Flat Belting

[KCSO]

I am looking for a good source for flat drive belting. I picked up a surface grinder made in 1910 and it is all working,but the drive belt is shot. Most of my stuff is converted to poly or v belt and I lost my flat belt info.

[waksupi]

http://www.thomasnet.com/products/drive-belts-4802906-1.html

Try this, Jim

[Jumptrap]

I am looking for a good source for flat drive belting. I picked up a surface grinder made in 1910 and it is all working,but the drive belt is shot. Most of my stuff is converted to poly or v belt and I lost my flat belt info.

If Ric's lead doesn't help you, go over to yesterday's tractors (www.ytmag.com) and inquire. Those guys know where all that stuff is for running corn grinders and threshers and so forth...should have what you're looking for.

[floodgate]

Jim:

Another good source for flat belting, belt lacing, etc., is Hit & Miss Enterprises <www.hitnmiss.com>, suppliers to the gas engine and tractor restoration trade. I've belted up an old 26" pole saw and a 12" x 8 foot wood-frame lathe with their stuff. All kinds of old hardware fittings, oil cups, and so on, and tons of NOS, replica and used parts. Nice folks, too.

Doug

[Buckshot]

...........McMaster-Carr?

You know, now you're going to have to build a steam engine to run it?

............Buckshot

[PatMarlin]

I love that olf belt drive machinery. I want a planer.

You could buy rubber belting at any industrial rubber supply and lace your own, ifn you knew how to lace.

I've got some here that would work well, but I use it for other stuff.

[crazy mark]

I love that olf belt drive machinery. I want a planer.

You could buy rubber belting at any industrial rubber supply and lace your own, ifn you knew how to lace.

I've got some here that would work well, but I use it for other stuff.

They also sell cheap metal lacing kits and they are easy to use. Kinda like putting giant zippers in. Mark

[KCSO]

I bought two surface grinders from a fellow and sold one for the cost of both. The one I kept is a Wilmarth and Morman and is solid cast iron and was made in about 1910. The unit is all good except for the belt and it has to be a spliced flat belt because of the design of the machine. It has been 10 years since i last ordered any flat belting and I had lost touch. I contacted a couople of the suppliers you fellows so kindly provided and am waiting for pricing. I'm not sure why I need a ton and a half surface grinder to taper springs with, but I got one now.

[shooter575]

Many years ago I got a SB 9" lathe. No belt.I made up one out of some oak taned leather belt leather I got at Tandy leather.Lacing instructions were in my old machinest handbook.I had to keep shorting the belt when it streched past the adjustment. Later I got a bunch of the steel lacing.Alagator brand? Anyway this stuff is neet.Comes in 10" lengths.Just bust off what you need.Hammer one side in.Line up the other,hammer it togther and insert the pin.Works on leather or composite rubber belting.
Drop me a PM if you want copies of the lacing info.I can send ya a piece of the metal lacing also if you cant find any.

[shooter575]

Also,I would buy the composite belting if I was buying.

[KCSO]

What I am looking at now is a vinal flat belt that comes with a seal/splice kit. The belt that was with the unit was a well worn and rotted leather belt with the splice kit. I am curently converting my S/B lathe to use an automitive flat drive belt, it is suppose to give about 25% more power.

[KCSO]

Just as I was set to call on a belt I found a stamp on the back of the old belt that siad PAGE BELTING. I did a search and the company is still in business. They have been suppling belting since 1868. I called and told them what I needed and it is on the way. The girl knew just what I needed and is sending a new belt and link set. They supplied belts for the Wilmarth from 1900 to the 1920's when they went under. Boy I can just picture me sharpening mower blades on a ton and a half surface grinder with an attached 15" wheel. This is crazy!

[Buckshot]

..............Ya but you haven't said anything yet about the steam engine! I suppose you could cobble up a Fairbanks-Morse hit r miss and it'd be kosher :-)

..............Buckshot

[wills]

http://antiquemachinery.com/1890%20surface%20grinder.JPG

[PatMarlin]

Listeriod?

[floodgate]

Man those old machines are works of are, aren't they? I have several of Kenneth L. Cope's books of data and engraving cuts from old machinery catalogs, and drool over them.

Reminds me of a surface grinder story; back in the college machine shop where they let us students use the machines (I learned on an 11" Logan, Rick). One day a physics student went to surface a piece of stock, laid it on the magnetic chuck on the feed table, threw the lever activating the magnet, switched on the grinder head motor and c a r e f u l l y lowered the wheel until it touched the surface - and threw his chunk of BRASS clear the length of the shop! Old Alf Enersen, the Norske shop boss, went away shaking his head: "These scientists, they don't know nothin!"

floodgate

[KCSO]

Buckshot
I thought I mentioned that this unit has a huge 1 horse solid copper electric motor. The motor is still in fine shape and hums like a sewing machine. If I got desperate i know where I can borrow a horsepower.

Floodgate
I'll send you some photo's when I get it all finished. I am going to clean and repaint it and resurface the table before I put it in place.

[Bret4207]

Listeriod?


