The Banshee Flat Lap
The Banshee was born from the scrap pile. The idea came from YouTube, but the machine itself was scrounged together from whatever we had on hand — which, in this shop, is usually more than you'd think.
The motor is the kind of thing you don't throw away. I'd been hauling it through life since 1996 — three addresses, nearly thirty years. Motors built in the sixties were made to last. This one proved it.
The Banshee is direct drive — no belt, no pulleys. The motor sits inside the bucket, mounted upside down so the shaft points up through the bottom. We cut a piece of sink pipe and set it in the hole so the shaft would stay dry once the arbor extension went on. The bucket is a painter's bucket — the same one we used when we painted our house. It wasn't doing anything else.
The lap surface sits in a Tupperware bowl Right Stuffed to the top of the bucket. We drilled a hole in the bowl, Right Stuffed a red funnel into it for the water feed, and ran a drain hose off the bottom. The water feed itself runs through a 2 GPM sprinkler dripper, a 90-degree elbow, and fish tank tubing on a bailing-wire bracket we bent on the spot. The splash guard is a plastic walkway protector cut to fit.
The one part we couldn't scrounge was the arbor extension. We had to order it. It was winter, and it took two weeks to arrive. Two weeks of the Banshee sitting half-built on the bench, waiting. When it finally showed up, we had it running the same day.
The angle adjustment is exactly what it sounds like: you tilt the whole unit. No fancy mechanism. The adjuster is a 2x4 laid on its side underneath. Over time we dialed in Janyce's favorite angle — exactly 3.5 inches of lift. That's it. That's the sweet spot. We stopped experimenting after that.
On/off is a router controller switch. One thing to know: if you touch the variable speed dial at startup, the fuse pops. We're looking into slow-blow fuses. Until then, you start it flat and adjust after it's running. The Banshee pipes off Frank's cooling system — no separate cooling evolution needed. Frank already solved that problem.
It cuts dead-true flats and polishes like a banshee, but it demands your respect.
The Frankenstein Lapidary Line →
The Dop Sticks & The Car Detailer's Secret →
Stabilizing Stone →
— Bob & Janyce, Rockhound Studio, Spokane Valley WA