Homemade small wheel question

G

gixxer

Joined
Sep 21, 2006
Messages
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So after realizing how broke I am, I have deicded to mod the grinder I have on hand. Still slow as hell, but I guess a little bit of versatility could make things better. I just feel llike I am "chopping firewood with a butterknife". I had a couple of ideas, one of em is make a small wheel attachment. I noticed at RFrinks' site that his small wheels are rubber covered shafts (Whatever, you know what I mean;) ). Do they need to be rubber covered?

What I had in mind is getting some 9/16" O1 drill rod and turning my own small wheels on the lathe. Do they really need to be rubber covered? I had visions of turning down each end for bearings, making a wheel holder, and slapping em on the "arm" so to speak. It might be ugly as hell, but at least I might feel a little better about my grinder.
 
The both of 1" wheels at the ends of my flat platen are turned from polyasetal, they are wheel holders both side. They do the job well. You may use also aluminum to turn...
 
If you search around, Dan Gray wrote a tutorial a while back on how he built his own grinder. In it, he made his small wheel with a tightly fitted coolant hose from an auto parts store. Small wheels leave little divots on the steel very easily, the smaller they are, the easier it is to get those divots. I think they will be even harder to avoid if the wheel is just metal.
 
Divots are no bueno. How does the belt put divots into the steel with non rubber lined wheels? Have anything to do with the bump from the taped edge of the belt?
 
On my grinder,which I made kind of like a kmg with changeable arms,I mounted 2 pillow blocks with a piece of 5/8" cold roll through them and got a piece of heater hose slipped onto that.Ugly as homemade crap :obut works great.About everything I have is homemade:DOh yeah and I use 2 by 48s with that attachment-2 by 72s on other attachments-------Regards Butch
 
Made mines out of ALU. Works fine.

small_wheel_att3.jpg


small_wheel_att2.jpg


Pad
 
Just my experience that the small wheels have a tendency to cut their own radius and not even out easily. I always use the largest wheel I can for a given job so that I can spend as little time as possible correcting it. The rubber will help the wheel conform a bit of the shape of the knife, soften the grinding and make it a little less aggressive. In my experience you don't need an aggressive small wheel most of the time.
 
I get what you're sayin. I need to go to Depot and look in the plumbing dept, they have a bunch of different diameter tubing up to around 2" I could understand wanting to soften the grind so to speak with the higher grits.

Thanks for the pics Padrig, a little more insight as to the logistics of fabbing a small wheel holder.
 
I think the heater/coolant/radiator hose was used for high-heat resistance, just something to keep in mind when searching.
 
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