Thread: Horizontal automated water stones.

Originally Posted by stevenjd

Has anyone imported one of the Makita horizontal water stone polishers?

My Makita clone was brought here with someone from the UK. It still had a UK plug on it, so never used here until I changed that over. I don't think they were ever distributed here.

IMO it's a bit 'dinky' and not worth the asking price. I got mine for nix and other than the value of the waterstone worth about that.

If I was doing a lot of Japanese knife rehab work I might get serious about making my own horizontal wet grind unit by either re-purposing a potter's wheel or something like a gemstone faceting machine (without the gem head). For woodworking tools I might go with CBN discs like these rather than waterstones wheels.

Or I might just do something like Derek Cohen did with belt sanders:

The Belt Sander Grinder MkI


The Bench Sander Blade Grinder MK II

You can buy belts that are more suited to steel than wood.

Thanks again neil..i gave in and bought a new diamond wheel for the Tormek, I am still waiting ona price for a second hand Naniwa automated water stone as well but its like pulling teeth trying to get a price.

Originally Posted by stevenjd

I am still waiting on a price for a second hand Naniwa automated water stone as well but its like pulling teeth trying to get a price.

Depending on Naniwa model, some only run on Japan's ~100v.

If only ~100v (at 200w) it would need a 200w step down converter to run on our ~240v. I expect (but not sure) that it would cope with the more common and economical ~240v -> ~110v step down converters designed to run US devices, but if not there are converters specifically for ~100v... eg.

200W Voltage Converter, Japan to AUS Step Down Transformer

Should you be successful in acquiring the 2nd hand Naniwa I would appreciate hearing here on the forum how it works out for you.

Hi Neil, if the sale goes ahead i will let you know. The Naniwa comes in a few different models and the one for sale is only 180mm dia. It would be great if it was around 300mm Dia. But then i would have import one and as you can imagine it gets pretty expensive I think I worked out close to 5K and at that price it would be worth making your own if you have access to machinery to get it made.
Anyway i will keep you posted in the 180mm dia unit goes ahead which I’m only so so about buying as i think for a water stone it pretty quick. In the interim i bought one of the Tormek diamond stone wheels and the extra jig.

I’m really being lazy as for 1. I don’t want to hollow grind the plane blades and very wide chisels and not doing it frequently enough tends to be a very slow process if you try and remove the micro chips some hardwoods make.
Steven

A planemaker in the US (Steve, I can't remember your last name, but I know you went to CNC...

...wait..Knight. Steve Knight.) Used one of the makita polishers on the backs of the irons that he sent out. However, due, I guess to its inability to do much, there were swirl marks on the backs of the irons but they weren't actually flattened side to side.

My advice if you want to make something like this is to consider getting a potter's wheel setup where the table will be slower and fabricate the wheel/plate in the bowl to be the same size as commonly available diamond discs. Those are usually about $10 each or so, actually work fast and will be OK at lower speeds (high speed use with diamonds results in the diamonds letting carbon escape either into the steel they're grinding or the environment, thus we have CBN).

You want something controllable and low enough speed to have decent flatness.

Used pottery wheel setups are around here (I guess for laziness, you could actually just affix something to the wheel without modifying it, like a riser turned on a lathe that's narrower in diameter) for fairly low cost. They're usually a couple of hundred watts of power (which is enough at low speed) and they have a bowl that will contain slop (or often do).

I talked to Steve at one point and he said something about the makita flat wheel slinging liquid (not in a "i love that it slings liquid" way).

This kind of flattening is more or less a coarse job where you want to make hand finishing take a minute or two (the sum of the process will actually be less than trying to do a finely machined job on a rotary grinder.

The other option is a large flat wheel with loose grit like you'd see from sharpening stone companies, but I think this would be a challenge (those are large slow moving discs that have a retainer bar - the stone is placed on them or placed on them with a weight on top and they sit against the retainer wheel while the wheel faces the stone with loose grit on it. This is kind of a crude poor man's attempt at a machinists rotary grinder, but works well for sharpening stones as they're not usually that hard (the natural ones) and nobody wants them rough cut.

the makita machine looked more practical for microbeveling power planer knives.

(good potters wheels aren't cheap, but there are a lot of people who take up pottery and then find out it's messy and they're not that great at it - and the wheels end up on classifieds for a fraction of new. I"ve thought of doing this as I"ve been making a lot of tools lately and even a cheesy setup to do bulk rough flattening beyond the accuracy of a good platen on a belt sander with good tension will do. The advent of cheap disposable diamond discs makes something like this easy to do without needing a lot of wheel speed, power or time. I have some pictures of the depth that a new 400 grit diamond plate will cut and it's like micro-level extreme violence to steel - far deeper grooves than you'll get off of a power grinding wheel).

Separately, I can do a lot of flattening by hand, but surprisingly, when you're making tools - high speed and strong abrasives make for cool grinding. I haven't overheated a single tool grinding (not primary angle, and not side bevels on chisels, which get ground on dry after the chisel is already made - just not with something like a common grinding wheel).

BUT, while I can lean on something very hard and hand grind fast, what I can't do is hand grind with pressure and not overheat steel. The whole slow and rotary and horizontal but not low power isn't really something cheap (I guess anything low speed and high power isn't going to be cheap because if it's got power, it will be dangerous with the drive reduction and high torque at the wheel).

Thanks for the replies Neil. I also own a Marunaka Super Surfacer that took me years to find. Now i'm trying to find a grinder to sharpen the blades and at the moment i will just take the 2 blades that cam with it and have them re-sharpened when i need them.

