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I recently purchased a used strip sander with three unused belts. They had been in storage for a decade and when I mounted the belts to the machine, the joints failed. Is there a method to reconnect these joints?

awatson6 wrote:I recently purchased a used strip sander with three unused belts. They had been in storage for a decade and when I mounted the belts to the machine, the joints failed. Is there a method to reconnect these joints?

There may be but I doubt that it would be worth the effort. Buy new belts!

awatson6 wrote:I recently purchased a used strip sander with three unused belts. They had been in storage for a decade and when I mounted the belts to the machine, the joints failed. Is there a method to reconnect these joints?

Any attempt will result in very limited success. I have done so when I needed to use an old one because I did not have a new one and time was the enemy.

Very light touch required, minimal time between subsequent reconnects, bottomless patience required.

Must be done with 0 thickness buildup at the splice.

Splice must not skew the edges of the belt.

Spliceable from the back side only(a non-smooth, non clean surface at best).

i.e. Not worth the effort.

P.S. The broken belts are useful for some hand sanding, so save them.

I did a simple Google search on:
splicing a sanding belt
and got back about 2,000,000 hits, mostly leading to discussions about it. Even reading them looked like too much work for a Monday morning...


.

Here's what I did.
https://forum.shopsmith.com/viewtopic.php?t=8421