King Circular Grinding Wheel Thing

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cotedupy

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Anybody tried one of these bad boys...? (@branwell this is right up your alley!)

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That's an electric powered, water-cooled/lubricated, disc-shape, King 1000. It's designed to be used with the blade against the flat surface of the disc, so not like a traditional grinding wheel. And the thing is quick once you pump 240v through it.

This is on loan from a friend, and I believe they were only produced for a small time for foreign markets and different mains electricity. Though they may still be available in Japan.

It's pretty fun tbh!
 
Makita makes one, I've got one with three stones coarse120ish, medium 1000, and a white 5000. It's very easy to screw up a knife blade on, I use it for my wood chisels.

Ah yeah I can imagine it would be!

Just to be clear though - I wouldn't really recommend this King one for sharpening. More for heavy repair or restoration work, as a slightly gentler and more forgiving alternative to a belt grinder / linisher. Even with the 1k King stone it's surprisingly quick.
 
Ah yeah I can imagine it would be!

Just to be clear though - I wouldn't really recommend this King one for sharpening. More for heavy repair or restoration work, as a slightly gentler and more forgiving alternative to a belt grinder / linisher. Even with the 1k King stone it's surprisingly quick.
I’d be interested in how you make out playing with it, for me it just eats too fast. A bigger wheel would help.
 
Variable speed 9 inch sanding discs are popular among some knife makers. Also 1 degree conical discs have interesting properties in that they take the far side of the disc, which is effectively going in the wrong direction, out of play.
 
Perhaps one could also mount such a diamond wheel on a motor-driven potter's wheel?! The potter's wheel may be cheaper than a sharpening machine from Japan. And the electronics should also be waterproof.
 
And with a little searching you should be able to find quality suppliers of such discs. One advantage I see is that - provided that it is a good quality disc and not Chinese garbage, then the disc is made for industrial use. That means it should last a long time in private use. And some of these discs are really designed to flatten rocks. In theory, this means a longer service life than the plates we otherwise use.
 
Had the makita one for sharpening jointer and planer blades. You are putting an edge on a steel blade from 6-12" long. Found it very difficult to use to get an even edge. You are supposed to have the blade at a slight incline to the stone and slice it back and forth. They had a jig to hold the blade well but there is a steep learning curve. Sold mine. Might be useful for flattening the back of a knife like a deba.
 
I've used machine shop tool grinders for blades for over 50 years in my machine & tool shop. I kept the Glendo rotary hone (which they don't make any more) after I sold the company. A low speed rotary hone is much easier in my opinion to control an edge than a small belt sander, which I've also used (they all run too fast for blades with a stock motor. In spite of the so called "diamond" hone disks which are diamond grit bonded to aluminum discs (nickel plated onto the disk???) the diamond on coarse rotary hones seems to fracture & wear away quickly. Aluminum oxide works much better.

Like every powered tool, you have to learn how to be gentle and careful for precision work.

Sharpening lathe tools, chisels and such requires gentle handwork, so I found it easy to start using the hone on knife blades. There is no doubt however that letting the motor do the work with the aluminum oxide disk makes it MUCH easier to sharpen a blade. For doing fine work on finishing blade edges, it takes very light pressures and very good hand control. It runs slow enough that I do not use cooling and the blades never get hot. For finishing, I only let a blade touch one side of the wheel and almost always only let the wheel touch the wide part of the edge moving toward the point for very fine edges.

I wasn't aware of a lot of the other horizontal laps noted above by other members, but it may be one of those might be worth trying.

I do NOT try to do honing on wide flat super narrow single angle edges of Japanese blades. I am not a masochist.

My overall experience is that getting a blade's edge back to the point near final honing works very well with aluminum oxide. All of my finish work is then done with Diamond disks. If necessary, I hand hone an edge with stones, though that is rare as the powered hone works fine for me. For a few of the finest tasks I will use diamond dust with oil on a solid flast aluminum oxide disk.

YMMV, but I like the motor to do the physically hard work.
 
Part of what makes a flat disc so nice to use is that the area closer to the center of the disc is moving slower. So the tip of the knife, which has less steel to sink the heat, is naturally ground on a slower part of the disc.
 
Anybody tried one of these bad boys...? (@branwell this is right up your alley!)

View attachment 166028

View attachment 166027

That's an electric powered, water-cooled/lubricated, disc-shape, King 1000. It's designed to be used with the blade against the flat surface of the disc, so not like a traditional grinding wheel. And the thing is quick once you pump 240v through it.

This is on loan from a friend, and I believe they were only produced for a small time for foreign markets and different mains electricity. Though they may still be available in Japan.

It's pretty fun tbh!

Wow! I was looking for one of these to try.

Water & 240 volts … What could possibly go wrong?

… And your point of contact with it is holding a wet iron rod (knife)!!!!
 
I have two of the Makita sharpeners with various stones, and they work really well, but I would like a larger stone, as mentioned previously, you really can only use one side when rotating.. I think these type of machines may be available, but not exported from Japan normally, and subsequently expensive and hard to get in the US.
 
did i hear circulular grinding wheel thing?? well i kinda made something.

an adapter so i can use grinding wheels for angle grinders in my drilling machine.
gonna grind razors with it. but i guess i could use the flat side too of course.
i can even run 2 of them stacked if i want a wider surface.

0-3000 rpm...

grinding wheel1.JPG


grinding wheel2.JPG
 
Part of what makes a flat disc so nice to use is that the area closer to the center of the disc is moving slower. So the tip of the knife, which has less steel to sink the heat, is naturally ground on a slower part of the disc.

This is a very good point! I hadn't thought about that aspect of it.
 
Would so love one of those, especially with a King 1K stone. I know its very out of style but I'm still a huge fan.

Thanks for reminding me of these machines. Should definitely look into one.

I'm quite liking it tbh. Though that's mostly because I don't have a proper grinder, and I'm rubbish at using them anyway, so find this a little easier and more forgiving. You otoh might just find it fills a gap that you didn't necessarily have!
 
did i hear circulular grinding wheel thing?? well i kinda made something.

an adapter so i can use grinding wheels for angle grinders in my drilling machine.
gonna grind razors with it. but i guess i could use the flat side too of course.
i can even run 2 of them stacked if i want a wider surface.

0-3000 rpm...

View attachment 166176

View attachment 166177

Ever used a diamond grinding wheel on an AG to for flattening stones? (That's what I wanna try...)
 
a regular angle grinder spins at 12k rpm :) don't know how easy it would be to control to be honest.

if going that route i would probably get one of those diamond cups for grinding stone from the hardware store

iu
 
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