For stoners.

[normal]

What I do with sears and other related gun parts both air and fire flies a bit in the face of things I read.

I bought a cheap "carbide" grinder.  Harbor Freight Tools sells a nice one for less than $150 if you catch one of their "sales."  Replaced the "green" silicon carbide wheels with 120 grit, maybe 180 grit (I forget which), white aluminum oxide.  Balanced the things within a millimmeter of their lives.  Vibration is zero.  Set both tables at a precise 90 degree angle.

I can put nice near polished ramps, curves, faces on sears, hammers, trigger parts in seconds.  Gotta watch the heat.  I put a nice polish with 1000 grit wet or dry paper on a piece of wood or leather on a flat surface, sometimes a file.  Reassemble with dabs of CRC synthetic Brake and Caliper Grease at the appropriate spots.  Viola! (music) All manner of respectably operating mechanisms.

I have my suspicions that the precise angle of the ground faces has something to do with the fairly high polish I use working so well.

This grinder is the most frequently used machine in my shop by far.  It puts nice tapers on pins for easier assembly, chamfers on all manner of things, sharpens tiny drill bits (hod 'em "upside down" and take tiny dabs), makes flat faces pretty, quickly sharpens a scriber, and on and on and on.  I've even sharpened toenail clippers.

[Big_Bill]

Like you Norm,

I have three bench top grinders, from course, shaping to polishing muslin wheels.

How ever I find shaping and sharpening very small parts better left to Dermal and fine hand files and stone.

Perhaps my hands are too big, or clumsy for sears and the like.

The best of luck to you and your endeavors. Let us know of your next project.

Bill

[RCnMo]

I keep tellin' myself I am going to get that exact grinder.

[normal]

Ralph,

It's like magic for a huge range of stuff on small parts.  The balancing, btw, was a few hours of run/stop/run/stop and try various washers under the four bolts that hold the wheels to the mounting plates on each end.  The grinder sits on rubber feet so I could feel which end was out of balance.  At some point, the thing just went smooooooth, and I said, "Aaaaahh."  I used a cheap (less than $10) single point diamond dresser and various Rube Goldberg with the miter gauges and various blocks of metal to dress/turn all accessible faces of the wheels true/flat before I started the balance routine and then touched them up after.  Single point dresser can make any grinder capable of nice work.

My grinder does not have reversing.  Wish it did.  The Harbor Freight item does and is still made in Taiwan, not China.  If/when HF switches to a mainland supplier on that item, it may well go downhill like other HF machines have.

I'm nowhere near the machinist you are.  I'm more of a tool collector/studier.  I admire the nifty work you've posted.  And I can only dream of the sort of things the tool and die dudes do.  Or the mold makers.  Or the CNC artists.  I'm all manual controlled.

[RCnMo]

Trust me, I'm no machinist. I'm a B.S. artist. Thanks for the kind words. A friend gave me a nice diamond wheel grinder awhile back with a sliding table. It's almost a surface grinder, but it's not really. I use it for sharpening endmills and grinding small pieces. I think what you have would be perfect for grinding HSS and carbide lathe bits. All I use now is an old 6" grinder with a silicon carbide wheel and an aluminum oxide wheel. Yes, balancing those wheels makes a huge difference. It's painstaking, but it's worth it until some dummy lets the piece he's grinding get caught in the wheel and spun through the shroud and spit out the bottom. Now I have a vibrator again!

[Jaymo]

That grinder is actually made for grinding HSS lathe bits. I keep telling myself that I'll get one.

[normal]

Yeehaw!  Looks like it's only dusty.  A little elbow grease, maybe a new wheel or two (or not:  they're pricey), some dressing and balancing and you're off to sears.  Fun!

[normal]

The key word here is "artist."  It takes talent and knowledge to do BS well.  I'd just as soon not be an "expert."

[Jaymo]

I'm itching to get one. I can't afford one right now, and my employer did away with our Christmas bonus a couple years ago.

[normal]

If you can rig things up, an alternative that will do small parts is to arrange a table carefully perpendicular to the side of a wheel of any bench grinder and then use a single point diamond to dress a part of the side of the wheel flat.  I might use a small piece of aluminum or steel plate to make the table and set it a little below center on the side of the wheel and very close to the wheel.  Make it look sorda like the arrangement on the "carbide" grinders.  Cheap!