Advice on small bench grinder please

[swatson144]

Better grinder gets you a better rest that you will soon find you don't use. I'd love to have a couple baldors around the shop but there is too many other things to spend on. one of my grinders is a HF 6" which had about 1/8" end float, so I bought a used 20yr old craftsman and didn't like the square motor. That made me take the HF apart and add a spacer now it is a gray wheel and wire brush machine. I gave the Craftsman to Joe.

Moral is that a grinder is a motor with a way to attach wheels. The wheels are what is important. Improper wheels on a 600$ grinder is far worse than the proper wheels on a 50$ grinder. Psst a secret, the wheels that come on your new grinder will be wall decorations for what we do, just hangin on a nail. this is why many of us have a few grinders, just to avoid wheel changing.

Steve

 

[swatson144]

Dave, The hollow grind is actually a benefit a lot of the time. Helps with clearances and reduces the amount of metal to be removed when honing an edge.

Cheers Phil

Absolutely! When it comes time to resharpen, that hollow is easy to place on the wheel and get the same grind. Admittedly easy is a relative thing and often needs practice. A hollow by 8" or 6" wheel isn't enough to weaken the edge but allow a couple honings between resharpenings before it is easier to resharpen than hone.

Steve

 

[refinery Mike]

Using a grinder to sharpen HSS steel bits is more difficult than you may think. Of all the grinders that you listed the only one that has any possibility is the Bosh 6". But before you start. the first thing is to throw the wheels away and buy some Norton white aluminum oxide wheels. In 6 inch that is not too easy to find but Rockler Wood sells them on line for about 20 bucks a piece. Regular wheels will be pretty useless. Then you need to dress the wheels before you use them. I like the metal spur wheel ones but others like Carbide or diamond types. The wheels need to turn as perfectly smooth as possible. No wobble, shimmy, or shake. You may also need to get new washers for the wheels or turn the ones you have flat.
I agree with the hollow grinding plan. Hollow grind you lathe bits on the edge of the wheel and then when you hone the face with a diamond hone (a small diamond hone, not expensive) the edges of the hollow grind will keep the cutting edge from getting rounded over. And you can clean up the edge quite quickly only removing a little bit of steel and not the hollow center portion.
I would also suggest you look into a Ryobi 8 inch grinder, I got one and it ran smooth and true right out of the box. Believe me most grinders do not.

 

[praxim]

refinery Mike, given my mixed experience with other Ryobi tools, I will probably go the Bosch or Makita route. For the rest I am on board.

 

[praxim]

It may be interesting, if not already known, that the German brand AEG is today the high end brand of the same Hong Kong company which owns Milwaukee and Ryobi.

Further, if you look at the AEG and Makita 550 W 200 mm bench grinders then you will find they differ in colour and nameplate. Mind you, that particular AEG appears to be sold in one big-box hardware chain in one country, Australia, and nowhere else I noticed on the web. I guess the paint job and badge are worth it if you can flog it as an alternative with borrowed credibility from a defunct company.