Listeroid refers to Indian made Lister diesels as opposed to the British made Listers, or so says a recent issue of Farm Show Magazine. Lister Diesls are considered the ne plus ultra (thats the extent of my French) of diesels by my Amish pals.

[PatMarlin]

I already knew what a Listeroid was Bret, but I was suggesting one for the belt drive.

I want one, and did you know they are not being allowed to be imported in the US now because of an EPA federal ban? The freakin' Feds are now banning Listeroids.

If you know anyone selling them let me know, cause of now- I can't get one... :roll:

Here we have an engine that will run boidiesel, pure oil of any kind just about, and sips fuel, but are government will not allow it... :roll:

[Ricochet]

I'm the guy who coined the "Listeroid" name, back in the late '90s when they'd just been noticed by some of the guys on the Enginads boards and the Stationary Engine List and several folks were talking about importing them. I finally got mine in late 1999, one of the second batch Mike Monteith (the first guy to actually import them to the U.S.) brought in. He had lots of hassles with the EPA. (And Customs. And the Indians.) The EPA finally let him bring them in, but said "no more after January 1, 2000." Later, some sort of compromise was worked out where they could be imported with an attestation that they would not be used in any kind of vehicle for some period of time. I think they're still available on that basis, but I don't know for how long. I've been out of the market for a while, as my 1999 6/1 hasn't needed any kind of nonroutine work. I love that engine! ("Dolly's" her name.)

(Another friend of mine on the SEL back then said these things are made of "Caste Iron.")

Dolly has a big flat pulley that I use to drive various stuff, but the main thing she does is power a generator that I drive with a serpentine belt, driven off the flywheel rim with a custom pulley that Mike made on the generator.

[redneckdan]

- and threw his chunk of BRASS clear the length of the shop! Old Alf Enersen, the Norske shop boss, went away shaking his head: "These scientists, they don't know nothin!"

floodgate

I supose he was using an aluminum oxide wheel to boot?

[grumpy one]

I'm the guy who coined the "Listeroid" name, back in the late '90s when they'd just been noticed by some of the guys on the Enginads boards and the Stationary Engine List and several folks were talking about importing them. I finally got mine in late 1999, one of the second batch Mike Monteith (the first guy to actually import them to the U.S.) brought in. He had lots of hassles with the EPA. (And Customs. And the Indians.) The EPA finally let him bring them in, but said "no more after January 1, 2000." Later, some sort of compromise was worked out where they could be imported with an attestation that they would not be used in any kind of vehicle for some period of time. I think they're still available on that basis, but I don't know for how long. I've been out of the market for a while, as my 1999 6/1 hasn't needed any kind of nonroutine work. I love that engine! ("Dolly's" her name.)

(Another friend of mine on the SEL back then said these things are made of "Caste Iron.")

Dolly has a big flat pulley that I use to drive various stuff, but the main thing she does is power a generator that I drive with a serpentine belt, driven off the flywheel rim with a custom pulley that Mike made on the generator.

If that generator is an alternator, you've probably noticed that you don't get especially great frequency regulation doing it that way. I used to have a Lister ST2 (i.e. the 1.25 litre two cylinder) driving an 8.5 kVA alternator, factory built, and it had two features that were really necessary to get satisfactory results. First, the standard Lister adjustable governor was replaced with a non-adjustable one that would go from no load to maximum load without letting the engine speed vary by more than about 15 RPM. The other is that the alternator was direct-driven; its housing was bored and dowelled to flange-mount on the engine, and it had only a single parallel-roller bearing at the opposite end from the engine - it used the engine main bearing to support the near end.

Because the maximum short-term running speed for a Lister is 2700 RPM, and the maximum sustained speed is about 2200 RPM, obviously it was necessary to use a four-pole alternator. We use 50 Hz mains frequency here, so the engine ran at 1500 RPM, and the alternator delivered 240 Volts. The rated power of an ST2 at 1500 RPM is 15 brake horsepower, so it was well-matched to the alternator.

Geoff

[Four Fingers of Death]

You want to watch your fingers with that old belt driven machinery, ask me how I know! :-) Mick, aka, Fourfingersofdeath, 4fingermick.

[Buckshot]

............When my dad was a kid back on the farm in Arkansas, there in town (small little place) they had a machine/blacksmith shop for repairs. Unlike today, lots of stuff was made to be repaired. Actually it was made to be properly maintained, and THEN repaired over and over until it returned to the dust from whense it came, or the owner dies of old age and didn't need it anymore!

Nowadays there is no maintainence involved, and when it breaks or wears out you throw it away or trade it in for another.

Anyway, the place was a lineshaft shop. He said a guy would step up to a machine and slap the running belt on the machine's pully, and do his thing, then slap the belt off. He said they had a big hammer by the forge and a guy would walk up with a piece of red hot iron, hold it over the bedplate and step on a peddle which tightened an idler pully and the hammer arm would strike wham, wham, wham, wham while he turned the piece over or moved it around.

Since this wasn't a real ritzy area and there was a depression on at the time, he said they used old boiler fluepipe for lots of stuff and had a big ole pile of it. He said they'd heat it and beat it flat to make plates or slit it, heat it, and beat it out flat for thinner plates.

