Dad always had one. I learned how to sharpen a hoe to a nice edge when I was 6. Jane’s dad had one. We just never got around to getting one, assuming they’d be really pricey.
Well, some are, if you want to lay down 300.00. This one, from Skil, is 69.00, and will save our joints—bigtime. I mean, swinging a big mattock/pickaxe combo and holding on as a blunt 1/4 inch thick/3 inch wide blade hits baked sod from an overhead swing, that’s worth your elbows and wrists. I pushed to get this thing, found it on sale at Lowe’s, nabbed the last one, and I’m in love.
The one I grew up with, that Dad owned for sixty years, was an old cloth-wired motor with a single grinding wheel, and one thing he was careful about was being sure there was good light on that wheel and he’d looked at it before I used it. [A cracked wheel, spinning at mega-RPM, is dangerous.]
Well, our new baby has 2 wheels, one coarse (garden tools) and the other fine (shears, etc, though I wouldn’t sharpen kitchen cutlery on this one)…it has little lighted plastic shields that throw an led light down on the contact between the blade and the wheel, and it has guards on the grinding wheels that only make them accessible between 10 and 6 o’clock, on the clock scale. I’d be really tempted to remove those guards and the fancy little shields, but—the shields do keep the sparks out of your face (they sting about like a 4th of July sparkler) and the light is nice; and most of all, the guards might save you some injury if you did have a wheel break. On the other hand—you have to hand-rotate the wheel to get a good look at it, for a safety inspection, so well…but I’ll go ahead and leave the guards. Lord knows, I learned to cope with a Skilsaw with a guard on it (Dad’s never had)…I consider the guard itself a bit of a safety hazard, but can’t figure out how to remove it, and Jane wants it, so there. I didn’t grow up with a safety-trigger, either, but hey…
Anyway, back to our new baby. It’s so steady it doesn’t walk at all with the use I put it to, so with our light use, I’m leaving it unbolted-down so we can move it easily. And thus far we now have a shovel that bites, and two mattocks that will not bounce off a dandelion root, or even a small growth of brush. Most of all, if we hit rock and ding the blade, we just walk to the garage and flip a switch, ch-ching, and we have a new edge.
Being a woman who builds things and works in the garden…I can tell you the next-to-last thing any woman needs are ‘light’ tools, like a dainty little hammer that makes you work harder than a blacksmith to get what a nice hammer with some mass to it will deliver without effort. A dainty little saw with a crappy blade. Etc.
And what EVERYBODY who works with garden tools oughta consider is a nice bench grinder.
It’s a bit of a learning curve—forget the nice little ‘guide’ for getting the right angle: the balance of the tool will tell you, and thanks to that helpful guard I can’t get an edge on both sides of the curved mattock blade, but I sharpen what I can reach, and the difference is that between a butterknife and a steak knife, on the job at hand. You simply take an easy stance, balance what you’re holding comfortably, don’t bear down hard, just let the edge kiss the wheel till you get nice sparks, and keep it moving across the grinding wheel so you end up with an evenly ground edge, same as if you were sanding it: you don’t want to bear down in one spot, but spread the action evenly and cleanly.
Snoopy dance. I’ve wanted one of these forever, and they can turn a crappy hoe or shovel into a real nice one.
And, with just a touch of mineral oil, you can use that fine side to do your kitchen blades, if you’re so inclined. 🙂
Mineral oil—excellent suggestion. I’ve got some knives we’ve gotten at garage sales that we mostly use for opening packages that I’ll practice on long before I tackle our Henckel set. Our figure skating blades, now, they’re right off the menu: 😆 they take really, really special equipment and rail-guides. But I’m always cursing the knives as not sharp enough. Hmmmn.
The problem with sharpening cutlery on a bench grinder, regardless whether you use oil or not, is that the heat generated by the friction of the wheel on the steel will affect the temper of the steel. You’ll get a nice sharp edge, but it won’t last because the edge will bend back on itself with use. That’s why I never use the knife sharpener part of my can opener. I use a ceramic sharpener that doesn’t really sharpen, but does hone the blade. I think any time you want to sharpen cutlery, it should be by hand, especially if the cutlery is ‘spensive!
