What about bench grinders?

D

DirtyBrad

Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
79
Working on my second knife. The first was all hand tools, but now I'm plugging in.

I bought an angle grinder, but haven't really liked it so far. I wound up doing my rough cut out with a hacksaw.

I'm finishing the cut out now and decided to give my 6" bench grinder a whirl. It's got the stock stones on it (one rough, one smooth). The rough one does a good job and I've even found that I can do fairly complex inner curves by using the "corner" of the stone.

How come I never seem to see anyone talking about using a bench grinder? I'm not letting the piece get too hot to hold (using thin gloves), but I am getting some blue on the edge sometimes. I'm trying to keep the pressure down to minimize that.

So, any reason I shouldn't be using the bench grinder or anything I should be thinking about for success or safety that aren't obvious?
 
I've used a bench grinder a whole lot for knife making. It works, good for profiling, but, not nearly as suitable as a belt grinder for beveling and everything else. Blue on the edge means you got it too hot and ruined your temper if it was already heat treated. Dunk the blade in water often when grinding to avoid this. If it's before HT then it doesn't matter. Post pics when your finished!
 
I use a bench grinder for grinding straight razors. The stock stones overheat the steel very, very easily. You need a better grinding wheel, which ends up costing as much as the bench grinder itself.
 
I'm just profiling, so no heat treat yet. I found that using the corner of the stone heated the piece up way less than the flat front. I did grab a glass of water and started dunking frequently. Big help.

I got it roughly profiled and am hitting with hand files to finish now. I got rid of the blueing, which was only on two small edges.

Things seem good now. The hand filing feels like it did on the last (no power tools) knife. Even if it's just helping with the rough stuff, the grinding wheel definitely saved a lot of time and energy.

Next powered step will be the rough beveling. I'm going to give the angle grinder a whirl for that and try to take it nice and light.
 
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