They grew a lot of rice and they had an old Plymouth flathead 6 on a skid hooked to a pump, to pump water into the fields. He said it ran on distallite fuel so you didn't want to shut it off for very long, and it'd run for weeks at a time. When they changed the oil he said you'd pull the plug in the pan and then start pouring in the new oil. When the new oil began to run out the drain plug you screwed the plug back in and finished filling it :-)

................Buckshot

[KCSO]

Buckshot

My Buddy is working a trip hammer that has been converted from line shaft, and most of our shop is all converted line shaft equipment. When I was growing up I'll bet I heard, " watch out for the belts" about a million times. All of my polishing equipment at one time was a 6 foot long line shaft polisher from an old blacksmiths knife shop.

[floodgate]

I don't know if it was still running, but the Sierra Railway shops in Jamestown, CA was, as of a few years back, the ONLY CAL-OSHA approved machine shop still allowed to run on lineshafting, because they did a lot of educational and demonstration work, the workers were specially trained and carefully supervised, and the public was kept well clear of the moving parts.

floodgate

[Bret4207]

My Amish pals all use lineshafts to run brand new Jet, Grizzly, Delta woodworking machinery and some serious metal working stuff like Bridgeprot mills, big modern lathes, etc. Quite impressive to watch.

[PatMarlin]

Brett I would be in seventh heaven to see some pics of how they do that.

Do you think you possibly could take some? We live up in the remote outback, and I need to start looking at ways to do that. I'll send you one of those disposible camera's.

Maybe they have a website up... amish.com or sumthin'..... LOL! yeah right.. :mrgreen:

[StarMetal]

Pat,

You asked, so here it is:

http://www.amish.net/

and it's for real. [smilie=1:

Joe

[grumpy one]

[QUOTE=Buckshot
Anyway, the place was a lineshaft shop. He said a guy would step up to a machine and slap the running belt on the machine's pully, and do his thing, then slap the belt off. He said they had a big hammer by the forge and a guy would walk up with a piece of red hot iron, hold it over the bedplate and step on a peddle which tightened an idler pully and the hammer arm would strike wham, wham, wham, wham while he turned the piece over or moved it around.

................Buckshot[/QUOTE]

I grew up with a certain amount of lineshaft machinery, but touching a running belt was just not the way it was designed. Normally you had a free pulley beside a keyed pulley and moved the belt back and forth between the two, but never by touching the belt - you had a fork and a pedal, so you just stepped on the front pedal and the fork pulled the belt across onto the keyed pulley, and you stepped on the back pedal to move it back to the free pulley. If that guy was using his hand, I'd be pretty sure that was a backwoods homemade setup and the fork-and-pedal mechanism was broken or missing. The belt has a join in it, and unless you carefully timed your grab, the join would lock onto your hand and tear you to pieces. It's just too stupid to contemplate, like dipping molten lead with your fingers.

My lathe still uses flat-belt spindle drive, so you can change spindle speeds without stopping the spindle. You get it running, then quickly lift the belt-tensioning weight (which is the spindle clutch box) with one lever while you shift the belt across with another lever. Only takes a second or so to shift, but you have to go one speed at a time, and drive it up to speed again before you shift again.

The last machine I used that used a free pulley beside a keyed pulley and a stop-go pedal that moved the belt, was my uncle's big pedestal drill. We took it out of commission a couple of years after he died, about ten years ago I guess. Offered it around as a freebie, but there wasn't much interest. I think we got a guy to accept it eventually, complete with its motor and intermediate shaft etc.

Geoff

[Ricochet]

If that generator is an alternator, you've probably noticed that you don't get especially great frequency regulation doing it that way.
Oh yeah, Geoff, my frequency regulation is TERRIBLE! But I don't run anything with it that's critical for line frequency. The only things I can think of that really are dependent on a closely regulated frequency are a synchronous motor electric clock and an old Hammond organ. I don't have any more synchronous clocks. I do have a Hammond right here, but I'm not running her off of Dolly's power.

[grumpy one]

Audio turntables tended to give unsatisfactory results with unregulated line frequency too, but the things that can get mildly inconvenient are overheating motors and transformers when you run them at full load at lower frequencies than they are designed for. The iron saturates - there is just barely enough iron to maintain a tolerable temperature at rated load and mains frequency. Of course lower line frequency also confuses your calculations about speeds and feeds a bit.

Geoff

[PatMarlin]

Pat,

You asked, so here it is:

http://www.amish.net/

and it's for real. [smilie=1:



Well blow me down Olive.. :mrgreen:

[PatMarlin]

Oh yeah, Geoff, my frequency regulation is TERRIBLE! But I don't run anything with it that's critical for line frequency. The only things I can think of that really are dependent on a closely regulated frequency are a synchronous motor electric clock and an old Hammond organ. I don't have any more synchronous clocks. I do have a Hammond right here, but I'm not running her off of Dolly's power.


Might that be the mighty B3? I used to have one with a Leslie 122.


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