CJ, I still have my ten fingers, and I love to work with my power tools, too. But I use the guards when I run the tools, except for the table saw when I have the dado blades in, you can’t run the guards when you have the dado blades. It might seem to be an inconvenience, but I consider the loss of a finger to be more inconvenient, so I leave them on the tools. I’m also left handed, so using a Skilsaw puts me on the wrong side of the tool, but I do all right with it.
Anyway, that’s a great deal on the grinder, especially with double wheels. Have you by chance looked at any of the tools on Harbor Freight? I’ve gotten a few things from them, they’re not all that expensive, and for the purposes I have in mind, they’re satisfactory.
We may even have a Harbor Freight outlet in town. Hmm.
Carolyn, there is a Harbor Freight approx. 1 mile from the rink, on Nevada just north of Francis. It is in that new strip mall adjacent to Albertson’s. Just sayin’ 😉
The thing about most tools is knowing how to use them the right way. A hammer for instance is not about the weight, but the lever arm. A contractor friend of mine has a big honken hammer that fools you. It’s made of titanium and has a large head and a really long handle. When you pick it up you expect it to be heavy, but it is very light. The long handle gives a big lever so it arives with plenty of force. Mass times acceleration. Small hammers are usualy designed for specific jobs, such as tac hammers. So Called “Woman’s tool kits” usualy come with what are really tac hammers. The smallest hammer I own came from my family’s Jewelery store. The head is about an inch long. My bench grinder/ pollisher came out of the store as well and has a coating of jewlers rouge over most of it. (That stuff never comes off completelly and gets on everything. My Grandfather’w white hair use to turn red when he used the pollisher.
Right on that! One of the reasons I like to use the mattock is that, properly used, and sharp, all that mass becomes weightless. You set your hands at the right point of balance, and swing, and you can repeat the swing with part of the energy it acquired in the last one, so it ‘tips’ in your hand, and is ready to come upward. If you hit a rhythm using that tool, it really turns light; and aim, too, is a learned skill. I can peel sod from beside a walk and never hit the concrete, while going fairly fast and getting a 2″ bite with it. I learned it because when our family worked in the yard, the really good tools got snatched by my mum and dad, and I got what was left over. I soon learned that particular tool has virtues, and once I really learned to use it, I’ve always preferred a pick-ended mattock to just about anything in the toolshed, when it comes to weeding, moving rock, or laying buried line or hose (pick end); peeling sod, cutting roots, establishing an edge, laying really big hose or pipe (mattock end), or just exercising your frustration (either end.) With that and a 4-tined longhandled claw (another implement that can move a lot of stuff without being heavy in the hand) I’m good for garden-work.
Until I was grown, my mother never had a power grinder. She sharpened tools on her father’s hand-cranked one that is bolted to the edge of the workbench. There’s a gear in there so the moderate turning, like with a pencil sharpener (OK, dating myself, do they still make manual pencil sharpeners?) spun the wheel at a good rate. No guard really needed, it didn’t go that fast, and it would sure stop fast if you started to grind yourself! I think the “motor” would have a very efficient “self-brake!”
All the time I was a kid, it had a little 2″ diameter stone. I thought that was what it was supposed to have, until one time I was in the basement and saw that it had grown to 6″. That little stone was just the core left after Grandpop had used it for years, and my mother hadn’t needed it often enough to replace. It sure went faster with all that extra circumference.
THen sometime in the seventies or eighties she got a two-wheel electric bench grinder, like you describe except not with the nifty LED lights. I use that now. Yep, nice tool.
For sharpening garden tools I find a belt sander works better and is easier to use than a bench grinder. 80 or 120 grit.
And I don’t like Harbor Freight tools. They are generally low quality and suited for low precision work.
