Most woodturners and home handymen find that sharpening their tools on a high speed bench grinder gives a perfectly adequate edge.  What most grinders lack are decent wheels and jigs.  However, we all have to start somewhere and we are pleased to offer a couple of reasonable, basic grinders to get the tyro woodturner up and running.

To avoid the creation of a concave bevel, the grinding wheel should be at least 6 inches (150 mm) diameter.  On the other hand, an 8 inch (200 mm) grinder costs somewhat more and - importantly - replacement wheels cost more too.  Hence, most of us use six inch grinders for our sharpening. 

We offer two versions of the six inch grinder from Silverline: a general purpose grinder with two 20 mm (3/4 inch) wide wheels, and an excellent development of this product that features a 40 mm wide wheel.  The wider wheel makes the sharpening of woodturning tools that need rolling on the rest so much simpler and ensures that wider tools such as skew chisels of 3/4 inch and larger can be sharpened with the full face resting on the wheel.  An added benefit of this wide wheel grinder is that the wide wheel is a soft, white Aluminium Oxide wheel of fine grit, able to give a first class finish on newly sharpened tools.  In both of these grinders, the 3/4 inch wheel(s) is a carborundum wheel, maybe OK for knocking bits off rough tools and maybe even for sharpening metalworking tools, but not really reflecting the current state of the art as regards sharpening woodturning tools.  In honesty, I would have to say that these wheels should be replaced at your earliest economic convenience with  the O'Donnell "ruby" wheels.  Even so, these grinders still offer a good starting point for a sharpening system.  The great news is that the clearance in the guards is sufficiently wide to allow the fitting of the wider ruby wheels with recessed centres, providing a 1 inch face width on a nominal 3/4 inch wheel fitting.  Wheel bore in all cases is 1/2" and the wheels feature the standard 31.75 mm (1.25") central hole (into which the mounting bushes are fitted) making replacements easy to find: it is very disappointing for us to have to explain to owners of Record and some other grinders that their wheels do not conform to the standard and hence the only source of - largely unsuitable - wheels is the original manufacturer.

The motors are 200 watt (1/3 HP), 220/240 volt on both models and the nominal speed is 2850 rev/min.  The grinders are supplied with eye shields and basic tool rests.  Again these could be beneficially replaced at a later stage with a good quality specialist sharpening jig, but one can survive and get started without this luxury.  (There's a neat DIY method of jigging tools for sharpening described in Keith Rowley's book "Woodturning - A Foundation Course" - listed in our books and videos section.)

For those for whom "big is beautiful" we also offer an 8 inch bench grinder with two 8" x 3/4" carborundum wheels and a 350 watt (~1/2 HP) 2850 rev/min, 220/240 volt motor, otherwise similarly equipped as described above - also from Silverline - but with 16 mm (5/8") wheel bore.

Finally, we also include here a grinder which features both a conventional high-speed grinding wheel 150 x 20 mm  (6" x 3/4") and a slow-running, 134 rev/min Aluminium Oxide wetstone wheel, 40 mm wide, which runs in a water bath.  The wet wheel operates at right angles to the high-speed wheel (to accommodate the gearbox which reduces the drive speed).  Please don't expect that this set-up will give you Tormek performance, but it will allow you to grind vulnerable tools, such as bench chisels and plane irons, without the risk of overheating and potential loss of temper.