Upgrading kit blocks

Robertk

Robertk

Joined
Dec 15, 2023
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Is there any way to take kit blocks, which are crude, land improve on their appearance? One thought I had was to put them in a rock polisher to smooth them up, any thoughts on this? Otherwise I just toss them and purchase better ones, which is what I do with the kit supplied rope.
 
The photo below shows a primitive (but cheap) experiment at rounding off the corners of kit-supplied blocks. A flap wheel sanding attachment is fitted to a mini drill. A sandpaper lined hole is made in a block of wood. In the cluster of blocks shown, the central one is unprocessed; the surrounding four suffered a 30sec spin in the device. Corners have been rounded and the edges slightly softened. An improvement would be to secure the block on a Dremel drill press and use the Dremel to drive the flap wheel. A perspex "lid" would allow the process to be observed. Maybe arranging the flapwheel off centre would help?
block rounding.jpg
 
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Short John Bronze said:
The photo below shows a primitive (but cheap) experiment at rounding off the corners of kit-supplied blocks. A flap wheel sanding attachment is fitted to a mini drill. A sandpaper lined hole is made in a block of wood. In the cluster of blocks shown, the central one is unprocessed; the surrounding four suffered a 30sec spin in the device. Corners have been rounded and the edges slightly softened. An improvement would be to secure the block on a Dremel drill press and use the Dremel to drive the flap wheel. A perspex "lid" would allow the process to be observed. Maybe arranging the flapwheel off centre would help?
View attachment 497648
Click to expand...
How large is the hole in relation to the sanding wheel?

I experimented with lining a film canister with sand paper and putting it in my paint shaker, but the results were negligible.
 
The hole is 25mm; the 'relaxed' diameter of the flap wheel is 17mm. I did try a 22mm hole but it was not as effective. I guess the blocks need room to dance. The blocks I tried were 5mm. Given the simplicity of the device it would be easy to try variations for different block sizes. As mentioned above, a bit of eccentricity might be interesting. The flapwheels were £4.89 for 10 plus mandrel from e-bay. Other sizes are probably out there. I guess it is working better than a paddle arrangement because the blocks are squeezed and dragged between a hard and a yielding sanded surface.
flapwheel.jpg
 
All of these block sanders work on the same principle and most depend on the “junk” materials in your shop that you didn’t throw away as they might be useful someday. Your’s is a great example of this. Well done!

Roger
 
Short John Bronze said:
The hole is 25mm; the 'relaxed' diameter of the flap wheel is 17mm. I did try a 22mm hole but it was not as effective. I guess the blocks need room to dance. The blocks I tried were 5mm. Given the simplicity of the device it would be easy to try variations for different block sizes. As mentioned above, a bit of eccentricity might be interesting. The flapwheels were £4.89 for 10 plus mandrel from e-bay. Other sizes are probably out there. I guess it is working better than a paddle arrangement because the blocks are squeezed and dragged between a hard and a yielding sanded surface.
View attachment 497728
Click to expand...
Thanks! I have a couple of flapwheels in different grits that I got from the local DIY+ store. Going to have to give this a try. Allen's set-up also looks good.

And while we're on the question of blocks, an unanswered question from my own build log concerns identifying blocks in plans. The French plans for my current build identify blocks as 3/1, 3/2, 5/3, etc. Apart from surmising the second number appears to be the number of sheaves in the block, I can't figure out what the first number represents. Anyone know?
 
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