Thread: Fitting polishing wheel to tapered spindle

Hi Mr Fever

I must admit I have on occasions hand-threaded the wheel incorrectly but it has always been easy to correct.

As you know, the pig-tail spindles come in left and right versions, so it never hurts to double check you've put it/them on the correct side(s).

Assuming they are right, the easiest way to thread the buffing wheel correctly is to allow the lathe to feed the wheel on itself. Turn on the lathe, and slowly insert the wheel on the spindle until it grabs and autofeeds. If there's still a problem, you might be placing the wrong side of the wheel on the spindle.

thanks for this reply, antiphile, but I am fitting it to a tapered spindle that is on a bench grinder that has two speeds - stopped and flat out

Dengue,

What Antiphile is saying is correct, but a grinder with tapers fitted (or any other taper equiped polishing power source) is technically termed a polishing lathe.

It can be intimidating to mount a wheel or mop to a running taper for the first few times, but you can do it with the motor "running down" after switching off till you get used to it and the wheel is mounting reasonably square.

Once mounted the wheel or mop needs to be trued with a wheel comb or very coarse abrasive (16 grit), and for polishing the surface needs to be teased out so individual fibres, rather than woven patches are doing the polishing.

I usually hold a polishing buff lightly in place on the end of the taper, give the grinder a quick flick of the on/off switch to get it spinning, and hold the buff till it is yanked out of my hand as it rides up the taper (lightly held, remember) while the grinder is slowing down. Never had a problem with it being wonky.

I have to not only apologise to Mr Fever for my laziness in language, but also thank Malb and Master Splinter for clarifying what I "should have said". It took me a while to work it out, but Malb immediately picked it up (thank goodness). When I talk of a lathe I meant a polishing lathe and certainly not a woodturning lathe.

In fact, my polishing lathe is also a converted 150 mm Ryobi Bench Grinder with a "pig-tail" (tapered threaded) spindle on each end. I found the post with a pic of my lathe here.

Hope you found the advice of the 2 more experienced and skilled members helpful.

Cheers
Phil

Many thanks for these valuable comments, I have learnt lots.

Will give it a go while the bench grinder ( polishing lathe) is powering down