Tilt Interest? CBN Sharpening Wheel

I’d really like to have a nice grinding wheel at the hackspace, something beyond what I can buy on CL for $30.

I can’t quite justify one of these for myself, so I figured I’d see if people are interested in doing a tilt.

This is the one I’m looking at right now, as it seems quite versatile, but I’m open to other options.

I can start this off with $30.

Would you plan on leaving this always installed?

These wheels can be damaged rather quickly. I’d be concerned that it wouldn’t be used properly, and would be useless in a few days after it was installed.

I’m open to keeping a practice of putting it away (we could make a small, well-labeled box for it) or some other largely obvious indicator that this is special and requires knowledge.

We have a couple grinders already, so we could keep one of them with this wheel on it and have it painted with large labels/warnings.

I know it isn’t perfect, but even just putting a paper flag on the bandsaw tension lever has really helped awareness.

I don’t think any of our current grinders take 8" wheels - the larger of the two is 7" I believe. Having said that, we have been planning on replacing them for a while; the smaller one is uselessly small, and the large one is sketchy. If we were to want a dedicated grinder for this particular wheel, we should get two 8" grinders (one as a replacement for the current grinders, one specifically for this wheel).

I agree that it will be quickly ruined unless very clearly marked however. Even the regular grinding wheels are misused & abused pretty badly.

Another option would be a wet grinder. I’ve been lusting after something like this for a while (KMS sells an identical one for $15 more):

*edit: Here’s the KMS one - the picture better shows its advantage; a water trough that keeps the tool and wheel cool.

DAMN YOU @rsim Now I need one of these too!

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My prefered sharpening system for woodturning tools consists of:

I have both a 6" and 8" grinder with the Wolverine on the 8" and the Maxwood on the 6". The 6" is mounted on a piece of plywood with rubber feet so it can be moved around easily and/or taken to demos and classes. This system has worked very well for me for over 10 years.

The diamond wheels are too expensive and too easily damaged, IMHO. The slow-speed, water-cooled sharpening systems are just too slow for the amount of sharpening you have to do with turning tools.

Excellent!

I was looking at saving a few bucks with this (or designing my own based off the same dimensions)

A 6" norton cool grinding wheel and one of those diamond hones wouldn’t be a huge expense… thanks for the suggestions!

Think I’d need an 8" as well or that’s just your setup?

I started with a 6" grinder and graduated up to an 8" a few years later due to the notion that an 8" grinding wheel will produce a larger radius hollow grind on your tools. That theory goes out the window as the grinding wheel gets smaller from use. The difference in radius doesn’t seem to make a difference to me for grinding most tools. If I feel that a hollow grind is not adventagous for a particular tool then I use a 1" belt sander to sharpen it.

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