Mind you i haven't even finished building my shed yet which is being built by a company as we speak to put so much stuff in.
And of course you can do x, y , z all by hand but it gets very very boring as you know. So in a way if i had to spend extra and buy a machine that will do it all such as the Marunaka blades etc I will. As the moment i do pretty much what everyone else does and that is copy the Japanese, Granit plate wet dry paper diamond dust etc etc. Then onto the what seems a really silly number of stones from natural to synthetic which i have collected of the decades.
But anyway it will happen, but does seem to take ages to find and then when you do its case of do i want to spend that sort of money. I do think your idea of the potters wheel is very good.
Maybe not for Marunaka blades but i think its a winner just the same.
Steven

I'd just like to thank everyone for the great replies. It is one of those area of sharpening that can be a dead set pain. If your doing it full time and your geared up it might not be such an issue to look for various machines.
But the other side is having too many tools that needs sharping and you look at them and think I really don't want to do a roughie on them at all. So they sit for way too long not as sharp and not used as they should be.
Anyway there is some great insight to the issue. Thankyou everyone.
Steven

Originally Posted by D.W.

Steve Knight. Used one of the makita polishers on the backs of the irons that he sent out. However, due, I guess to its inability to do much, there were swirl marks on the backs of the irons but they weren't actually flattened side to side.

The issue with the horizontally rotating waterstones is that they will always wear unevenly due to the linear speed being much faster near the circumference compared to near the centre so the waterstone will wear much faster near the outer edge. When I got my 2nd hand Makita clone the rim was a lot lower by at least a cm. The better models of this style of horizontal grinder come with a diamond point that swings across the horizontal surface to keep it horizontally flat. I have used mine for rehabbing kitchen knives and sharpening some of my more rugged blades like axes and adze where flatness is not such an issue.

Originally Posted by D.W.

My advice if you want to make something like this is to consider getting a potter's wheel setup where the table will be slower and fabricate the wheel/plate in the bowl to be the same size as commonly available diamond discs.

And here I was thinking that mine was an original idea... which perhaps it was twenty five years ago when I purchased two waterstone wheels intending to convert my pottery wheel over for that purpose. But that was well before the flat diamond discs (well at least the economy ones) became available and then the cooler cutting CBN wheels followed displacing the whole idea.

Of course, a diamond disc can be added to a Makita or Naniwa unit to do the quick grinding before finishing on the finer waterstones. I've seen riser spacers being placed inside the waterstone centre to fit a diamond disc on top. I guess the height of the riser would need to be reduced as the waterstone thinned.

I still think that the cost of a new Makita or Naniwa unit is expensive for what it does.

is this the kind of machine that OP is referring to?

Shinko Blade Knife Sharpener Polishing machine with Wheel Whetstone STD-180E | eBay

s-l1600.jpg

Originally Posted by woodPixel

is this the kind of machine that OP is referring to?

Shinko Blade Knife Sharpener Polishing machine with Wheel Whetstone STD-180E | eBay

s-l1600.jpg

That looks like a near dead copy to the makita machine (which could very well have been made by someone else in japan itself and branded makita).

I recall the makita sharpener being something like $400 15 years ago.

If anyone on here does know of a good rig-up (aside from buying a low cost potters wheel as they have iffy reviews - both in machines dying quickly, and having seemingly less power than the 350w quote) for a slower speed 10" platen (250mm in chinese diamond wafer terms), I'm all ears.

My question above and beyond the smaller wet stone types is that I need some lap length beyond what a smaller machine will do.

I have a lathe like most people do, I guess, but I think the low speed setting is still a bit too fast to make a plate and try to hold something to it.

That model is similar to the Makita, I don’t have any idea of goods or bands. Makita seem to have 2 models. The more expensive version has a slide bar on top so you can sharpen planer blades.

I recall reading about the disappointment someone had with a horizontal stone set up due to the fact that he had to wear a raincoat when using it. Running motors at low speed and high load means motor cooling becomes an issue but that could be overcome using gearing via pulleys and if a 3 phase motor was used speed control as well. A DC motor would also have speed control, walking machines are a common source for DC motors and controllers. It is obvious Tormek use low speed for a reason and that the introduction of diamond and CBN wheels have made the Tormek somewhat old fashioned these days as we can now dry sharpen without water if that suits.

Originally Posted by D.W.

That looks like a near dead copy to the makita machine (which could very well have been made by someone else in japan itself and branded makita).

I recall the makita sharpener being something like $400 15 years ago.

If anyone on here does know of a good rig-up (aside from buying a low cost potters wheel as they have iffy reviews - both in machines dying quickly, and having seemingly less power than the 350w quote) for a slower speed 10" platen (250mm in chinese diamond wafer terms), I'm all ears.

Shinko or Makita are basically the same machine. Just slight variations in the water dispenser. They all come with the adjustable height posts to take a sliding jig. Yes, Chris, they spin water but they have a foam collar that you raise or lower to catch that. However, IMO, definitely not worth anything like US$400.

On pottery wheels (about which I do know something, having had a pottery studio of my own and setup and run a number of pottery teaching workshops), you wouldn't stop or burn out a professional potters wheel. Professional wheels are rated primarily on their 'çentering capacity', expressed in the weight of the lump of clay that the wheel will handle while being centred on the wheel, akin to HP. If the wheel is rated, say at 45kg/100lbs or above, which is in the professional range, it's not going to notice a little abrasive action. If the wheel doesn't quote a centering capacity, give it a miss.

See the following web page for the top brands in the US...

Pottery Wheel Buyer's Guide — The Best Wheels For All Studios — The Studio Manager

These studio level wheels are not cheap purchased new, but you might get one 2nd or 3rd hand for a lot less.

Can't immediately think of another repurposed rig-up that might do the job.