Thread: 6" hand held Holzher belt Sander

Hi Errol,

it doesn't look like a one-off or some other private initiative custom job. The frame casting looks like it's factory made all right, so you have a rare machine from a limited series, probably made to special order or for some special purpose, like quick yet fine sanding of large planes. (the drive system doesn't look to be reinforced or souped up in wattage in any way, so i doubt that it will cope with rough and intense stock removal with such belt width). I've been around for some decades now and i've never seen a 6-inch version of the original type 210 4-inch sander before, so it goes to show that there are new things to be learned every day!
Your experience with this exceptionally wide belt sander is somewhat like the experience i once had with an exceptionally big orbital sander. I never expected to encounter a sander big enough to take a full A4-sized sheet of abrasive paper, yet Festo turned out to have made one. This RTH-model was made in the 60's, in their (Alsacian) Sarreguemines works.

But back to your belt sander. The 4-inch version was Holz Her model 210 (later 2210), with an 800 Watts motor and a belt speed of somewhere around 300 - 400 m/min. So it was pretty standard and much like the large Hitachi's, Makita's, Festo's and Porter Cable machines of the same era. Holz Her also made this model for Bosch, which carried it in its catalogue as type 1270. In those days (latter 60's/early 70's) it was not so easy yet to build a really heavy duty motor of 800 Watts or beyond in a reasonably compact and lightweight shape. Festo and Holz Her were honest enough to mention on the type plate that these motors were not fit for pure continuous duty under heavy load circumstances, but rather in a 40% regime (meaning that for every 4 minutes of use under severe load, a cooling down break of 6 minutes had to be taken into account). So, the standard design shape of this Holz Her belt sander motor was already light and sparing, with little metal bulk as reserve, helping out as a heat sink in case of overheating. For this reason and since the motor on your wide belt sander doesn't look larger than the motor housing on the standard 2210, i believe that Holz Her didn't succeed in cranking up the motor power to a 1000 Watts or beyond, because they would run into heat damage problems with the insulation materials properties of the day. I also suspect that there is a thermal motor protection unit (bi-metal overheating cut-out switch with red reset button) mounted above the motor drive belt pulley (out of vision in your pic).

Rather than cranking up the motor power to cope with a wider belt at the same speed, i think they used virtually the same motor to drive the wider belt in a slower pace instead, like you would choose low gearing for a Landrover to make it climb steep slopes. But, like i said above, this model is totally new for me, so this is all speculation on my account. The type plate is missing, i presume?
I think this wider machine was made to order for some specific work, like finishing fine furniture in a quicker way than with an orbital sander and with a bit more stock removing power. Things like cupboard paneling, tabletops and doors would spring to mind. So for my money your machine is a special issue, meant for a niche market. Just like the tiny vintage Festo MBS 1 belt sander was, with its belt width of only 40 mms, meant for finishing door rebates.

I retrieved some pics of the standard 210/2210 from an earlier post i wrote about the Holz Her / Bosch belt sander story. The other pics show the interesting Festo RTH A4-sheet orbital sander (300 Watts 2800 rpm either single phase or three phase induction motor and very heavy). I will post a pic of the Festo MBS 1 when i can find one.

greetings

gerhard