Hand crank grinders?

[Gary Roberts]

If you're looking for a good vintage hand grinder on Ebay, watch for a Luther brand grinder. They made some of the best products of their day. Here's a link to one of their catalogs:

http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalog...talogs192.html

I have two and would never sell them. Solid internal gearing, oil wicks, heavy castings. All you could ask for in a hand grinder.

Gary

[Jim Koepke]

I don't know what the correct mechanical/engineering term is, but whatever that mechanism is in the sprocket, would also give you the benefit of being able to stop pedaling, but let the grinding wheels keep spinning--same effect as what happens when you stop pedaling on a bicycle.

On a bicycle, it is called a freewheel. On a wrench, it is a ratchet. In other uses it may be called a slip clutch or a one way clutch.

Tristan - In your situation, sandpaper may be ideal. One word of advice based on the experience of trying to thin a Hock blade down by 20 thousandths on sandpaper - buy some high-quality aluminum oxide or zirconium oxide (sometimes called "ceramic oxide") paper. Wet-dry paper uses silicon carbide as the abrasive, and while it's ideal for flattening waterstones, the abrasive isn't hard enough compared to hard tool steel. You'll wear out multiple sheets trying to take off even a little bit of hardened steel.

20 thousands is a lot to remove, especially if it is A1 or A2 steel. The wear factor is one reason I like to buy sandpaper for such use in PSA rolls. Then a long strip spreads out the wear and tends to cut the metal before the metal dulls the abrasive. Also, since the paper comes with its own adhesive, there isn't all the spraying and cleaning and it sticks down much better than the spray adhesive.

jim

[Eddie Darby]

Luther Grinder

http://www.woodworkingonline.com/wp-...2/Grinder1.jpg

[Tristan Williams]

Shame shipping on those on ebay to Europe is so expensive!

[Matt Wilson]

I've been steadily getting rid of power tools but a grinder, or at least my idea of a grinder, is hard to do without. I've thought about getting a hand crank grinder. But grinding a tool well takes two hands, two steady hands... Cranking with one while trying to shape an edge with the other seems like an exercise in frustration to me. It turns the process into a two person job.

Keep in mind that unless your some muscle man, the wheel is spinning much slower so there is a much bigger "fuge" factor. At 3600+ rpm you can make a mess quick, not so much at the rate I crank at.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Yeah. I often pay more for shipping the item itself, sometimes shipping is twice the price of the item.

By the way, where are you in Finland? From January, I'll be living across the border, in St. Petersburg.

[Tristan Williams]

I'm in the capital, Helsinki. Nice place, but the woodworking pickings are a bit thin on the ground... My better half's parents live just across the border from St Petersburg!

[Tristan Williams]

On the topic of grinding with sandpaper, I was bored this evening so I pulled out my glass plate (a couple of bucks from IKEA!) and attached a spread of grits from 60 to 1000 to it and went to work sharpening all my edge tools. Way more pleasant than the whetstones I used to use. One of my Two Cherries chisels had a couple of nasty chips in the edge from getting a bit abused in the recent renovations - 10 minutes at the paper and it had a perfect edge on it again. I use yellow paper (not sure of what its made of) for the low grits, they seem to keep their grit a lot longer than the wet and dry ones do when I need to grind out nasty chips like that.

A nice pint and an hour tuning my tools, good times

[Andres Sender]

I use a hand cranked grinder every summer at a violin making workshop taught by Michael Darnton. We all use it for plane blades of various sizes, knives, chisels, gouges. It's never been a problem, even though at home I use a powered grinder so I'm not practicing one-handed year-round.

At home I'm still using a slow speed grinder made 15 years ago from an arbor similar to the Woodcraft one mentioned earlier, and powered by an old motor I picked up somewhere for cheap.