Grinding Wheel Specs.

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radius

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Setting up to grind 1/4" HSS tool blanks. Recommendations for grit, grade, structure, etc. Interested in having both a coarse and fine wheel. ( nobody seems to quantify this on their Youtube sharpening instructions) Thanks.
 
Do you have a way to dress the wheels? If not this should be the first thing that you build.
Diamond dressers work well yet one needs a way to hold them square.
 
Pretty much any bench grinder or belt sander will grind a decent HSS tool. Like Wreck said, you need some sort of wheel dresser for grinding wheels. I have read a lot of recommendations for using white wheels like surface grinders use, but I have not seen adapters from the big 1-1/4" holes they have to the smaller shafts on bench grinders. They can pretty much all be done freehand.

I have several bench grinders, several belt sanders, jigs for holding various types of tools including lathe and boring bits, and a diamond grinder for carbide, so I really don't walk the talk here.

The number one thing you need for grinding HSS tools is practice, the more you practice, the better your tools will be.
 
Sorry let me clarify, I have lots of sharpening equipment, bench grinders, belt grinders, diamond dressers etc, that I use for my plane blades and chisels,but most woodworkers take off the stock grey wheels that come with most grinders and replace them with cooler cutting wheels (typically white) at about 80x and with a grade of about"H" which is considered soft. All the sites(I've seen) explaining HSS tool bit sharpening use grey wheels,which I assume are aluminum oxide, but what grit would be considered coarse for this usage? 36x, 60x? and are they generally a harder grade than we woodworkers would normally use? say in the in the P - S range with a structure tending towards dense as opposed to open which would be less durable. Thanks again.
 
I think the standard gray wheels are pretty hard on the scale, I have a medium on my 10" sioux, I think it's around 60gr or so. I wouldn't worry too much about the wheel, after its ground your gonna hone it anyway, 60 or 80gr is prolly sufficient and still have other uses, grinding tungsten for instance. Aluminum oxide. One thing I wouldn't do is cheap out on the wheel, don't buy that value wheel from ebay lol. Buy a brand you can trust that has good quality control.
The premium white bench wheel from norton is cool cutting, it's states specific metals such as hardened steel and hss. The gray wheels are maybe more universal, not to say I don't grind aluminum with my white wheel on the surface grinder...
Norton has a chart you can download to help pick the wheels based on material being ground
 
A white wheel on a bench grinder is great for getting that keen edge you need. They are not for roughing since they break down quicker than a grey wheel will. And of course, they run cooler when grinding!

I have a 6" bench grinder that has a fine gray wheel as well as a medium coarse gray wheel which is perfect for 1/4" tool bits. As gator said, don't forget the cup of water!
 
Curious what the original poster decided if anything about the wheels and how they worked out since I'll be doing the same. Have a variable speed two wheel grinder that uses 6" wheels in the garage. I'll pick up a diamond dresser and find a way to keep it square but I know nothing about the wheels so following someone else works for me :wink:
 
radius said:
Sorry let me clarify, I have lots of sharpening equipment, bench grinders, belt grinders, diamond dressers etc, that I use for my plane blades and chisels,but most woodworkers take off the stock grey wheels that come with most grinders and replace them with cooler cutting wheels (typically white) at about 80x and with a grade of about"H" which is considered soft. All the sites(I've seen) explaining HSS tool bit sharpening use grey wheels,which I assume are aluminum oxide, but what grit would be considered coarse for this usage? 36x, 60x? and are they generally a harder grade than we woodworkers would normally use? say in the in the P - S range with a structure tending towards dense as opposed to open which would be less durable. Thanks again.
Click to expand...

I'm using a white wheel for my tool sharpening quite a lot at the moment, it eats HSS dinner, the soft binder exposes fresh abrasive often hence the fast removal rate.

I'm still not sure if I prefer it to the regular wheels or not but it definitely works pretty well.

I recycle snapped hss centre drills into booring tools, they might get eaten too quickly by the white wheel's

Stuart
 
A little late to the party but..... I use these Norton stones for my HSS bits. I forget what grits I got ....maybe 100 and 150. FWIW this place has a good selection and good prices. The edges I get with these stones are really, really sharp and the wheels seem to last.
 
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