Belts and pulleys

Sammy and I had a major session of sorting this morning organizing all the odds and ends imported over the past two days. We popped out shopping in the evening as I needed a pulley to get the belt sander going, but the shop where I remembered seeing a nice pulley collection laid out no longer stocked them. There are some things that denote the decline in western civilization and the tendency for the more fundamental tools to dissapear from the shelves while there is still room for a choice of 20 varieties of antiseptic hand soap may be one of them.
Anyway, we got back around seven and I couldn't resist having a poke about to see if I could convert something to do the job, and did that. Finding a smallish pulley and widening the center hole on the lathe to fit the motor shaft. The sander runs a bit slow, but the motor I hooked up for a quick trial is a one horse power number, so it is very powerful, just right for hoiking a lot of metal off of something with a rough belt on there. I'll get the motor bolted on properly next, and fit a switch, but for this evening I am happy to have the thing running. I shall have another potter with it tomorrow evening if I manage to get plenty of other work done in the day.
I wonder why all these machines require contortionist training to get anything in the way of maintenance done on them.