Thread: Finally bought a grinder / It arrived!

Now that I've been using it for a while...

I removed the tool rest for grinding and sanding. I freehand. You see, if you're grinding, it is possible for the belt to catch an edge or corner and push the piece downwards. If there is nothing there, the workpiece and our hand will just move a couple of inches and you can resume sanding after figuring out why that happened. If there is a toolrest there, it is possible for the workpiece to get lodged between the rest and the wheel, and the added pressure will cause it to get rammed through. Depending on where exactly your fingers were, this may end badly.

I also had to true my rubber grinding wheels.
Given that this thing is designed for knifemakers, I had assumed that the wheels would be true. Yet I never got the belt to track 100% reliable under pressure. and I also noticed that I had a tendency to grind slight divots where the edge of the wheel touched the blade. To true it, I just held a piece of sandpaper to a piece of flat stock, and then gently touched it to the back of the wheel while the belt was running medium speed. This removed a lot of fizz from the edges of the wheel, and not it tracks true and has a very even grinding profile.

Oh, and that wooden table is now some sort of indistinct mottled grey