skiveblk.txt

Written October 1999 
by Grant Erwin 
This document is in the public domain

My lathe has a horizontal flat belt drive. The belt that came on it had a clip
that went click-click-click which I didn't like. I wanted to learn how to 
splice a flat belt anyway. There is some good information in the book "How
To Run A Lathe" published by South Bend Lathe Co. and reprinted by Lindsay,
available on the Internet at http://www.powells.com from Powell's Technical
Books, the best bookstore on the planet in my opinion.

I got a lot of help off of rec.crafts.metalworking, largely from Jim Rozen.
If you want to reach him you can search on his name on DejaNews.

Anyway, I consider the prices of belting to be ridiculous. Being cheap, I
wanted to glue my own, and not pay anyone for anything besides a leather
belt and glue. I bought my belt from Peat Belting in South Seattle, and
they gave me half a baby food jar of acetone-based glue, along with
directions.

I tried to cut a skive several ways, but all failed miserably. Finally, I
resolved to make a skiving block that couldn't fail. I also made it dual
purpose, so it can also be used as a clamp. The skiving block has a 1"
wide slot cut at a "ramp" of varying depth, going from zero to about
5/16". It has a clamp at one end which securely holds the belt. I put a
single parallel in the mill vise and clamped the block so it presented
the wide face of the belt as a vertical surface. I put a long end mill
in the mill (I used 3/8" end mill) and ran it at the next to highest 
speed. I didn't take off all the leather in one pass, rather I took 
"back steps" working first on the outer 1 1/2" then taking longer
passes and going deeper. I found that at the very end the leather
tends to stretch when it gets very thin. So I cut it off square with
tin snips.

It's good to pay attention to the way the skive is supposed to be
arrayed with respect to the pulleys. The acetone glue gets applied to
both surfaces, and is allowed to dry for about 15 minutes. Then a
second coat is applied, and again it is allowed to dry. Finally, a
3rd coat of glue is applied to both surfaces, then the belt is clamped
in place for 20 minutes after which the clamp is removed and the 
joint allowed to dry for 24 hours before running under full tension.

Using this method, for less than $20 plus a little milling time, I was
able to get a nicely quiet new leather belt for my 9" South Bend lathe.

-- gwe