I bought a well used Hitachi Super Surfacer FA-700 from a retiring Japanese shoji and small traditional building maker.? It will plane about 6-inches wide with the blade at 90-degrees to the bed.? The driving belt arrangement is below the wood and the knife above.? There is no provision to make a 90-degree edge.? The belts are a series of 2-inch wide, thick, and originally soft rubber to grip the wood and pull it through under the knife.? The belts have hardened up and cracked over time and no longer grip well.? I've tried grinding on them to remover the hard skin and it helped, but really need new belts. The Part No. 948356 Conveyor Belt is discontinued.? I am not getting help from Hitachi USA and letters to Japan have not been answered.? So it sits in storage until I get serious about fixing it.? I have documentation including the part number and details on changing and adjusting the knife blade, with several spare knives, but no belts.? One idea will be to coat the belts with conveyor belt resurfacing material but that will be in the future.? On cedar it still works and the finish is lovely, and on clear fir is hit and miss. They were reportedly designed for softwoods and when I tried it on oak, it stalled with even the thinnest of cut.?
Any ideas on how to find belts is appreciated.
