Wet grinding belts?

Nathan the Machinist

Nathan the Machinist

KnifeMaker / Machinist / Evil Genius
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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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I've got a lot of very hard abrasion resistant blades to sharpen and my regular technique of sharpening on a wet grinding wheel followed by oil stones is too slow. There are hundreds of blades to sharpen. I'm not doing this on paper wheels or a dry belt because I have found these techniques can affect the temper at the very edge and then leave no visible trace of the problem which won't fly in this particular application. For this particular application I feel that any powered grinding needs to be done wet. So I'm looking at a mister. I'm wondering if anyone here has wet grinding belt recommendations?
 
Norton used to market a horizontal wet belt grinder for butcher shops. The belt was about 3" wide and about 30" long. I have not seen one since 1964. The platen that supported the belt was about 10" long. It would accept belts of different grits, and they were quick to change.
 
Nathan - My favorite wet grinding belt is 3M's 977. I've only ever used them in 60 & 120 grit though . . . I'm not sure if they're available in higher grits in 2x72?
 
micron belts on a film backing or diamond belts
super grit used to have 9 micron fillm belts that were killer for sharpenig when wet and i did see the other day when i was up 2x30 diamond belts
they are out of the 9 micron tho so i hav eo find a new source
 
I just use my windex bottle full of water and spray away. What about a decent portable pressure sprayer used for pesticides, etc.? 2 gallon capacity or more, and goes a long tome when it's fully charged. You can get a fine mist, but it may be a bit broad for your application. Maybe adapt a mister off one of those Palm Springs set ups to a pump bottle as I described or a compressor fueled drum?
 
Haven't got it setup right now, but the system I used was a lapidary mister pump. It sat in a bucket of clean water like an aquarium pump and provided a small spray of water on the hose end. I got my belts from Klingspore. They were marked waterproof, IIRC. I used this on a Bader like clone. I set up a big "U" of aluminum that caught the spray from the belt, but it was still a pretty messy affair. I had the grinder on a rolling cart that could be rolled outside. I mainly used it for lapidary and stained glass work.
 
So it wasn't an air over water type of thing (aspirator), but just a real fine water spray?
 
Stacy had posted links to Home Depot irrigation spray nozzles in the past I just can't find that link again.

They were very cheap and simple
 
Here's a great vid by Mick Strider wherein he shows his wet grinding set-up. Mick has been a big proponet of wet grinding for some time now. You can get the manifold he uses from McMaster-Carr. Hope this helps. :)

[video=youtube;X0VO1qPRF7E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VO1qPRF7E[/video]
 
Shawn Hatcher said:
Here's a great vid by Mick Strider wherein he shows his wet grinding set-up. Mick has been a big proponet of wet grinding for some time now. You can get the manifold he uses from McMaster-Carr. Hope this helps. :)

[video=youtube;X0VO1qPRF7E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VO1qPRF7E[/video]
Click to expand...

That is quite a bit different than what I was planning on doing, but I think that is the ticket right there.
 
This will work but sooooooooooooooooo slow. Also will be a hollow ground whether you like it or not. I now pretty much use my Tormek just for honing lathe tools and leather stropping blades.......knife grinder for everything else.
Bigblue17 said:
How about a wet stone like on a Tormek?

-Peter
Click to expand...
 
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