Contact wheel

I'm looking for some direction in purchasing a larger contact wheel , I have an 8'' and looking to move to a 14'' and was wondering what is preferable , rubber , hardness(duro), or serrated vs plain. Any help sure would be appreciated .

95% of knife makers (and I am totally making up that percent, but I'm not far off) use 70 duro hardness wheels. Serrated wheels remove metal faster and slightly cooler at the expense of a rougher finish. The vast majority of makers use a smooth finish wheel.

rubber and poly wheels are very hard to tell apart when you are using them and even just looking at them side by side.

Poly melts around 185F. That sounds low but try holding a 130f blade some time. No one has really proved it but rubber wheels are believed to hold up longer in use. I have not seen that myself in practice but I won't disagree with that either.

the big difference in a wheel that size (14") is the core and how it is machined. A 14" wheel slings a lot of weight around and run out gets to be a bigger issue.

Bossdog has been around many more different sized and kinds of contact wheels than I have so my remarks are from using the wheels on my three 2 x 72" machines.

I have all rubber now and I only had one poly and won't buy any more. Rubber at 70 Duro came on my Coote and while I haven't ground more than a handful on it because I prefer flat ground/convex knives I have profiled and done many other jobs making metal go away for 19 years and still purring!

On my Hardcore Products 2x 72" The 5" and 2" have had to be cleaned up a little with sandpaper over the past 17 years and going strong. The smaller the wheel the hotter it can get so they have worn a little faster.

The KMG that I sold was a flat grind only rig but I put a 2" contact on top and bottom of the platen for quick fix its.

My 0.2 cents is get Rubber at 70 Duro and don't look back. There are two companies that supply most of the wheels for knife makers as far as I know.

Contact Rubber & Sunray. If I ever do buy that 20" wheel I've been thinking about for Japanese culinary knives I will order it direst from Sunray.

Quick follow up question. Why the 70 duro vs others? What is the feel difference on say a 70 vs 90 in the real world?

90 will last a longer and 70 will cut a little faster. I've always been happy with 70 in cut and longevity.

I don't do allot of hollow grind knives but when I do I use this..... http://www.grizzly.com/products/G9242

Fred look into Sunray inc. for contact wheels pretty good prices.