What type and where to buy grinding wheels

S

Stipacomata

New Member
Hi, I was taught by my shop teacher in school on making knives. He showed my by taking old files and grinding them down on a bench grinder. My current setup is a 10" bench grinder and then using a regular 4" bench belt sander. I do like grinding by hand and I am at the point of having to buy a new wheel. Anyone have any ideas on where to look and which to buy for the grinder? Also I have been reading a lot of posts on this site and they are all talking about heat treating a file in an oven first before grinding and working on it. My question to that is can I use a regular kitchen oven for the 400 at two hours? What does the heating of the file accomplish? Thanks for taking time to help

Pete
 
what happens is when you temper them in the oven before u grind out the blade out of a file , it makes it less brittle but still tough. Yes you can use an oven and it works just make sure your files are a bit cleaner so oven dont smoke. Send me a message if you need help with the files, I make all my knives from files.
 
Personally, I wouldn't recommend using stone grinding wheels for knife making/grinding. Not only does the shape and radius change as the wheels wear away, but they are very hard and unforgiving.

Ideally, if hollow grinding, you want something with a little give to it, like a rubber contact wheel, usually somewhere around 70 durometer. Some guys do get away with using hard wheels or radiused platens with sanding belts, but that's still more forgiving than a stone wheel, as you don't have to worry about the changing diameter of the wheel. You can also get away with files and hand sanding (though this is a lot more work with tempered files, as they are still relatively hard), or even with flat grinding on a 1 to 2" wide sander.
 
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