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Bench Grinder Basics

May 29, 2021
If you know how to use it correctly, the

bench

grinder

can be the quickest way to prepare your chisels and planes for sharpening. You can also use it to restore a badly damaged edge on a tool you perhaps bought at a flea market and prepare it for polishing or you can reshape the edges completely and form entirely new tools, but many people give up on the

bench

grinder

, they get uneven results or burn the tip over and over, turning the steel blue and removing its hardness, but there is no need to fight. I'm going to show you an amazing, really old-school tip that Joel Moskowitz brought to the magazine that makes me work faster and more accurately than ever before.
bench grinder basics
Check it before getting into the technique. I need to say one thing. A few words on how to set up a grinder the right way for success. Make sure your grinder has one of the new wheel styles. Look up the word friable. That's what he wants. That means that the particles as the wheel wears, begin to break down. It exposes fresh new edges and the grinding wheel runs cooler, which is really important. The second thing is that you want to throw away your old tool holder. These old tool holders suck in a word. They are too rough, too small and difficult to adjust.
bench grinder basics

More Interesting Facts About,

bench grinder basics...

Get yourself an aftermarket. rest like this veritas from Lee Valley that adjusts quickly and easily in all directions. Now here's the magic trick that makes the rest of my grinding technique possible. It's all about how you dress the wheel. I used to think it should be flat in the front. The strange thing is that it works much better if it's slightly rounded with a high point in the middle, so get yourself a flat diamond dresser like this one, they're not expensive and then pull back the edges slightly to end up with a nice smooth curve. on the front, okay now the grinder is ready to go so this is the most common way you will use it, this is the point where you have done a lot of polishing and re-sharpening of the edge and those polished areas now too are great to efficiently touch up your fine stones, it's time to re-polish the entire edge, but first we need to readjust the angle of this tool rest, so if you are already happy with the angle at which your chisel is ground, can match it. placing the chisel over the rest adjusting it slightly and crouching down and taking a look you want the wheel to hit the bevel about half its length what you can do is slide it towards the wheel when you think it's close and rub it back and forth back and then turn it over and look at the scratch pattern.
bench grinder basics
It should be somewhere near the center of the bezel. It's that easy: place the tool on top of the rest and slide it onto the wheel when it starts to spin. grinding wheel use your backhand as a depth stop against the back of the rest and simply start moving the tool from side to side letting the high point of the wheel slide gently over the edge for even results, rotate the blade now to make sure Make sure the wheel is hitting the bevel somewhere near the middle, then simply rotate it from time to time to check your progress.
bench grinder basics
It's easy to polish a little more in some areas to even out the bevel, but polish lightly, that's one of the most important keys, the very fine tip of the tool is vulnerable to overheating. So when the grinder starts to get close to that tip, start dipping the blade in water from time to time and you'll know you're done when the freshly ground area covers the entire bevel and a small burr forms along the back. from the tip you feel. Perfect, now let's talk about a chisel that you somehow inherited or bought at a flea market and it's in really bad shape.
This one has a rounded tip and we're really going to want to start from scratch. Here we want this tip to be 90 degrees and straight, so just use a square and a fine tip marker to make a reference line. The first thing we need to do is place this tool at about a 90 degree angle to the wheel, like it was when I was grinding the wheel. but don't worry, it just needs to be close to 90. That looks great. Now we're just going to blunt this tip all the way to the baseline once again, all it takes is a very light touch on this.
In this case, since we are polishing the thin tip almost instantly and blunting the heat shouldn't be a problem if you use a light touch so you don't have to dip the tool in water, now we need to go back to the tool holder and set it to the bevel angle we want with the last chisel that was in good condition, we could rely on the bevel angle and use it to set the tool holder. In this case, let's say this chisel is in really bad shape and this bevel angle is not good for us and we need to set it from scratch and there are a couple of good ways to do it: you can buy one of these little angle setting gauges and cheap or you can just make one yourself out of cardboard as the chisel sits right against the tool rest when you're grinding place the bottom of your angle gauge against the wheel because we dull the tip and we're rehabilitating this whole beveled edge .
This grinding process will take some time, but keep checking that dull tip to gauge your progress. You are removing a lot of metal now so use a light touch and start dipping the tool in water to cool it as the edge starts to thin and sharpen and the blunt edge starts to disappear once the grinder marks They reach the point you are going. To start to see the blunt tip start to disappear, the best thing is that you can use that blunt tip to track your progress and make sure you are grinding evenly. You'll know you're done when the blunt tip is gone, it feels sharp and you feel that nice little burr along the back of the edge, so that's it, now you know how to use any garden bench grinder, put one on it. new wheel, place a better tool on it and then grind perfect bevels quickly and accurately every time.

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