COLD SPRING, Minn. – Chalk it up to one of those crazy thoughts a lot of us have, before we push them to the back of our minds.
But as Brian Prigge stood in his shop several years ago, gripping his belt sander, he couldn’t rid himself a burning question.
“I watched that belt go round and round and I thought, what would happen if you just turned it on and set it down?”
Prigge now knows the answer – as does much of the community of Cold Spring, which recently celebrated its 8th annual belt sander races on a packed main street.
“One little idea and all these people show up,” says Prigge, still a bit amused by it all. “I had no idea it would turn into this.”
Prigge’s idea morphed into a 64 foot elevated belt sander drag strip surrounded by bleachers with seating for several hundred people.
Belt sanders, tethered to long extension cords, race side by side. A drag strip “Christmas tree” triggers the start of a race and finishes are timed and displayed electronically.
For the fastest sanders, a trip down the wooden track takes about two seconds, with puffs of sawdust trailing behind.
“You’ve got to see it at least once,” says Jay Femrite, whose belt sander finished first in the modified class.
Most belt sanders are decorated, some to the point of being unrecognizable for their original purpose. They race in two classes, modified and stock.
Femrite, whose wife runs a Cold Spring eye clinic, adorned his sander with a large eyeball. “Actually it’s made up of two router motors and it's pretty much welded out of junk I have sitting around the shop,” he says.
After his original brainstorm, Prigge searched the internet and found other pockets of best sander racing across the U.S. and Canada. He incorporated some of what he learned online into his own track.
“It’s different, it’s novel, it’s fun,” Prigge laughs. “It’s competition, it’s the American way.”