Thread: Use for 220 grid Norton Waterstone

I'm sorry. I didn't manage to find the time to get any new pictures.

I have an old picture here I posted a while back that might help.

A workhead is basically a mounting that you can bolt to a table that holds your bearings that in turn holds a shaft that grinding and buffing wheels can be mounted on......the blue thing in the picture. You can buy them at Carpatec in Australia. They call them 'portable work heads'. The largest shaft type is about $80 AU.

Now, you don't need a workhead. I mean, you can mount your buffing wheel on a regular grinder thats already to go from the shop. Just take off one of the grinding wheels that come with it and put on the buffing wheel instead.

What ever you do, make sure the buffing wheels mounted so it spins away from you ie. the opposite to the direction a grinding wheel goes. Or else the chisel will crash dive into your buffing wheel and probably try and kill you some how.

I recommend a workhead though for a few reasons. But it might be beyond a beginner (if thats what you are...excuse if wrong). but here the reasons anyway.

- A workhead allows you to mount the wheel overhanging the table more than what you can do with a normal bench grinder, which is good, because the focus when hand grinding/buffing is on that glinting edge. And its best seen when you look down on it with plenty of light. And the further out it hangs the more you can look down on it.

- A workhead can be run by any motor, and an old washing machine motor is just fine. But of coarse that means you got to do your own wiring. Its very easy, but, I don't want you to die and for your family to blame me for it. So I won't tell you how to do it. (You might know anyway eh ?)

- A workhead and motor setup allows you to easily control your wheels speed by simply changing either the workheads pully or the motors pully. ie. the smaller the motors pully gets the slower the wheels R.p.m.....and the smaller the workheads pully gets the faster the wheels r.p.m.

- Normal bench grinders have motors in them right ? Well, the housing for these are usually so large they foul the movement of large tools you might be sharpening. Like drawknives. Workheads have no housing, less if anything that may foul movement.

- They seem to run with less vibration. At least the ones I've made. As long as you've got a good bearing (sealed so no grit gets in)workhead and motor that are fixed strongly the vibration seems much less than a bench grinder. Might have something to do with motor seperation. Don't know exactly. And vibration must be at a minimum for the kind of buffing with a hard felt wheel that I'm trying to detail.

Thats enough for tonight. Hope I didn't overwhelm you. I can rave. If you got any more questions don't hesitate to ask.

Goodluck.

Jake.