How to Clean Sanding Belts

Want to get more life out of your sandpaper? If you’ve been wondering how to clean sanding belts, good news is, it’s easy. All you need is an abrasive cleaning stick.

Especially important on drum sanders

Of course we want to get more life out of every piece of sandpaper we use in the shop, but this is especially important on drum sanders, for a handful of reasons. Good quality paper for drum sanders ain’t cheap, so it makes sense to get as much mileage out of it as possible. In addition to the cost of the paper, you may be custom cutting rolls of abrasive to fit your sander. That means you’re investing money, and your time, to keep sandpaper on your machine. A little preemptive cleaning will go a long way toward keep your sandpaper cutting. Clean sandpaper is going to cut better, with less chance of burning your material, than clogged paper.

How to clean sanding belts

The simplest approach is to grab the abrasive cleaning stick and run it across the drum. Want to distance yourself a little from the action? No problem. We show you how to make a drum sander cleaning “wand” for just that purpose.

Drum sanders are great

A drum sander is a wonderful tool to have in the shop. It can save you A LOT of time sanding, and give you better results than a hand-held sander.