Reply To: Advice on grinders – slow/fast, wet/dry?
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Yes, softer metals can clog CBN wheels. In fact, the Hurricane wood turning tools pdf on their offering states that only hard steels like HIGH SPEED STEEL be ground. A steel in that category would be A2 that the makers like lie Nielsen uses, for example, but not O1 like would be on ordinary Stanley plane irons. Another fellow adds V10, which is also a hard steel.
http://www.thewoodturningstore.com/content/PDFs/Hurricane_CBN_Grinding_Wheels_Instruction_Sheet.pdf
One fellow I know uses a belt cleaning rubber block to keep his unclogged and says it works. Norton makes a dressing stick like those that also has aluminum oxide, (Norton, 1X1X6 Type 54 Dressing Stick 38A150-Ivbej but I wonder how often you can do that. There are two types of CBN wheels. With one coating method, the CBN is electroplated to the wheel like diamond stones are. The other method is about a 3/16” thick layer of CBN in some sort of matrix. These can be dressed more often and is the type the video shows Murray Carter using.
But again, this can be that you are using too fine a wheel to grind with. Large grit won’t clog as readily,removes more metal, runs cooler, and is faster. If you look at the video I posted, Murray Carter starts with a really coarse wheel to shape his knives. You can hear the wheel grinding. It’s not a sharpening wheel. In the video, he discusses that the wheel needs to be dressed.
I have toyed with getting an old fashioned wet wheel which I see for sale from time to time. They take up a lot of room at a time when I think more about downsizing.