Help setting up bench grinder?

[bulldogz71]

I have a 6 inch bench grinder, I put a sisal wheel on 1 side and a felt wheel on the other. I'm wanting to use it to buff the kydex sheaths I make. How do I make sure these type of wheels are trued/balanced? The sisal wheel is narrow, and it may be whats causing my excess vibration. Do I just need to stack another sisal wheel? Any thing else I should know about converting a bench grinder into a buffer?

Thanks guys.

 

[HeavyHanded]

Usually vibration is caused by the wheel being out of true or the shaft being slightly bent. You can try setting the arbor again so that if it does have slop it has an even gap all around the shaft.

After that all my advice will get a bit risky. You can take a rasp and brace it in a divot or other fixed point just off the wheel, with the teeth facing into the direction of rotation. Start the grinder and slowly gently bring the upper end of the rasp in so it starts hitting the wheel at its midpoint. Its important you have one end firmly fixed or all you'll do is smooth out the surface and the wheel will remain out of true. You can gently remove material till the rasp no longer has any felt vibration to it.

You can also try returning the sisal wheel and getting another. There are probably other tricks but I've used this method several times to true up low density wheels. You can also use coarse sandpaper wrapped around a piece of flat stock, but for buffing I'm not sure I'd want any possible embedded grit in my wheel.