Belt & disc sander improvements 

Thanks Chris. This design has been around for many years and I've noticed lots of clones. The changes I made to mine have made it much more useful and were definitely worth the effort. Cheers.

One of my most respected mentors (my father) used to refer to "making a silk purse out of a sow's ear" :) Thank you for the comment.

Interesting idea. Thanks for watching.

Thanks Peter. It was a game changer for me - turned a machine I didn't like using into a very useful tool. Cheers.

@@alanshomeworkshop I'm continually having the drive belt break on mine. No idea why. any thoughts?

I haven't experienced any belt breakages on my machine and can only offer a couple of generic suggestions. Belt breakage could result if the belt tension is too high or, less likely, if the pulleys are out of alignment or damaged in some way. Hope you find a solution.

@@alanshomeworkshop belt tension as in sanding belt or drive belt?

I meant the drive belt - I haven't had sanding belt problems on that machine either. I did however have a problem with sanding belts breaking on a hand held belt sander. That was a bad batch of belts that came unglued at the factory join...

Well, addressing your observations one at a time - I bought the unit in the early 1980's and I used it in the horizontal position for 30+ years. I pbly looked at the owners manual when I unpacked it but the manual, and any memory of same, is long gone. It is true that I bought what I could afford at that time so I suppose you could say I "cheaped out". If I was to buy such a machine today, my circumstances would allow for a more expensive machine. However, my strong inclination these days is to recycle / re-purpose / upgrade rather than ditch and replace. The modifications do not seem over-thought to me and I was definitely not having some fun on viewers. But you are, of course, welcome to your opinion. Thank you for your comment.

@@alanshomeworkshop since I must have missed the part about 30 years ago, I can be forgiven for the assumption that this was a recent purchase. But really, at 30 years you are still complaining ? Whatever.

@@georgecurtis6463 I am now retired and have the time, resources and inclination to fix some things that i have tolerated for too long.

@@georgecurtis6463 Clearly George you don't seem to be that observant. A Blind Man can see in the video that the machine has quite a bit of age on it. Perhaps limit your comments to constructive ones rather than bagging someone who has ingeniously come up with ideas to improve the machine as has been demonstrated in many of Alan's videos.

I think George might be Alan’s jealous neighbor who wonders why Alan drives a nicer car, has better tools and retired before He did? By the way Alan, could I buy one of these kits for my Ryobi? I Love it. It is the way I do things too. Things that are less than ideal seem to keep nagging at us to fix vs. the things that work as they should all the time. I think that if you rushed into making it work earlier, you would not have had the wisdom nor the talent to make it so well!