Ever since I started working with metal, I have wanted a way to shape parts in a more consistent way than an angle grinder. In the knife making community, a 2×72” belt grinder is the gold standard and, even if knife making isn’t necessarily my main purpose, it seemed like an excellent tool for the shop. I did some research and found this fantastic DIY build by Jer Schmidt. It suits my general shop philosophy beautifully - it’s flexible, modular, and a great amount of attention was put into the details of the design. I bought the plans immediately and then sat on them for many years - even building it yourself, it isn’t cheap to get the motor, electronics, hardware, and steel. But I finally hit a wall with the projects I was trying to build recently and decided it was time. I had the more complex parts with curves laser cut from Jer’s provided DXF files and made the rest by hand.

I won’t go into detail on the build - Jer does an awesome job of that in their videos. But here are a few photos of the process.

I still have some work to do - it needs to be disassembled and painted and there are some additional attachments I’d like to build. It also sits too high on my fabrication table - when I have more space I’ll build a cart/stand for it.

A few key features:

• tilts 90 degrees and the table remains centered on the hinge axis

• easily swap belts from very coarse for fast material removal right down to very fine for sharpening an polishing

• 2HP motor can run on 120 or 240V single-phase power with a variable frequency drive (VFD) converting it to three-phase and allowing it to run at any speed from zero to about 3800 rpm in either direction

• the feet have been modified from the original design to fit the 4” bolt pattern on my fabrication table so it can be mounted wherever it’s most convenient

The build process was a joy and the results have exceeded my expectations. A new tool like this always opens my mind up to new possibilities and I look forward to seeing what I can do with it.