Today I tried some carpet backing that I picked up from the local flooring store. It has a composite felt-like material with rubberized backing. The stuff is about 5/16 thick.
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I used 3M Feathering Cement to mount the padding on the platten attachment so I can lift off a worn strip and put another one on.
This is how the material looked after about an hour's use.
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I tested pulling the padding off without messing up the glue and it worked mostly - good enough to stick another pad on over the remaining glue.
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I found that I was grinding in one location a lot, so I modified the platten attachment so it now has clips on both top and bottom. That allows me to simply flip the attachment up side down if I wear a spot.
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The platten & attachment are set back to a position so the belt has little non-grinding contact.
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I also coated the padding with silicon spray to make it a bit slicker. Here's how the pad looks after about 3 hours of use, running the belt at about 40-50% speed. Still very usable.
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I cleaned up two rough convex kitchen knife grinds with this padding today, and I'm impressed! What a great way to get a soft, smooth grind. I haven't tried it yet, but if I wanted an even softer platten, I may try gluing two of these pads together. Scrap carpet padding is cheap (free) and readily available. I think I have enough padding for about 5 life times.