It occurs to me that I could make a belt sander myself (I'm thinking a
6x48 stationary sander). I have motors (up to 1 hp), pulleys, belts,
lots of scrap steel, a welder, lots of wood, a metal lathe, ....).
Also, I just fixed my junky 4x36 sander, and it seems to be a simple
machine. What do I need to be especially concerned with? The rollers
have to be crowned, I imagine alignment is pretty fussy, and so on.
Has anybody done this? There is some guy who build a pretty small
sander (like a 2" belt) out of plywood and so on, and you can find
this on the web, but none of his stuff seemed particularly relevant to
a larger one. So, has anybody done this?