Phil Brown
Lightweight tools are for lightweight jobs; a 12 ounce ball peen hammer, although it can be used as a finishing hammer for your siding, is not the best tool for that job. Tools also need to be in good repair, and keeping the edges of your digging implements sharp makes them more effective. I don’t have room in my tiny tool room for a bench grinder (I don’t even have a good tool bench!), but it sounds like you are getting good use from yours. Guess I’ll stick to files and whetstones for now 🙂
Nice thing about this one is you don’t have to bolt it down (instructions firmly say do, but I didn’t), so you can move it for a job, then put it up. You can also bolt it to a piece of plywood and use clamps to hold it, but just on its own it’s very steady, on little spring feet that grip nicely. But there’s nothing wrong with files and whetstones, either, especially on tools that already have a good edge: ours were (unfortunately) used straight from the store for 2 years, and have gotten steadily more blunt.
Actually the old hand crank sharpening stones can be really good and put on an excellent edge. They are easy to control the placement of the tool to the stone. Of course, it take another person to turn the crank. They had a really good stone at the “Scout camp” I went to as a kid. It was ther for years and we all used it for sharpening our knives and axes. Untill someone managed to break the stone. The loss of that tool was felt by all who attended the camp.
The old ones often had a foot-treadle that is quite a good thing once you get the feel of it. I learned to sew on a foot-treadle machine that was as good as an electric motor once you got the knack of stopping on cue.
So did I. That dates us, doesn’t it?
And you say you ain’t got no rhythm. I actually loved those, tho the Kenmore is still my favorite. That sucker could send a needle through anything. I bet it could handle leather, tho I never tried. And I loved the knee control rather than foot control. Those darned foot feeds always scoot out of reach. GRRRRR.
Something else you may want to try is to substitute a wire wheel for one of your grinding wheels (pick the on you use least) on your bench grinder. Great for removing accumulated old paint, rust and grunge from most anything. In my situation – at least – very useful.
Thanks for that. 🙂
The wire wheel simply cannot be beaten for cleaning the threads of bolts and such, stripping rust (as jd sez), etc. Shields and goggles are really a necessity when using either grind wheel or wire wheel–we need your eyes in as good a shape as we can get ’em, to keep the production rolling! 😀 Also hard to type if you’ve ground off a bit of finger or thumb–ask me how I know! :-O
Something else I’ve seriously lusted after. Thanks for the reminder. So good to get it BEFORE you need it!
😆 I am careful with my hands, and my eyes, I promise!
Memories: when my Grandmother died a few years ago and we had to sell her house, we finally packed up the rest of my Grandpa’s tools and benches, who had died in 1970. I brought home his old pencil sharpener. It’s bolted to our cellar stair post and is a delight to use. I think of my Grandpa and I think of elementary school and it is indeed far better than an electric pencil sharpener.
Mattocks: In 1983 I excavated in Bavaria. It was a rescue archaeological site and we needed to get to the earlier, Neolithic layers fast even if there was Carolingian material atop it. Some of the guys perfected what I called the “thermo-nuclear blast technique” and could mattock through the heavy clay soil, stopping just short of pottery or bone. Very impressive. I’m better with a trowel, which I still have even though I haven’t excavated now for years (just teach archaeology). It’s my best gardening took, despite that it is a flat, triangular mason’s trowel and not a scooped garden one.
HEHEHEHEHEH! When I was in college, we were excavating a site in the Kent valley. In order to get through the osceola mud flow from Mt Rainier, we had to bring in jack hammers! That stuff was set like concrete several feet thick. But we found goodies underneath, along with charcoal to date, so it was worth it.
I got stuck doing the drawings of artifacts. TEDIUM TEDIUM TEDIUM. Wonder what happened to those…seeing as I was ducking out of painting class to go dig, there’s some sort of humor going on there.
