In article ,
"coffelt2" wrote:

Looking for advise here. There have been threads here about lathe tool
sharpening,
and I think Ive read them all. For 6 or 7 years.
I see Grizzly has an 8" wet grinder with a leather strop (?) wheel.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/8-Gr...arpener/T10097

I've got, and use, an 8", high speed tool post grinder, and had been
thinking of a finer grit stone, but a good stone costs almost as much as
I paid for the whole grinder. The darn thing is just too fast and
unforgiving
for my level of experience. especially trying to eyeball grind a good
"fingernail"
grind (I think some here call it) Once in a while I hit it right, and then
the
turning is just so much fun it is hard to stop!

What do you think? I hope to coax SWMBO to stop by Bellingham
Grizzly showroom with me next week.

Old Chief Lynn

Eyeballing a fingernail grind if pretty much limited to people who burn
a lot of tools learning to do that. The rest of us use jigs, and you
don't have to buy one, you can make one quite easily. Some of the ones
you make are better than what you can buy, since I don't think anybody
sells the "pivot at floor level" jig Jerry Glaser came up with. It's
kinda large for normal sales channels.

http://www.woodcentral.com/articles/glaser3b.shtml

(the third page of a 4-page article, well worth reading the whole thing,
but that's the page with the jig on it)

Jigs, if you like woodworking rather than transferring your funds to
someone else to get toys, go to http://www.aroundthewoods.com (Darell's
site) and read up on lotsa free grinding jigs. And tools to make too. Or
you can get rid of your money buying the things...

If it's actually a toolpost grinder, it's not for grinding tools with
anyway - it's for grinding work in a metal lathe and you should be able
to ebay if for plenty to buy something else. 8" would be kinda big for
one of those so I suspect it's a terminology issue, and you have a stand
grinder. High speed is not a problem, just choose a good wheel and don't
lay into it too hard.

The bees knees for actual grinding (IME) is a cheap 4 inch belt sander
bolted to something such that the belt is running "uphill" (some of them
can be easily reversed - others it's easier to just bolt the base to the
wall) with an AlZ belt. A 2" belt grinder would also do, and there are
some good homebuilds on those out in the wild from knofe-makers (soem
with a large contact wheel if you like a concave grind (I'm a fan of the
flat platen effect myself) - you can get 8-12 inch wheel "effect" with a
belt that costs only a few bucks. I find the 1" belts bit fussy for
some tools (can't get the whole skew on at once) but if you have one,
sure - if shopping, I'd go wider (and the 4" "sanders" are often cheaper
- just don't use the same one for wood and metal unless you like putting
out fires when the sparks meet the wood-dust.) One of those ad a few
beltw will probably cost less than a new stone for the big grinder. But
the stone in the big grinder now might be a lot more use if you get a
jig built, too.

For constant little touch-ups, some sort of strop loaded with chromium
oxide is good. A bit of carborundum or diamond film glued to some glass
or a granite tile is also handy.

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