How To: Make a Tooling Arm for a 2x72 Belt Grinder

oh hey what's happening there youtube it's brian house here for housework and today we are going to go over my favorite accessories and attachments for a 2 by 72 belt grinder if you don't already know i'm super passionate about belt grinders and about a year ago uh right here on youtube we designed we prototyped and we built and then ultimately we led this thing to manufacture right here on youtube and you were a big part of that so i really want to say thank you to you guys everyone who has supported this project and me and my work right here in my workshop and studio uh so this is the revolution and what we're going to talk about today isn't exclusive to the revolution the reason i love 2 by 72 bell grinders not just this one is that they're they're very flexible you know you can add different tooling arms and different accessories to them and make them do different things i truly believe that every workshop in the world should have a 2 by 72 belt grinder and hopefully one day we'll see that come to fruition whether it be woodworking or metal working you can really get a lot done with this tool so today we're going to go over some of my favorite attachments and accessories that i use on the regular now there's a lot of stuff out there that you can buy for a 2 by 72 buck grinder it's really expensive some of the tooling arms are really expensive if you've done your research you know that like buying a solid aluminum tooling arm can be really expensive one of the things i love about the revolution is that it uses really inexpensive mild steel tooling arms that are one and a half inch by one and a half inch tube steel and you can pretty much modify those to accept pretty much any kind of tooling that you want for this machine and in fact today we are going to do that we are going to take a piece of tube steel and we are going to convert it into a tooling arm and we are going to test a new small wheel attachment that we just got in the mail so anyway guys let's get on with the show let's get it started screw it let's do it one of the most important accessories i've added to my revolution 2 by 72 belt grinder has actually been the cheapest this is a little led magnetic light you can take it and just slap it right on the side of your tooling arm it sits there nicely does its job holds itself and it's got a nice goose neck head on it and it just can you can basically stick it and light up anything you want i have these on all of my tools i have different versions of this light this is uh the most latest recent version of this and this one is about twenty dollars i believe between fifteen and twenty bucks you can get these as cheap as ten dollars uh the reason i like this one is because the gooseneck is a little longer and the head actually all you have to do is touch it to turn it on and there's three different stages of on for this thing so there's low medium and high so if you need brighter light you can turn it brighter now the reason why this actually changed my grinding game is because for the longest time i was actually not touching the platen parallel i was i was hitting you know just off to the side a little bit and i was creating grooves in my knives and unfortunately what that does is it creates low spots now just by simply adding this little led lamp to my setup i was able to see exactly where i was going with that knife or whatever i was grinding and i knew it was parallel to the platen this was a game changer for me i'll put a link down in the description so you can find one on amazon and attach it to your own 2x72 belt grinder all right so my number two most favorite tooling attachment for my grinder is this contact wheel a lot of people ask me about these you can get them all over the internet uh they're readily available uh one of the biggest problems in finding these is uh the uh the cost they're really expensive if you buy them in the us now you can go online and buy them overseas like in china and on ebay but you really want to make sure that when you're buying this that you understand that you know most of the bearings are set up for metric if you're buying it overseas and you need to find one that will accept a half inch bolt or you'll have to modify you know your tooling arm to allow for uh you know the the right kind of axle uh that's something you really want to pay attention to and i'm actually working with all of my guys on the diy belt grinders and machines facebook forum we're working together to try to figure out a solution where maybe we can buy a whole bunch of these wheels and then modify them so that they'll accept the standardized axles that we use which is a half inch 13 bolt or just find another solution out there so we are in process of working on that and i think we'll have a solution fairly quickly one of the things when you set this up is that you'll have to pay attention to the amount of spacing that you'll need we get into this in a lot of with tooling and attachments i'm talking about tracking so in this particular case i've welded up a nice little plate here that gave me a little bit extra girth and then put in some nylon spacers a washer and a nut and it just gave me enough room so that the belt would actually travel uh properly on this uh this wheel so yeah it's uh it's my favorite tool uh other than my flat platen for grinding so if that makes sense i love using a hollow grind you know making hollow grinds s grinds you can tilt the the grinder on its side and you can do all kinds of stuff with you know profiling using this because it's almost like a single point of grind that you get very very detailed grinding you can get inside of a more curvatures and different things like that so i am a big fan of this this contact wheel now uh this question gets posed to me a lot uh two questions actually get posed to me a lot what size uh this is a 10 inch and this is the only one i have i drive a 10 inch contact wheel and i love it and the other one i get is should you have the serrations or should you just straight up have the flat rubber on the contact wheel now this is just speculation i don't really know uh you know if this is true or not but i would think the serrations help move air through this and cool whatever you're working on