How I made a harbor fright bench grinder usable.

[nn4jw]

A few months ago I bought a Central Machinery 8" bench grinder from Harbor Freight for about $50. Not the one with the light. OK, it's definitely a piece of typical harbor fright junk but it seemed heavy duty enough for grinding and sharpening lathe chisels. The truth is that if I had seen one without the grinding wheels mounted or running and leaping all over the bench with its wheels wobbling merrily side to side I'd have run away.

Being stubborn I decided to see if I could do anything to make it actually usable since I had bought it.

The short version is that I cleaned up the arbors, bought a Norton blue wheel, replaced the stamped wheel flanges with machined table saw blade stabilizers (really!), dressed and trued the wheels, verified wheel balance and now it's actually a usable grinder.

Not counting the cost of the new wheel, which I'd have probably bought no matter what was on the grinder, it cost me about $22 and a couple of hours work to make this thing usable. The details of what it took to do this are, as usual, on my blog. Way too involved and long to post here.

http://jrwagner.org/blog/2013/08/05/bench-grinder-hacks/

As long as the motor doesn't go up in smoke I should get quite a bit of use out of this grinder now.

 

[MarkE]

I just upgraded from my old Harbor Freight grinder after 15+ years of service. It was still working and I sold it to a guy on CL. I only upgraded to go from a 6" to an 8".

Bottom line, I guess, is that the motor lasted for those 15+ years with no problem. Here's hoping you get at least as much service from yours.

 

[junquecol]

With bench grinders,you never know. My 30+ years old, $29.99 special from Lowes is still trucking along. I bought a fairly expensive slow speed a few years back. Both end bearings were trash. They were open bearings on a grinder- DUH! Just gave my grandson a grinder that I picked up fom Big Lots a couple years back for $20. Thing is HEAVY, as the end bells are cast iron.

 

[Hmerkle]

Thank you Jim...Now I don't feel so bad!

I bought one at Direct tools - it was a reconditioned Ryobi - I pulled the wheels and housings and added a cotton and felt and for - (are you ready for it?) $24!!! I have a "Almost a Beall" finishing system... (now if I can just figure out how to put three wheels on two shafts!)

 

[Rick M]

Jim, did you need to shim that blue Norton wheel to get a snug fit?

 

[nn4jw]

Jim, did you need to shim that blue Norton wheel to get a snug fit?

Rick, the Norton wheel included nested plastic bushings to fit different arbor sizes. They fit this grinder pretty snugly. What I did have to do, but forgot to say on my blog, was sand the ends down a little. The stock bushings stuck out just enough past the wheel that they contacted the blade stabilizers. So I sanded them down enough that they didn't stick out at all. The blade stabilizers were larger outside diameter than the original flanges as well as thicker at their centers. They really improved the precision of holding the wheels in the correct relation to the arbors.