grinding techniques

Lol ouch!!

 

I finally received some belts today and finished stand for grinder. Felt like it's Christmas in July.

I wanted to make a common hidden tang western tang for Takamura gyuto from a block of Ironwood. No spacers, no crazy shapes, nothing fancy. I drilled a hole for tang and glued block to the blade. It happened few weeks ago. Once glue cured I started shaping handle with rasps and knives, but got bored very quickly. Ironwood dulled knives very fast and my rasps weren't as quick as I'd like them to be. So I decided to wait for a grinder. Used 60 grit belt to do all the rough grinding (like 80-90% of final shape) and finished with hand tools. In the past shaping western handle could take several hours. Today it took me around 1-1.5 hours including time to polish.

There's one thing that bowers me about grinder — dust. I'm working on the balcony and it connected with our kitchen so it's essential to keep my working place as clean as possible. My good old disk grinder has a fan that blows away most of the dust and I managed to connect it with vacuum cleaner. With a belt grinder I don't see any easy ways of stopping the dust from flying everywhere. Any tips or advices on this?

 

Make a funnel (or buy one) with an approximately 2-3cm opening at the narrow point. Tape it to a shop vacuum hose, and affix it just below the belt in the lowest part of the front of the grinder. Make sure you empty the vacuum any time you switch materials you're grinding. IN PARTICULAR do NOT grind steel and aluminum into the same closed container.