again it's probably very small amount of cooling but it does in fact help so you won't notice any difference in your grind you won't see grooves in whatever you're working on with this type of this array of slots in this so and i've not used a flat one so i can't really tell you if it makes a difference or not i have just read that the serrations actually help cool your work while you're working on it so 10 inch contact wheel i'll put some links down in the description to find them there's like some i'll make a couple of different links there's some on amazon there's some on ebay you just really want to pay attention to this uh the the bearing size you know or maybe you want to press in your own bearings you can buy your own bearings and press them in it's totally up to you [Applause] okay so now we're moving on to actually making a tooling arm for the revolution 2x72 belt grinder or maybe you have a home built belt grinder that has a 2 by 2 tube steel receiver set and if you do most likely you've run into the problem of the weld seam being down the middle and you have to remove that and and then also a lot of you have contacted me and said i've removed the weld seam but i can't still i still can't slide my tooling arm in and out of my receiver tube and the trick to this is in this tank this is standard household white vinegar okay this is my acid tank i use it to soak all of my mild steel to remove the mill scale i have been criticized about this so many times by so many different fabricators and welders they don't seem to see the benefit of it but this is such a simple process to remove mill scale and it removes just that little bit that you need in order to telescope one and a half inch by one and a half inch tube steel into two by two tube steel and both of those pieces of tube steel by the way are uh they're 0.25 wall quarter inch wall uh and the reason why we did that with the revolution is so that you're not welding nuts to the outside of those tubes in order to thread in your knobs and other things if you use quarter inch wall there's enough room there to tap and make it happen so without further ado i'm going to open up this pickle tank and we're going to get the the tooling arm out of there now i always use gloves even though this is non-toxic this this particular tank is quite old uh it's been uh you know so i just refresh it every once in a while put it put a little bit more uh vinegar in there and then but i would imagine by now the acidity level is quite high so yeah it's really gross in there and it smells okay like this smells like vinegar really um and then you gotta fish around ah yes so here here's our here's our tooling arm and it's been soaking now let's see this is about 48 hours and if i rub my finger on the outside of it it is taking the mill scale right off of the the steel itself so what i do is i pull it out i always have a rag right near me close this up get rid of this all right so this is just a standard scotch brite pad nothing special been used quite a bit actually and the mill scale is just coming right off that's 48 hours in an acid vinegar bath and it is already just coming right off a little bit of windex to neutralize everything a little bit more let's see by just doing that you can see the the scale just falling off now if you've ever tried to grind scale off of these two steel or any mild steel really you're going to go through a lot of expensive flap discs if you just plan ahead you can get this done with vinegar and you can buy that at any grocery store look at that beautiful then once you got all your mill scale off take a little bit of a vapo rust in a spray bottle and give everything good spritz even the inside i like to make sure the inside gets gets a nice spritz and rub it in by hand and that'll kind of get everything worked in and then i like to just set it on end like this like let it drain out let all the vinegar drain out make sure you keep a nice clean workspace this stuff is coming out it's kind of gross but the evapo rust what it will do is it'll neutralize any corrosion on the inside so that won't be a problem in the future i love that stuff you can actually buy it on amazon i'll put a link down in the description so you can find a can of it for yourself and the last step is grab some 40 grit paper throw it on your sander and just knock down the edges of the corners of this thing random orbital sander grinder whatever you got will work just fine i like to spray a little bit of wd-40 and use my isotunes headphones and they protect my ears while i'm working see i just rounded over the edges nothing too crazy but just hit it with that 40 grit and some wd and that will just uh ensure that it slides and slides in and out let's give it a test run so one of the things i always like to do is make sure i'm using the same side a tooling arm for every test fit so i can see the weld seam on the bottom of this one so i'm going to use that as my bottom and then i'm going to slide it into both tooling arms just to make sure or receiver tubes just to make sure that they'll fit and oh yeah they fit nice and tight just the way i like it yes yeah hardly any play that's what you want okay so now we've got this tooling arm all ready to go we need to just kind of look at what we're up against here with this this small wheel attachment this is my third and favorite uh accessory slash attachment for a 2x72 belt grinder now this thing is made by tr maker he's in turkey but you'd be surprised at the quality of these devices that he makes he makes some amazing equipment over there and he can get it to you almost quicker than i can ship out the revolution i mean he gets things here in the states from turkey in a couple of days uh he ships via dhl a super good guy to work with as well so let's take a look at how we're going to mount this because that's kind of important we we need to obviously uh put it on the right side of the tube right and and in the right direction in this case he put my my housework logo which is which is awesome on there and i think let's see if the bolts are going to nest down into there we're going to want it on that side and i think that's the correct orientation so really what we need to do i'm thinking all the way out uh to the end of this this receiver this uh