Ghetto Grinding

B

bzzhewt

Joined
May 8, 2005
Messages
127
All i have is a cheapy bench grinder with very coarse wheels. So all I can do is the roughest shaping with it. Excuse my ignorance, but i don't know the grit. Standard wheels that came with it. Anyway, I have NO access to a belt sander of any type.
So what would be the best way to finish and smooth those Xtra coarse grind marks?
A file?
Sanding? If so, what grit and method?
Benchstone?

As you can see, I'm obviously a poor, ghetto newbie, please give me some ideas!
Thanx.
 
The word 'ghetto' is an Italian word meaning foundry ! Get some files. For finishing use a draw filing technique .Do a search here on draw filing to learn how.
 
I'd second the motion for draw filing. :cool:
I made my first few by filing, the very first one by push filing (the 'normal' way)

Then go out and buy lots of wet/dry sandpaper, a spray bottle for soapy water or baby oil (thanks J.!) and a good movie or two. The hand sanding or hand rubbing will take some time.

Machines just speed up the process but the end result is the same.

Enjoy!
 
I used bench grinders for several years. Started out with a 36 grit wheel and and a 60 grit wheel, eventually moved over to 60 and 120 grit. I'd hollow grind to about 60% and then do my heat treat. After heat treating I'd go ahead and grind it to final shape, and as good a finish as I could(wheels cut a little smoother and cleaner on the hardened blade). Then I'd start in by hand with 120 or so grit sandpaper and work my way up. Generally stopped around 220 grit.
It was a lot of work, and the results weren't nearly as nice as I'd have liked, but I turned out some pretty decent looking knives that were good users.
Also, don't get super hung up on high grit finishes. A clean, even, 220 grit finish is going to look better than a 400 grit finish with 150 grit scratches mixed in and hook marks all over.
A heavy strip of cardboard or something to back your sandpaper when your sanding will help speed things up also.

EDIT:
Make sure you have a stone dresser and learn how to use it. Keeping the wheel face square, and true will give you much better results, and will make the grinder much more safe to use!
 
My experience grinding tools on a wheel grinder is that it creates huge amounts of grinding dust from the wheel itself. This stuff is pretty nasty, and I wouldn't want to form a long association with it.

While wheel grinding is actually a good method for sharpening some tools, I have moved over almost completely to belts. A 1x36 or 42 inch sander is so cheap now, about the cost of a replacement wheel, that if at all possible I would make the move now. These little grinders can be fitted with high performance zircon belts, and do a pretty good job. I still find mine useful, even though I have a 2x72 for serious stuff.

These are just my impressions, and I may have the actual toxicity issues backwards. Anyone Know? I do think you will prefer the belt grinder either way.
 
mete said:
The word 'ghetto' is an Italian word meaning foundry ! Get some files. For finishing use a draw filing technique .Do a search here on draw filing to learn how.
Click to expand...

Fonderia is the Italian word for foundry.

"Ghetto" is actually a Jewish word...at one time the section of a European city where they lived, or the "Jewish section". It could have originated in Italy by the jews living there, not sure.

If you ever read "The Source" by James Michener, it points this out. I don't read as much as I used to. Not since in the Navy while standing those long mid-watches in the IC Room...25 years ago.

Craig
 
CLW, in the times when Venice was in it's prime the Jewish population was expanding and they requested from the Doge more land to move to. The Doge told them they could use the land where there used to be a foundry [ghetto] for making cannon.The word is apparently the Venice dialect [very different from "italian" ]for foundry.. You should find this in Abba Eban's [sp?] "History of the Jews" The word then became defined as 'a place where Jews live'.
 
Ghetto originally referred to the district where Jews lived in Venice. The district was once a foundry, but ghetto doesn't mean foundry. Ghetto is mostly a diminutive ending, probably from a word like borghetto. Like calling an area of downtown New York "Little Italy", borghetto would have meant "little city".

Of course, the area where Jews live now is rarely what we'd call a ghetto anymore. The term has come to mean any economically depressed single ethnic area.

Incidentally, it's hard to say what's a Jewish word. Northern European Jews spoke a German dialect called Yiddish. Southern European Jews spoke a Spanish dialect called Ladino. Jews in Arab areas spoke a Judeo-Arabic dialect, like Yiddish and Ladino, written in the Hebrew alphabet.

So borghetto or whatever the original word was could have been from one of these dialects, not matching exactly the local language. But it probably was the local language, to have been used at all by the larger society.
 
Esav, thanks .My Italian dictionary says 'getto' refers to casting.I wondered if the venetian dialect changed it to ghetto. The gondolieri in Venice now sing Neopolitan songs apparently because no one would understand the venitian dialect songs !! Everything comes down to metallurgy.
 
Bernard Shaw referred to England and America as two countries separated by the same language. As we know, the Italians beat us at that game. :D
 
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