB can give you the first hand info you would need as well as some other tips as well.
take care,
John

[Reg Mitchell]

Hi Cali. I have a 24" older model Jet WBS. I, just a few weeks ago, Flattened the wide belt on it. Now what I did was raise the table and watched under the rollers until I could just see light. Then I used the hand feed and raised it a few thousands at a time. I put an indicator on it to let me see what I was doing at that point because I was working "blind". After that it's just a matter of watching the belt to see how much is comming off. Not all wide belts "max out" at 1/8.
The dbl surface tape is a good Idea if your useing thicker stuff but you are useing thinner stock so it might leave a little low spot where the tape is and then you have to get it loose without breaking your wood.
My thought would be a sled as already stated and put a piece on the sled to work as a stop and sand away
Reg

[Richard McComas]

I have a Bridgewood open-end sander which is very similar to the Grizzle,PM and Notrhstate. If I remember correctly it recommends no less than 1/8 .
I sometime like to push the envelope and have successfully sanded stock up to 8 inches wide to well under 1/8 of an inch. I don't know know how wide of stock one could get a way with sanding that thin on these machines.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

For really thin stuff I'd build a sled to ride the belt that captured the work.

If you can use dbbl stick tape and can live with working over sized stock (longer &wider) so as to be able to trim off the places where the tape made the stock stand proud for the sander Then you will be golden.

If however you don't have the luxury of over sized stock you can hold the work in place with a vacuum pump and a shop built vacuum sled.

[Todd Solomon]

Hi Cali,

I spent 1 hour at the Grizzly booth at AWFS in Vegas, investigating this very issue, and crawling all over their wide belt sanders. I was very impressed with the equipment, and the patient sales staff.

My personal goal is to be able to sand down to .070 inch.

The salesmen, in front of my own eyes, sanded a piece of wood from 1/8", down to .070". It was perfectly uniform (same thickness within .002"), and absent of snipe or any defects. Then, he continued to sand it down below .010". I don't recall, but I think he went to .006"! No need for a backer board.

To go below 1/8", you need to adjust the hardstops on the Grizzlies. You need to take care that you never go all the way and sand the feed belt. They also warned that, if you go thinner than maybe .015", the dust collector can suck the veneer and destroy it. But the cure for this, is to reduce suction by partially closing your gate. In any case, I'm happy if it can go to .070".

I really, really like the automatic digital control of thickness on the 18" and larger wide belts. I asked Shiraz (President of Grizzly) if he would go with the 15" open-end or the 18" wide belt, and he said there's no competition. Go with the 18" wide belt, because of the digital control and stiffness of frame. If I had the funds, it'd be nice to step up to a 24", but the 18" looks like just a narrower version of the same thing. The extra horsepower of the 24" would be really nice, you'd be surprised how much power is sucked up just to turn the sanding belt.

The feed belt on the Grizzly is also specially designed for uniform thickness of thin veneer.

Bottom line, the Grizzly 18" or larger, are pretty ideal for your need of 3/32". It's first on my list of dream tools.

Todd