Shopsmith Forums

I do not see anything about homemade arbors when searching this forum, so thought I’d show what I have been doing. Proper Shopsmith arbors are rarely available locally, plus I wanted to mount some non critical items like polishing/buffing wheels and wire wheels (a couple of each) at minimum cost. I got some 5/8” bore heavy wall pipe and had a few 5/8”diameter bolts, so I cut the heads off the bolts and connected bolt and pipe with a ¼” roll pin; this is the result:
[ATTACH]12097[/ATTACH]

I do not recommend you use these for critical items like saw blades or grinding wheels where exact concentricity is important. It is useful to have a metal lathe to trim the ends of the pipe perpendicular. The portion of the bolt in the pipe does not have any threads. The roll pin extends right through both sides of the pipe.

The following arbor is 3.5” long, made up of a piece of the pipe 1.75” long and the bolt extends 0.565” into the pipe (leaving a socket 1.185” deep). The bolt without head was 2.315” long. The center of the setscrew is .375” from the end of the pipe. The roll pin is .3” from the other end of the pipe.
[ATTACH]12098[/ATTACH]
Works fine, especially since I am using them at slow speed.

Nice innovation!:) Thanks for posting!

That's a great solution and good photos. I too have wondered if others out there have tried this.

Thanks for your comments.

This week I was in our local Dewalt store and they had a 6" Porter Cable rubber backed and velcroed sanding disk, a Dewalt 5"x3/32"x5/8"x11tpi metal cutting disk and a 9"x1/4"x5/8"x11tpi metal sanding disk on sale for cheap, so I bought one of each.
[ATTACH]12228[/ATTACH]
Their center threads screw right on the arbors I have made using standard 5/8" bolts.
[ATTACH]12229[/ATTACH]
Now I have to see what to use them for.
[ATTACH]12230[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]12231[/ATTACH]

My first 10ER came with a "homemade" saw arbor which was very scary to me. He had cut the head off a (5/8"?) bolt, sandwiched the saw blade between a set of nuts and washers, and then gripped the bolt with the drill chuck.

Your arbors look pretty nice and not nearly as dangerous!!

Very scary!
Fortunately the pipe I got is a nice tight fit on the 5/8" SS spindle and the cut off bolts fit snug into the pipe so there is very little wobble.
The setscrews I use take the standard SS hex wrench.

We have the metal lathe and just need to know another word for wall pipe.

Those arbors would really come in handy
Anne in Arizona where spring sprang today

"Heavy wall" pipe is just a term for pipe with a thicker than usual wall. You need a pipe with exactly 5/8" bore and a wall thick enough to give ample thickness to accomodate the set screw. A thin wall results in the set screw falling out when you back it off to remove the arbor from the SS. The pipe I used has a wall of 0.190", near as I can measure. I think the metal supplier had other even thicker wall pipe as well.

Great idea, I will have to try a get my neighbor to turn some out on his metal lathe for me. Would be nice to have enough to mount up several things on.

prmindartmouth wrote:"Heavy wall" pipe is just a term for pipe with a thicker than usual wall. You need a pipe with exactly 5/8" bore and a wall thick enough to give ample thickness to accomodate the set screw. A thin wall results in the set screw falling out when you back it off to remove the arbor from the SS. The pipe I used has a wall of 0.190", near as I can measure. I think the metal supplier had other even thicker wall pipe as well.

Your local PVF (pipe, valves and fittings) distributor should have steel pipe that is known as Schedule 40, Schedule 80 and maybe some 160, which indicates various wall thicknesses. Typically, if someone in the construction industry is referring to heavy wall pipe, it is the 80. It's application is usually for high pressure piping. I'd be surprised if a plumbing supplier had it.

Oh, one little issue... it comes in 21' joints and they usually don't want to cut it up, but it also comes in pipe nipples up to 12" long which would make 3 or 4 arbors.