Hot Rodding the Wolf Sander

by patpruitt on January 31, 2009

“Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true, Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil, Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet, All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world, So there was only one thing that I could do…”

Jesus built my Hotrod – Ministry

Yep, you got it, less than 48 hours after giving this thing a good run for its money, I went in under the hood and started the modding.

New, quick change, contact wheels in 1/2″, 3/4″, 1″, and 1.135″ (60mm) stock wheel size.

Repositioned tension arm (10mm reamer required for this mod).  Moved over and down to accommodate a new, longer, tension arm, this is important in using the tiny contact wheels, including the stock diameter wheel, flat sanding plate, and still be able to tension the belt.  I also had to remove a better portion of the cutout for the arm clearance.

Why you ask?  Well, the Wolf sander is a cool tool, but I needed more out of it.  Namely the smaller contact wheels.  That was the easy part.  The business end of the Wolf sander had a cool little stem sticking out where the old contact wheel attached.

Using this as the base, new contact wheels were fabricated, and wouldn’t you know it, laying around in the shop were some 4mm socket set screws that were perfect for this job.  Bore a hole that is tight fitting on the stem, then tap for the appropriate set screw.

Now the contact wheels simply screw on and off, seating down on the flat of the drive mechanism…pretty keen.

With all the new contact wheels made, here’s how they all look, sorry for the redundancy in photos.  You can see how the tension wheel accommodates the different wheels nicely.

1/2″ contact wheel.

3/4″ contact wheel

1″ contact wheel

Remade stock contact wheel. 1.135″, with flat plate installed.  The flat plate can only be used with the stock diameter wheel due to the path of the belt.

NOW I can get into those tiny radii on the parts im working on.

Quite a few hours to do the modifications will save me gobs of time down the road, I am so glad this was possible with this sander…

One other modification I made was to the flat plate itself, knocking off the square edge at the leading edge of where the belt hits quiets it down a hair, and saves on that edge beating up on the splice tape on the belt.  A thing to note, the flat plate is not truly flat due to the punching process used to make it, that will be fixed shortly.

Yeah, now im super stoked with this tool…..The last and only thing I can think of to make this the best tool on the planet is to build an extension arm for the top idle wheel, extend that out further so one can use a more common belt size, say a 1″x30″ or 1″x42″ belt.  Dollar for dollar, the longer belts are still in the $2 range, but your getting 3x to 4x the abrasive.  More abrasive = longer belt life.

Hope you enjoy,
P@
www.patpruitt.com

patpruitt

patpruitt

patpruitt

Latest posts by patpruitt (see all)

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Lynn Vernon February 2, 2009 at 1:23 pm

I am an admitted tool geek with NO skills in improving them. I am jealous of your “modified” tool and your skills! Optivisor off to you!

Kate make these for the rest of us please!

Nel Bringsjord February 2, 2009 at 12:32 am

I’ll bet Kate would say it is wicked good. Kate loves tool mods too. Ah, don’t we all?

patpruitt February 1, 2009 at 11:52 pm

Yep, I am definitely a tool geek, been collecting them for almost 20 years now, plus building my own…

Teri Baskett February 1, 2009 at 11:40 pm

I think beefing up a jewelry tool qualifies you for the affectionate term “tool geek.” What a way to save some dough and end up with “more” product than you had to pay for! Teri Twitter: Teri_B
http://teribaskett.userblogs.ganoksin.coms

hansmeevis February 1, 2009 at 2:15 pm

Friggin’ genius.

Beth Wicker February 1, 2009 at 10:41 am

Wow – can I come and learn machining from you?? Pretty please?? I’m highly jealous! Now you need to get Kate to offer a “hot rod” model through Rio so we all can have this much fun!

Previous post:

Next post:

WordPress Admin