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The Newbies Arena Are you new to knife making? Here is all the help you will need.

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  #1  
Old 07-30-2013, 11:32 AM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Boone, NC USA
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Changing it up, wet grinding and other madness.

I ended up with a reason to finally repair and restore an old early 1900's treadle grinding wheel that some friends gave me. It turns out that I really like it and want to make or find another one, except I would rather it be a water wheel this time.
So does anyone have any experience doing wet grinding? What should I look out for when looking for a wet grinder (man powered, not electric)?

I'm assuming that attempting to cast my own grinding stones is going to be advised against, however I've a good bit of cement and various blasting media so I'm going to do it anyway, don't try to talk me out of that part.

Lastly, if anyone wants to see where the restoration on the grinder is right now I'll be happy to post pictures.
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Old 07-30-2013, 05:41 PM
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Fulmaduro Fulmaduro is offline
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Sounds really cool. Any pics would be equally cool. Just recently went on a website that had stories and pics of early Solingen German knifemakers who ground knives on huge fast powered grinding wheels and did so while flat on their stomachs. And the stories go many died when the stones exploded into chunks at speed and riddled their bodies with debris. I know you said human powered, but this was an eye opening website to say the least.

Good luck, sounds like fun.

Tony Z


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Old 07-30-2013, 08:24 PM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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My grandad toured one of those places years ago. I'm told that they trained small dogs to lay on their backs while they were working to keep them warm. It was a hoot to hear about.

I don't think I'm going to be going for anything THAT big, probably 24" tops and I've got some tricks for reinforcing them as well for good measure.
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Old 07-31-2013, 09:19 AM
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WynnKnives WynnKnives is offline
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That sounds super neat, would love to see some pictures. I can just picture a blacksmith grinding out and sharpening a big medieval sword... awesome
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Old 08-01-2013, 08:09 AM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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Right, I'll be posting pictures over the weekend as I make the forms and such for casting the grinding wheels, any maybe casting them.
I've got a few sets of pillow block bearings and bushings so I should be good there, I've got one other old grinding wheel that I mean to see mounted as well, need to touch it up first though.
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Old 08-07-2013, 09:34 PM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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Firstly, sorry for the lack of pictures. Didn't have enough hands to do the pictures and fiddle with all the clay and whatnot.

To keep my resource usage small for the time being I'm casting a series of 400g cylinders and checking the abrasive qualities of each and how they wear. Once they cure I'm going to be mounting them on a small arbor and running them on a low speed drill and seeing how they perform. Wear characteristics are more important to me right now over the abrasive in the mix, so I'm just using 550 grit sand.

The other thing I'm in a quandry over is the best way to heat these stones to get the clay in them to vitrify, both the clays I'm using are high temperature hard stuff and need heat in excess of the sand I'm using. Right now I'm thinking that my best bet is to dig out a kiln (thankfully I live in NC, almost all the soil up here in the mountains is clay) and wood fire it. Even if I don't reach the temperature needed to fully harden it, it should be sufficient for the wheel.
In case you're wondering I'm working with Kaolin clay, which is used in porcelain and is brutally hard when fired and another commercial fireclay going by the name "Greenstone". Both need to reach temperatures of around 1600-1800C to fully harden, which means that the sand I'm using for an abrasive would melt, which would kinda defeat the purpose.
Going to keep poking at the idea and see what shakes out, I've got some good early results.
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550, arbor, awesome, blacksmith, block, casting, drill, fire, flat, forging, german, grinding, harden, heat, knives, make, man, post, repair, sand, sharpening, wood


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