What's new
What's new

Anyone have a Tormek T8 I’m Looking for a good drill bit grinder and tool bits.

Sir

Tormek is generally considered a hobby machine. That said; As apprentices we were all expected to learn how to offhand grind drills and lathe tools. The learning curve for hand dressing drills is about the same as the leaning curve for your average hobby level drill grinder and about as accurate. Freehand is more satisfying BTW.

You might simply wish to consider a bench grinder or one of the 2 x 72 belt machines that are popular with the knife grinding crowd.

Good drill grinders sorry to say are spendy and take up real real-estate. Surplus tool grinders are cheap the tooling and consumables are not. In industry there is very little of that going on any more, drills, reamers and carbide inserts are way cheaper than a trained grinder hand.

Seriously if you are thinking drills smaller than 1/2", you will be money ahead to simply buy them. Advice from a guy that's owned a grinding shop running Cinci 1&2's, Monosets, Brownie 13's Stars and Wickmans.
 
Ok thank you. Yeah I’m only classified as a series of hobbyist . I do Mostest of my sharpening now on the bench grinder. But it’s too aggressive.


What’s a good slower spinning water cooled tool grinder to buy? I’ve seen a few but not sure if they are worth it seem to mostly be China clones
 
Ahh, I've been in your ditch and I think I know the way out. It's not the bench grinder it's the general purpose stone they come with, the bond is way to hard and the abrasive mostly non friable. The result is slow grinding and burning of the work. Stock stones are for grinding rivets on shovel handles and so forth.... not tool grinding

For just what you want to do I most often use my oldest tool a Baldor 712RE (bench grinder) that I bought when I was in High School. As I recall I tossed the original wheels pretty quick. You couldn't retip a screwdriver with them and avoid turning the blade blue.

One side wears an induced porosity 46 grit RA (ruby wheel) the other a 60 grit white Alox K hardness (tool steel duty) . There is another just like it swinging a green wheel for carbide and a brown wheel for general purpose shop tasks. I don't recall but I think all of the stones came from Travers or MSC. The brown and green wheels are probably Norton the ruby and white "no-name" specials

And BTW there is a full suite of old school precision grinders tooled up and available. For most of life, the two little 7" bench grinders are perfectly fine albeit messy

The ruby and white alox wheels are 1-1/4" affairs with shop made micarta bushings. I keep them tuned up with a Norbide stick. There is truing and dressing, not the same thing; find a copy of the old Norton book on tool room grinding. IF you bought wheels by the case they gave the book away. It's probably on line

If you need cooling add a cheap mister running just enough sauce to avoid rust. in the old days it was simply water and sal soda. IE the comercial equiv of "Washing Soda" from the grocery store. About a cup of washing soda to a couple gal of distilled water. The commercial preparations are better, but you're going to want PPE regardless.
 








 
Back
Top