Sanford followed me home from estate sale.

I went to an estate sale a couple of weeks ago that advertised wookworking equipment. As it turned out the guy was a tool and die maker from the local GE tube plant. I found this extra nice Sanford SG48 grinder with a lot of goodies for $275.00. I can't get over how nice it grinds! All factory scraping is there and the leadscrews have almost no backlash. I disassembled the grinder to clean and repaint and it is now making sparks.
A large selection of wheels came with it as well as 3 new Elgin diamond wheels, several new belts and a brand new factory spindle in the box.
This is a second generation model from around 1970. Our local tube plant had a least 50 of these grinders throughout the plant for sharpening small dies, etc.
They ceased tube manufacturing in 1985.

Those small Sanford's are hard to find. I don't like the larger models at all, but yours looks pretty nice. Great buy!

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They are very hard to find and are usually worn out when you do see one. This one was used very little. This is an SG48. The SG is for "small grinder".
Charles

That's a handy looking little cutie ......and I like what you paid.

That's practically theft..... even if it is a small machine.

More pics please!

I have a Butterfly Grinder "manufactured and guaranteed" by Harvey Manufacturing Corporation in New York, or so the label says. According to the name plate, mine is also SG 48. From looking at the pictures, it is an exact clone of what you have except for the stand, the eye protection sign, chuck and mine has Butterfly molded into the wheel guard instead of Sanford. Mine has a permanent magnetic chuck instead of electromagnetic chuck. I don't know if the same company made them under two different names, one company licensed out the design to another, there was industrial espionage, or some other explanation, but they appear to be identical in all major ways.

I found your tooling interesting. Can you post some more detailed pictures of the tooling and extra spindle (not the wheels), along with a description of what you think it is for? Is there a method to balance these wheels? Can you post a few more pics of the vacuum take off? Can you post a picture of your motor?

Yes, the Harvey Company did sell a re-badged Sanford under the Butterfly label so it is the same grinder. I went ahead and installed the new spindle on my grinder just to make it grind as good as possible. I'll snap a few more images and upload. As far as I know there was no way to balance wheels on this grinder but with wheels this small balancing is really not needed IMHO.
Thanks,
Charles

Thornewmexico,
I uploaded more photos to photobucket. The bronze spacers are used to adapt the thin abrasive wheels to the grinder and the spanner and t wrench is for changing wheels. There is also a homebrew dresser that the previous owner made. The old spindle is shown with a cut off wheel mounted. The new spindle was a late model green hammertone version. The dust collector is almost always missing on these grinders.
Thanks,
Charles


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I wondered what that hole was for on my wheel guard, and it is for a missing vacuum hookup. Good to know. Why does your diamond holder accept four diamonds?

Good question. Two different sizes and angles. He probably made it to fit diamonds that he had on hand.
Charles

Really nice looking grinder! If you can post your serial number I will add it to the Sanford database. My history of the company and the machines is at:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/sanford/

Although the Harvey grinders are a copy, they were not authorized. When I asked the company president why they didn't pursue the infringement, he said they tested one and pulled it apart for inspection. He said Harvey was not producing the tight tolerances they were, and were priced higher so it wasn't worth the bother.

Dennis