Happy Mardi Gras everyone!
Just ran across a tool that I hadn’t heard of, a Wolf belt sander.
Is it used primarily for metal? Polishing? I’m curious how those of
you who have one are using it.
I saw one at the Bench Jewelers Conference in Denver a couple years
ago. It was powered by a flexshaft with the handpiece removed. It
looked really cool. I would have bought one but the vendor only had
one as a demo and never got back to me when he had them in stock.
I can’t remember the vendor. I checked Brad Simon’s website but I
couldn’t find a list of exhibitors…
Rick Copeland
Silversmith and Lapidary Artisan
Rocky Mountain Wonders
Colorado Springs, Colorado
rockymountainwonders.com
carol,
i worked in antique restoration about 20 years ago. at that time
wolf was the leading brand in any sanders. wolf is actually the
company name from germany, i think, and their belt sanders, like any
other sander is used the same as any other brand. they are a very
reliable sander and i dont recollect them making any other industrial
tool apart from sanders or polishers but they are very reliable and
will outlast any australian sanders on the market.
cheers jim
Hi Carol:
I picked one up at SNAG last year. I haven’t used it much, but I’ve
been positively impressed with it those times I have used it. The
initial one had a minor manufacturing issue (someone forgot to
drill/tap the holes for the dust collector). I had an email directly
from Kate Wolfe within a day or so, and she swapped the unit for me
the next day. (Shipping from her went out in under 12 hours, but
since we’re on opposite sides of the country, it took a couple of
days to get to me.) So customer service is outstanding. I’ve got a
few minor tweaks I’d make to it, and will eventually write up for the
’frankentool’ section of my website, but it’s a fine tool out of the
box. (slightly different tool-rest, along with a suggestion from Kate
about rigging it to be mounted upside down for slack-belt sanding.)
If you have (or are thinking about getting) a foredom that can
switch directions, that’d be a handy thing to power it with, and if
you have a GRS benchmate, absolutely get the GRS mounting attachment.
(about $10) It’s a lot more stable clamped into a GRS bracket. (the
dust collector assumes a normally rotating foredom, to spray dust
back and away from you, but there are times when it’d be handy to be
able to go the other way.) If you have a small shop-vac, use it. The
thing creates mountains of dust…everywhere…
My only real complaint about it is that it seems to be a mechanism
for causing me to buy sanding belts. This is just a fact of life with
belt sanders, so it’s more of an observation than a real complaint.
One of these days, if my use of it gets to the point where the belts
bug me, I’ll look into getting some raw 1" abrasive rolls, and
splicing up my own belts. It’s not hard to do.
The available belts run the range from fairly coarse to absurdly
fine, so it’s got a wide range. The strip-length of the belt is also
short enough that you could splice up your own belts out of standard
sized sheets of abrasive if you had to, or you needed something
weird.
Hope this helps,
Brian Meek.
Usual disclaimers apply: no interest beyond a satisfied user.
I bought one, and it had an alignment problem. Kate replaced it as
soon as she got new stock. It works well, and there are a selection
of belts and grits for it. I made a little adaptor for my Micro-Star
dust collector. I think that it is a well thought out, reasonably
priced tool. As far as I know there aren’t any polishing belts for
it, but it can be used to sand or grind anything that you would do at
a polishing lathe or with a flex shaft. Polishing belts, similar to
the felt surfaced Moore’s disks, would be nice for flat lapping.
Rick Hamilton
http://www.ottofrei.com/store/product.php?productid=16863
Here’s a link to the Wolf Belt Sander by Kate Wolf.
Elaine
Serendipity is when an exquisite craftsperson designs a tool to make
their life easier, and makes it available to the others. ZKate
Wolf’s Belt Sander is just one of these. Quality is Kate’s middle
name, and permeates her line.
Your ability to build onto, or expand the capacity of the tool, is a
plus. So what about a strip of leather or suede mounted onto the
sander for use as a polisher?
Hugs,
Terrie
For those of you lucky enough to go to Tucson this year, look for a
tool created by Jay Whaley, which will be marketed by Euro Tool, and
demonstrated at Catalog in Motion. I have been happily using this
for a year now and love it.