Bench Grinder Basics

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if you know how to use it correctly the bench grinder can be the fastest way to prep your chisels and your plane irons for honing you can also use it to restore a severely damaged edge on a tool maybe that you picked up at a flea market and get that ready for honing or you can reshape edges completely in form entirely new tools but a lot of people give up on the bench grinder they get uneven results or they burn the tip again and again turning the steel blue and removing its hardness but there's no need to struggle I'm going to show you an amazing really old-school tip that was brought to the magazine by Joel Moskowitz that has me grinding faster and more accurately than I ever have check it out before we get into technique I need to say a few words about setting up a grinder the right way so you'll have success make sure your grinder has one of the new styles of wheel look for the word friable that's what you want that means the particles as the wheel gets worn they begin to break away exposing new fresh edges and the grinding wheel runs cooler that's really important the second thing is you want to throw away your old tool risk these old tool wrists stink in a word these are too rough too small and too hard to adjust get yourself an aftermarket rest like this Veritas from Lee Valley which adjusts quickly and easily in every direction now here's that magic trick that makes the whole rest of my grinding technique possible it's all about how you dress the wheel I used to think it should be flat across the front the weird thing is that it works much better if it's rounded slightly with a high point in the middle so get yourself a flat diamond dresser like this one they're not expensive and then knock back the edges slightly to end up with a nice smooth gentle curve across the front okay now the grinder is ready to go so here's the most common way you're going to use it this is the point when you've done a lot of honing and REE honing the edge and those polished areas are now too big to touch up efficiently on your fine stones it's time to regrind the entire edge but first we have to readjust the angle of this tool rest so if you're already happy with the angle your chisel is ground at you can just match that by laying the chisel on the rest adjusting it slightly and getting down low and taking a look you want the wheel to hit the bevel about halfway along its length what you can do is slide it up to the wheel when you think you're close and rub it back and forth and then flip it over and take a look at the scratch pattern it should be somewhere near the center of the bevel here's how easy it is lay the tool on the rest and slide it up toward the wheel when it starts to grind use your back hand as a depth stop against the back of the rest and just start moving the tool side to side letting the high point on the wheel sweep smoothly across the edge for even results flip the blade now to make sure the wheel is hitting the bevel somewhere near the middle then just turn it over occasionally to check your progress it's easy to grind a bit more in some areas to even the bevel out but grind lightly that's one of the big keys the very fine tip of the tool is vulnerable to overheating so when the grinder starts closing in on that tip start dunking the blade in water every once in a while you know you're done when the newly ground area covers the whole bevel and there's a tiny burr formed along the back of the tip that feels perfect now let's talk about a chisel that you've inherited somehow or picked up at a flea market and it's really in bad shape this one's got 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 set this tool rest back to about 90 degrees to the wheel like you had it when you were dressing the wheel but don't really sweat this it just needs to be close to 90 that looks great now we're just going to blunt this tip working our way right up to the reference line once again all it takes is a very light touch in this case since we are grinding off the thin tip almost instantly and blunting it heat shouldn't be a problem if you use a light touch so you don't have to dump the tool in water now we have to go back to the tool rest and set it for the bevel angle we want with the last chisel which was in good shape we could sort of trust the bevel angle and use that to set the tool rest in this case let's assume that this chisel is in really bad shape and this bevel angles no good to us and we need to set it from scratch and there's a couple good ways to do that you can buy one of these inexpensive little angle setting gauges or you can just make one yourself out of cardboard since the chisel sits right down against the tool rest when you're grinding put the bottom part of your angle gauge against the wheel because we blunted the tip and we're rehabbing this entire bevel edge this grinding process will take a while but keep checking that blunt tip to gauge your progress you're removing a lot of metal now so use a light touch and start dunking the tool in water to cool it as the edge starts getting thin and sharp and the blunt edge starts to disappear once the grinder marks reach the tip you're going to start seeing that blunt tip start to disappear the great thing is you can use that blunt tip to track your progress and make sure you're grinding evenly you'll know you're done when the blunt tip is gone it feels sharp and you feel that nice tiny burr all along the back of the edge so that's it now you know how to take any garden-variety bench grinder put a new wheel on it put a better tool rest on it and then grind perfect bevels quickly and accurately every time
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Channel: FineWoodworking
Views: 577,360
Rating: 4.8464408 out of 5
Keywords: woodworking, fine woodworking, christiana, bench grinder, sharpening, grinding, chisels, Bench Grinder Basics, bench, Grinding Machine (Cause Of Death)
Id: GB-Pa73Snp4
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)
Published: Wed Mar 27 2013
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