Out of round grinding stone

[RetiredLE]

Greetings from a new member here in the Great Northwest.

I have an old pedestal style grinding stone that was given to me.

After a few visits to the local machine shop, I had a center made for it and was able to mount it onto a motorized stand that I salvaged from an old bandsaw base & motor.

The stone itself is quite out of round and I am trying to figure out how to remove enough material to make it round.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

PS: I tried to post a pic using the 'attachments' feature but kept getting an error message.

 

[tdmidget]

Your terminology is very difficult to decifer. If by "stone" you mean a grinding wheel then you are on a course that may lead to disaster. The speed a wheel turns is critical. It sounds as thought you have no information on it. In that case take it and drop it on a hard surface until it breaks. Then throw it away , fill up a hole, etc.
It sounds like you have gone to some expense and danger to avoid spending about $30 at Harbor Freight

 

[J.R. Williams]

Wheel

Remove the wheel from the arbor and tap it gently to see (hear) if it rings. If not hit it harder with the hammer until it breaks. This will prevent a serious problem when it breaks while running.
JRW

 

[PixMan]

I have to agree with the first two respondents. There is no grinding wheel that has so much value (nostalgic or otherwise) to be worth the risk of breaking at speed with someone's safety or life at risk.

Break it into pieces and get a new one from a reliable source. (NOTE: Harbor Freight is NOT one of those sources!) And when you get the new one, also give it the ring test before mounting it, then run it for at least two minutes before applying any load to it. When you do use it for the first time, make sure you're not standing in line with it.

 

[keithmech]

use a mounted diamond for "dressing the stone.
.If real bad ,mount it in the lathe and machine it
true.

 

[eKretz]

By the description I get the feeling that this is a *big* wheel, like used back in the day with a foot pedal. If so it is probably rotating fairly slowly. I think what the OP probably meant was that since he had a machine shop make an arbor for him the wheel is running out of true, or not concentric with the bearings. I think there is little danger of the wheel going kaboom, but hopefully the OP will enlighten us as to wheel diameter and RPM. As to truing the wheel, that will have to be done with a diamond dresser the same as any other (AlOx) grinding wheel.

P.S. Mike welcome to the board. Excuse the safety Nazis for jumping the gun and forgetting to welcome you.

 

[RetiredLE]

You are on the money. The wheel is one of those large stones that almost all of the old farms had to sharpen tools and implements.

Through it's history it developed a wobble and I am trying to get it back to being round. Hate to just throw it away - thus all the effort thus far.

Will try to figure out how to post a pic, since those are still worth a thousand words.

 

[J.R. Williams]

Wheel

The photo changes things considerably. The wheel is an old Sandstone variety. Set up a good rest and use a large carbide tool and it will cut the wheel back to shape in a hurry. They are a soft wheel and can be easily cut to back round. The wheels would set in water on one side for extended time intervals and when used to sharpen a tool, the wet soft side would wear down in a hurry.
JRW

 

[RetiredLE]

I knew the value of a photo still had some merit...

I will try your suggestion.

 

[eKretz]

Oh wow, that IS an old wheel. Since it isn't AlOx I'm sure you'll have no trouble truing it up as suggested. You might even get away with one of those star wheel dressers if you just want to try something quick and easy.

 

[magicmaker]

These are easy to dress.
1. Run wheel at low rpm
2. Set up a drip onto real sponge to spread water smoothly over wheel surface.
3. Have movable rigid tool rest.
4. Set tool rest as close to wheel as possible and move it in as needed.
5. Use diamond plated bar dresser.
6. When finished dressing or using wheel, let it run without drip to evenly dry out.
7. Dressing this way is clean and throws no dust.
8. If there are small holes in your wheel rim, you may fill them with dop wax.
Jim

 

[RetiredLE]

I have quite a bit of material to remove. Will this bar dresser be up to the task?

 

[magicmaker]

Yep.

BTW- wheel turns toward you for dressing.

By slow rpm I mean just short of slinging the water.
Jim

 

[Peter from Holland]

If you have a angle grinder with a disc for stone you could use that to

Make a bar parallel to the surface of the stone
With the guard of the angle grinder against the bar move left and right while turning the wheel (wet or dry whatever works)
Move the bar for adjusting

Peter from holland

 

[crossthread]

I think it will be pretty easy to "square" up that wheel. Abrasive stones like that cut pretty easy. I recently resurfaced an old Arkansas stone that my dad used for many years. It was so swaybacked it was just about unusable but I have never seen one harder then this one and I can remember my dad putting a razor sharp edge on a knife with it. I clamped it in my mill vise and milled it down with a 4" carbide face mill. I kept the speed and feed down and it got a little hot but did not crack or anything. It is just as good as new.