Homemade Electric Burnisher ... What Do I Need?

[Nuttish]

Do I need to slow the motor down at all, or are the higher RPMs ok?

It helps me greatly to slow things down. My 1750 rpm 3/4 hp motor is running 2:1 to an arbor with those Italian felt burnishing wheels from Campbell Randall, so it's about 875 rpm.

Works well enough. This English bridle took maybe 3 minutes, though it's tiny. Sand straight, bevel, 400 grit belt to dress it up, saddle soap foam burnish, 400 grit, saddle soap foam burnish, 400 grit then 600 grit, super secret wax mixture.

[slipangle]

That's a nifty setup, Nuttish.

Any way you can slow down a standard grinder or buffer motor will help. It really doesn't require high RPMs like 3450 to burnish edges and I think that is a little too much.

I mount my home made burnisher, with steel shank, like the OP's, in my metal lathe head stock chuck. Or a drill press works too. But I try to save my drill press for drilling. The bearings in a drill press were not designed for lateral loads, even though burnishing puts very little sideways pressure on the quill.

Slip

It helps me greatly to slow things down. My 1750 rpm 3/4 hp motor is running 2:1 to an arbor with those Italian felt burnishing wheels from Campbell Randall, so it's about 875 rpm.

IMG_4710.png

Works well enough. This English bridle took maybe 3 minutes, though it's tiny. Sand straight, bevel, 400 grit belt to dress it up, saddle soap foam burnish, 400 grit, saddle soap foam burnish, 400 grit then 600 grit, super secret wax mixture.

IMG_4713.png

[Nuttish]

You only need a 1/2" Jacobs chuck. for any of these solutions. You can get them from Harbor Freight for $9.

If you want to go slower than 3400 RPM, you'll need another motor or to build a mechanical speed control like I did — it is not practical to change the speed of a capacitor start motor. I'm not even sure it's possible.

You can get good-enough benchtop lathes from Harbor Freight for $200. The speeds are perfect. http://www.harborfreight.com/5-speed-bench-top-wood-lathe-65345.html

There are variable speed fractional horsepower bench buffers with long arbors on Amazon for less than $200. I think they have 5/8" arbors, but you can also get 5/8" Jacobs chucks.

You can get cheapish VFDs for 3 phase grinders if that's what you have.