Love my CBN wheels

[John K Jordan]

I love my two CBN wheels (80 & 180). My question is which one should I buy next? For me the choice is between 350 and 600. I am planning on using this for my bowl and spindle gouges. I attended a couple of very interesting workshops with Tom Wirsing and he had all of these.

I have 80, 220, 600 on bench grinders and use a 1200 on the Tormek. Mine are all from Rizza but I haven't tried the cheap wheels.

I generally sharpen my skews on the 600 grinder then take them to a leather honing wheel. I sharpen my spindle and bowl gouges on the 1200 grit then hone. I sharpen the negative rake scrapers on the 600 also, remove the grinding burr and raise a burr with a burnishing rod, usually use the 220 for other scrapers. I use the 80 grit only for shaping/reshaping tools. Note: I mostly turn dry wood - if I turned green I might sharpen differently.

Unless going for a finer wheel some day you might consider the 600 instead of the 350.

JKJ

[Scott Grossman]

I added a 360 grit after the 180 grit. Didn't see much of a difference, so it sucks to have sunk that money for little gain.
The much more experienced turners' (Reed and John) experience with the higher grits seems to be the way to go.
Scott

[David M Peters]

If you're happy with your 80/180 pairing I'd stick with them and spend your money elsewhere! You'll notice how folks in this thread mention how they hand-hone their tools in between trips to the grinder. If you practice that it really doesn't matter what grit your fine wheel is. I have a Rizza 80/220 combo and am very happy with them. I just wish I had the wider Mega Square wheels; a sharp corner would be more useful to me than the radius on the 4-in-1.

[David Gilbert]

Thanks for your responses. I have 80 and 180 wheels from D-way Tools. They don't have the radius edges (a good thing in my mind) but are steel and weigh about 7 pounds each. I think they contributed to my Woodcraft 1/2 Hp grinder's death (not a good thing). I replaced it with a 1 Hp Rikon grinder from Woodturner Wonders and am happy with it (a good thing). Also, I don't hone any of my tools.

Right now my inclination is to buy a 600 grit wheel. I'm just not sure of the source and design. I'm still looking for opinions about the $99 wheels from Ken Rizza.

Cheers,
David

[Phil Rose]

I just purchased the new $99 wheel from Ken with the aluminum center. Should be here on Saturday, so I'm hoping to get some experiences with it over the weekend.

[Reed Gray]

For reasons unknown, I never got good results from hand honing. The 600 and 1000 grit wheels took care of that. What little honing I do now is in the Tormek leather wheel. Most of the time it is the skew chisel as the fine CBN wheels leave a burr. I have been playing with honing the bevel and top of my shear scrapers and then burnishing a burr. Not sure if it makes a huge difference compared to grinding and then burnishing the grinder burr off...

robo hippy

[David Gilbert]

Phil,

I'll be calling later next week.

Cheers,
David

[John K Jordan]

... You'll notice how folks in this thread mention how they hand-hone their tools in between trips to the grinder. If you practice that it really doesn't matter what grit your fine wheel is. I have a Rizza 80/220 combo and am very happy with them. I just wish I had the wider Mega Square wheels; a sharp corner would be more useful to me than the radius on the 4-in-1.

After using them I'd hate to be without the finer wheels. I use an extra fine diamond hone several times between sharpening but I fine each time gives me diminishing returns since honing creates a flat and changes the geometry a bit. My spindle gouges and skews, for example, work better right off the grinder, and after being lightly hand honed or honed/polished. I use the Tormek leather wheel with their compound, a leather strop, or for the skews, a piece of resawn MDF with polishing compound smeared on it. This doesn't removed metal like a diamond hone but basically takes off any grinder burr and polishes the edge. I also hone the inside of the flute of gouges with either the Tormek profiled leather wheel, a curved ceramic slip stone, or a tapered extra fine diamond hone.

For a while I had a 350 grit wheel too but it was too close to the 220 to make it worth keeping. The 600 grit gives me a much better edge than the 220. The 1200 gives a better edge than the 600. As mentioned, I mostly turn dry wood, often hard exotics. The more an edge is like a polished razor the less sanding needed (assuming I'm guiding the gouge carefully!)

I also like the square cornered CBN wheels instead of the radiused. The first one I bought was radiused and I didn't keep it. The radiused edges reduce the width of the useful flat part of the wheel significantly. I understand the reason for the radiused design was to sharpen the small HSS bits used in hollowing cutters mounted in long handles - lets you sharpen curved sides without having to swing the handle in a wide arc.

I also like the wheels with 1" of flat grid down each side. I use this and the 90-deg corners mostly for grinding/sharpening special scrapers.

JKJ