Buffing Station?

I just took a tour through Odie’s pictures of his shop, and came across the dedicated buffing station he made with the old motor from his lathe. I’m inspired! Odie, has it worked for you the way you’d wanted? Anyone else have a similar setup? I have a motor I’ve kept from an old industrial fan which I bought a 5/8” flange for a number of years ago, thinking I’d make it into a grinder, then thought better of it and bought an actual variable speed grinder. Imagine that! Now I see a use for this motor, and wonder if others have done similar. What size wheel? Any improvements you wish you’d made?

 

I did with a 1700 rpm motor i got from HF. Built a stand on wheels with a couple drawers. I bought the Beals kit that came with a motor shaft adapter and 3 - 8 inch buffs. I turned my old 12 inch HF lathe into a disc sander.

 

I set up my Jet 1442 as a buffing station because of the variable speed and the headstock can be turned 90 degrees. As to your motor what is the speed on it? I prefer about 3000 plus for danish oils and under 1000 for lacquer . It is very nice to have a variable speed motor and most fan motors can be adapted to that. You also might want the extension for the Beal buff, When you set it up i would make it a mobile cabinet so you can push out of the way and make drawers or shelves for buffing supplies.

 

Good question Gerald. I’ll go out and look today. It is reasonably slow speed, and while it may be able to be varied, it only was set up for one speed - on or off. (Power company has notified us that power will be cut in our neighborhood today from 8:30-12:30 for them to do work. Sadly, the shop will be unusable during that time.)

 

Here are a couple of shots of the motor and the tag on it. I’m not an electrical expert, but looks like the speed may be able to be variable depending on the input. Am I reading that right?

 

One other way to get variable speed is to change the diameter of the buffing wheel. A 4 inch diameter wheel has half of the surface speed compared to an 8 inch wheel. I also have an 8 inch wheel that has worn down to 6 inches, so I have three speeds available. I find that the 4 inch wheel is significantly more gentle and comes in quite handy on lacquer.

 

Good point Michael. I’ll keep that in mind, but I think I’d prefer to be able to adjust speed without changing wheels, if possible. I wonder if anyone with more electronics knowledge than I’ve got knows if something like this should work? (Sorry for only posting a screenshot rather than a link to the item, but I couldn’t find a way to copy a link from Amazon.)

 

I use fans from the condenser of an A/C unit. I bought the adaptor from Beal. The condenser fans run at 1100 RPM which is ideal for the Beal buffs.

 

The name plate on the motor indicates that it is a 2 speed motor so you would need to select one speed or the other. The motor is probably not infinitely variable and unless the speed select / on off switch is on it or a wiring diagram is on it, it probably isn't worth the expense to find out.