A belt sander was the tool I didn't have at our workshop where we made frames in Bucha, Ukraine that I missed the most. When the Russians broke in to steal whatever they wanted, they took many of our basic tools like drills and grinders and probably would have taken the grinder if we actually had one. I couldn't buy a belt sander at the local big box store (now totally destroyed). When I started building frames in 1975, I didn't think a belt sander would have been that valuable. However a machinist friend said he liked his a lot so I took his advice and got one. They are just so handy,
By the way the Russians didn't bother to take any of the bike specific tools like our frame and fork fixtures so I was very thankful for that. Now they would be much more difficult and expensive to replace. Yuriy, the guy in charge of the shop, bought new general tools in the western part of Ukraine where they fled to escape the worst of the war. He just wrote me this week to say they see drone bombs flying overhead. Our shop was about 20km from the center of Kyiv. As a refresher, Bucha was the staging area for the Russian push into Kyiv but got stopped by being unable to cross the Irpin river/raven. The Ukrainian blew up the bridge so they couldn't. The airport was just to the north of the college campus where the workshop is located. I heard the world's biggest cargo plane land one time (that is where it was stored) and it made an enormous sound.
df