What Is A Bow Sander?
Making a Bow Sander With Opa's Wrokshop
When restoring hand tools I often need to remake or refinish grips, totes, knobs, and handles, but they are always a pain to sand. You end up with all these scraps of sand paper that are prematurely bad and just gave you third-degree burns. Sanding sponges just fall apart and are not much better. I needed a strip of paper that would get into small places without the need of my fingers wrapped in the crumpled paper. A friend of mine (Opa from Opa's Workshop) came for a visit and we needed something to build and this problem came to mind. I have seen several other bow sanders that look more like a coping saw and you install small strips of paper into a handle, but then you have to replace the paper and they can be a bit difficult.
Just about that time, I saw a bunch of sanding belts I had kept from back when I had a belt sander. So what am I supposed to do with sanding belts and no sander? We are going to make sanding bows. All told, the project took us about 1.5 hours and could have been done under an hour if we were not filming it, but it was worth the fun. Now I need to make them for other size belts.
But, with Opa here we had to have some fun so I hope you like this video and the outtakes at the end were worth their weight in gold!