Here's my DOUBLE rant of the day - Sandpaper belts. and Lowes

[LCHIEN]

I have a 4" x 36" belt sander and bought three belts a while back; I think unfortunately the glues that splice the belt are only good for a year from manufacture. The belt on the sander broke on startup, then I broke two more spare belts in short order. The belts were kept in air conditioned house and in a closed cabinet (no UV)

You can only buy them in three packs but as an occasional user one last me easily a year after which all three are bad.

I tried to go on Lowes website and see what they had: What's missing from this description?
Yeah, no size. So I scroll down to the specifications. Surely...



I have no idea what size this is. How useful is that?

For the win: No description matched 4 x 36 belt at Lowes. They had 11 pictures of sanding belts but none had the size in the description. How can you sell sanding belts without size information?

[Jim Frye]

Been there, done that, also didn't like it. I once bought a bunch of 3M 3x21 belts in various grits. They were kept in my basement shop where the temperature is always in the '60s and the humidity ranges from 45%-60%. After several years, all of the joints failed on all of the belts. I now buy belts for a given project.

[leehljp]

We should not have to do this, but a few years ago, more like 20, when I was in Japan with my American sized sander and belts and unable to get some quick, I sanded down the glue on a (came apart) belt, I got some rubber epoxy and glued it and clamped it. I never had a problem with that and other belts that were glued by me.

In today's life that should not be, but the old days of fixing what you had - sure was helpful! But when you are on a project, who wants to wait 24 hours or so for a belt's glue/epoxy to cure? It is a pain!

[capncarl]

Have you tried Harbor Freight? I broke my last 6x48 belt and headed to Lowe’s, didn’t have that size. HF had plenty at a reasonable price. Decent sandpaper.

[Jim Frye]

I have noticed a trend emerging in big chain stores lately. Former known brand named products are being replaced with house brand or off brand items that are sometimes less costly and of lesser quality. Example: both SWMBO and I use heating pads to help with our arthritis pain. We have been using a pad by Sunbeam that was selling for $35. All of the stores around no longer have them on their shelves. The local big box grocery store chain replaced all of the Sunbeam products with store branded products at half the price. We used to use these, but stopped because of the short life span of the products. BTW, the $35 Sunbeam heating pad is still available on Amazon for $53. Pretty sure this all tariff related.

[LCHIEN]

****, I was across the street from HF tonight and I didn't think of them.
I have one coming by delivery Friday (today's Wed) but HF would have been right there and cheaper, too.

I tried gluing together the broken belts, made an alignment jig and everything, but no luck. Takes a specialized adhesive and the adhesive is a special formula only in large cans, expensive and only lasts a year.

[LCHIEN]

I recall we had a similar discussion some time back

https://www.sawdustzone.org/forum/di...ers#post840326