tooling arm is the best way to do this so that we're we're sticking out quite a ways just gonna line it all up here and then take a look and maybe make a couple of measurements and then drill some holes so [Music] i absolutely love working with steel i love how permanent it is i love how when you you heat it up or you change its temperature you can you can breathe life into steel and i love how it'll be here long after i'm gone something i can leave behind is the tools that i've made and shown others how to make that makes me feel like the luckiest man in the world leaving something behind something that makes a difference something that could change the world and i feel like we've done that with the revolution [Music] so we have our holes drilled need to tap these we're going to tap them all the way through this is actually one of these little tools that someone turned me on to it's made by erwin i think and it's uh it's basically a tap holder that will fit inside of any ratchet i got it on amazon i'll put a link down in the description so you can find one this would be my first experience with it so we'll see how it goes but looks like a pretty cool tool and the reviews on it actually were really good so let's tap this m9 hole here and see if everything lines up of course we got to use a little bit of tap magic to get things lubricated so so far i'm liking the tool it's a little tough to get it started but once you get it started i really like the leverage it gives you so yeah i'd say i recommend it all right moment of truth see if everything lines up we might have some success here all right looking pretty dang spiffy all right let's go mount it in the revolution all right if all goes well this should track pretty well looks like the way it was designed there was plenty of room on this arm to push the wheels out so it all should line up now the concept of this is you uh grab these little soft wheels they're not too soft they're rubbery but they're like nylon coated wheels with bearings on them click this into place and now you've got a small radius to work on with your belt this is one of the new empire abrasives 80 grit ceramic belts they're a sponsor of my channel now and i really do love their stuff great guys they're out of new york link's down in the description so you can go online and sign up get yourself a discount and get some of the best belts i've used in my workshop all right okay so the concept of this is the belt rides up underneath these two wheels there's another wheel down underneath here and what that does is that gives you a nice tight radius to work on other designs i've seen they're not like that they don't have these wheels here and the belt rides up at a higher angle removing a lot of the radius that you can actually use on these small wheel attachments now yes i do know that eventually these wheels will wear out i talked to yusel about that and you know it's just kind of the nature of the game there really isn't a better way of doing this aluminum is about the best thing you can use for this so let's give it a quick whirl here oh yeah yeah she tracks really good all right very good very nice already getting a little bit of wear and that aluminum but that's no big deal as you can see that's how the belt travels and that's why it's important is it gives you this real nice spot because it gives you this real nice spot to work on track it out just a little bit yeah it tracks really well let's kick it on and give it a shot i'm just gonna take something down with this with this one of these small wheel attachments here and just see how it performs throw on my isotunes ppe for my ears crank this thing up to 11. that's actually not crank it to 11 let's go let's go like 30 percent all right so let me tell you exactly what i think about this thing i think this is going to be an absolute game changer for grinding setups and and one of the reasons why is i had a small wheel attachment from another vendor that i used for quite a few years and the the actual small wheels were steel they weren't coated with like a nylon surface like these are and what i would run into a lot was i was trying to get nice clean interior curves and couldn't do it because of a lot of chatter because of the steel of these small wheel attachments now this isn't a terrible design it gets the job done but then you end up having to do a ton of hand sanding afterwards to kind of smooth out those interior curves and what i discovered with these is that that is actually not the case it's nice and smooth i don't have the the bumps and the chatter and the lines in my interiors and it's going to save me a ton of time i'm excited to see what i can do with this and i appreciate tr maker for sending this over to me and giving me a chance to try it out if you'd like to go check them out they're on ebay they have a website you can find them on facebook i'll put links down in the description so you can go out and find one yourself if you got something out of today's video guys make sure you hit that thumbs up button and if you're not already subscribed hit that subscribe button and if you click that little bell you get a notification every time i upload something to youtube there's many ways to support what i do here in my workshop and studio there's patreon there's buy me a coffee you can go out to the website housemaid.us you can buy pieces parts and plans for the revolution 2 by 72 belt grinder project and those are all great ways to support what i do right here in my workshop and studio listen guys i truly appreciate you hanging out with me today in my workshop i hope to see you on the next video my name is brian house and this has been housework [Music] you

Channel: HouseMade

Views: 33,943

Keywords: 2x72 belt grinder, 2 x 72 belt grinder, 2x72 belt grinder build, 2x72 belt grinder plans, 2x72 belt grinder kit, knife grinder, belt grinder, Homemade tools, how to build a belt grinder, home made, diy belt grinder, heavy duty, 2x72 belt sander, metal working, belt grinder diy, diy, belt grinder homemade, belt grinder build, knife making, belt sander, how to, variable speed, metalworking, frequency drive, workshop, 2x72, welding, build, homemade, vfd, knifemaking, grinder

Id: lExIPktOfsk

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020