Those old hand-cranked pencil sharpeners were great. And going to use them in the classroom gave you a chance to scope things out from a different vantage—(“I see you takin’ my paper, Junior Barnes!”) Great memories…
I think I’d be with the mattock guys: a trowel or hand-claw means kneeling or sitting on mud, and I am so not into sitting on mud! 😉 [and I have a background that would have led me to Mediterranean archaeology, where the mud is warmer, but the sun is hotter!]—With the mattock you get spattered with mud, and you stand in mud, but at least you are not sitting on it!
Seriously, I so envy you the experience: I would have sat on mud to participate!
I learned to sew on my mother’s little electric Elna (no zigzags, no bells and whistles, but now a 70+-yr-old still working machine. But when I was in grad school in NYC I acquired a gorgeous Singer treadle machine (off the sidewalk!?! put out as trash) and did a good deal of mending with it. Only trouble was the leather belt tended to come unspliced where it was fastened together at the ends.
😆 my maternal uncle, who was military, then a farmer, lost an arm in a combine accident and had to find a way to make a living: he started fixing Singer sewing machines, which in a farm community with a real zeal for county fair competitions was, let me tell you, a real essential piece of equipment, and quite elegant, with their black enamel and goldwork decals…ironwork treadle with an ornate design, and a nice cabinet with places for thread, etc. Those were the queens of machines, I’ll tell you, and the front porch at his place had a lot of them sitting there waiting for attention. I used to be able to make those things go without a break in rhythm…those were the days: don’t feel sorry for my uncle: he was already quite popular in the community, and the sewing machine repair didn’t hurt: he was county clerk after that for many years, and something pretty neat in the Lion’s Club, too. He was quite a fellow. So those old treadle machines have a very warm spot in my memory.
Mum’s machine had a neat cabinet. You lifted up the machine, and then folded it down and it was then hidden away. The front had doors with all sorts of storage for spools, scissors, and whatnot and when they were closed it just looked like an elegant cabinet. It was bought new probably around 1937-38.
What’s this “Jane wouldn’t let me?” I never said anything about removing (or not) a guard. I don’t see any reason not to do so under certain circumstances. Under most…usually a guard does as much for protecting the equipment when not in use as the user when in use, so I’m generally reluctant to do away with them altogether. I haven’t looked at it yet, (remember cafe press? :D) but I bet we can make it usable, however you want it to work.
My sister still has our machine like that…tho it was a Kenmore. Also with that wonderful “lift the lid and up came the machine” cabinet. That’s still my favorite machine ever. I really don’t like the fancy one I got a few years ago and if I get set up and start sewing again, by golly, I’m going after another Kenmore!
Bench grinders are good, I use one all the time. But unless you have a steady hand or use the guide they can damage tools or erode them away. I mainly just use hand files while wearing leather gloves to sharpen most tools.
The wire wheel comes in handier. I use my grinder to shape antler for stone tool handles or making letter openers. Only problem is my shop starts smelling like a dentist’s office with that drilled tooth smell.
Yep, divots can happen really easily. Fortunately what we have to sharpen are generally yard tools that have met Washington’s state rock, lumps of basalt…the point of our shovel had curled into a roll.
My mother had a very old Singer that she bought while she’d been working for a seamstress. It had the knee control, the stand was the fold over and close the lid type. She eventually bought the Singer Golden Touch and Sew when they came out, but now they’re upstairs tucked away.
My ex-wife has something like 2 or 3 treadle machines, plus some older electrics, and at last I knew, she had a Pfaff, and she bought a Brother Embroidery Machine in 2001. That Brother cost $3900 for the machine, and $2100 for the software. That didn’t include a PC to hook up to it. Well, I have no idea what she’s doing, I haven’t seen her for over 6 years.
I considered getting a cheap-o machine at Wal-Mart, but they’ve done away with the fabric department for some silly reason.
oooh, I didn’t think of getting a bench grinder – I have a small hand one, used for tidying up the bottoms of pots if the glaze runs – if a bench grinder can be that cheap, perhaps I should get one ….