Well I made this little gizmo recently and since I’ve been using it a
lot I thought I’d share it.
I needed a finer sanding disks for the foredom and didn’t have
patience or money to send away for one of the finer grits. So
recalling the big rubber disks from the hardware store that are used
in black and decker drills to sand rust spots etc. I decided that I
would like something like that to contact cement the emery paper onto.
An added bonus to this idea was that there was no metal mandrel
protruding out the face which I invariably run into the work while I’m
sanding. Here’s what I used:
1)a worn out foredom wire disk(a few wires here and there)
2)the shank of a broken burr. You don’t need this if your wire brush
already has a shank.
3)some little left over bits of unvulcanized castaldo(happened to be
no shrink pink, adds that little bit of luxury)
4)a brass donut about one inch inside diameter, and two 1/4 in
aluminum squares about 1 1/2 in square. These are components to make
up a miniature mold frame.
The first step is only because I needed a shank. First I took the
shank and heating it red I gave a couple wacks on a bench block with a
hammer to flatten one end a bit until it would no longer slide through
the hole in the wire disk. Then I placed the wire disk on a block of
wood over a hole that fit the shank. Then I drove the shank into the
center of the wire disk and the bigger end locked the shank on place.
Then I took one of the mold plates and drilled a hole in the center
that would recieve the shank and so that the wire disk lay flat
against the plate. On top of this plate and around the disk I put
that little brass donut and after paking in some rubber around the disk
within the donut I cut a disk of rubber to cover the wires and fill
the rest of the donut(which is only about a 1/4 high) Clamp it and put
it in th furnace for about 15 minutes and voila a little rubber disk
on the end of a shank.
I use contact cement for the emery paper because I have a hot air
blower tip on one of those small butane pen torches and it doesn’t
take me long to dry the cement on the two surfaces, but maybe double
sided carpet tape will work. When I need to change it I heat the old
emery paper with this little butane blower and peal the paper off; cut
a new circle(or sqare to be trimmed) of emery paper and dido with the
procedure. In all it takes me about two minutes to switch papers.
The rubber disk won’t last forever but its holding out really well and
it stays cool during use. Any way I hope you can picture it.
Manuel