As these images show, I have 3 polishing stations. My first is a converted Harbor Freight grinder in a cardboard box enclosure vented with a 1 HP exhaust designed for wood working tools, threaded shaft on the left with i/2" hole rough buff using a bit of Cu pipe as a spacer. On the right is a spiral spindle attached to the threaded shaft for rouge where I wrapped the area of the set screws with tape to avoid those times when a piece would be marred if it contacted these bumps. The second lathe is a variable speed grinder without a spiral spindle so I can attach the great 3M soft abrasive wheels and run them at a slower speed. The last is a standard cabinet buffer with steel and brass bristle wheels on the right spindle and 3" 3M soft radial bristle wheel on the left. I am very happy with all of them, although I do plan on building a metal cabinet for the first one.
Hello Orchidland and Rachel,
I’ve been lurking as this discussion has unfolded. Rachel, initially I too used a grinder motor to polish/buff. The process is messy. Dust is flung everywhere. Not to mention that the lower 1725 RPM means polishing takes more time, resulting in more dust. When I began coughing up black sputum, I knew it was time to bite the bullet and buy a proper motor, within a powered exhaust hood.
Maybe you have a powered exhaust hood. If so my point is mute. If not, do give close consideration to where you put your motor. Without the powered exhaust, everything will soon collect black dust. Along with safety glasses, please wear a good dust mask to protect your lungs. And do save the money to buy a proper motor (3250 rpm) with two arbors, in a powered exhaust hood equipped with good lighting and filtered exhaust. You will be SO glad.
“And that’s all I have to say about that.” Forrest Gump
Judy in Kansas, where temps are high enough to keep the rain from freezing.
I had to look up what an expansion wheel was, I had never heard of them but they look pretty cool (Up to 2500 grit!) and they would fit more easily on my straight 5/8” arbor, thanks for the suggestion!
Hi Cristiano,
That’s an interesting idea, I never considered grinding my current arbors into tapered spindles. Not confident in my ability to do that much heavy duty grinding (and no idea how I would thread the tapered arbors once I got them tapered) but if my finding attachments plan doesn’t pan out I might just resort to trying other things. Thanks for your suggestion!
I use mine all the time. They are kind of like a power file. They are actually lapidary wheels as I also cut and polish most of my cabs. I may have mentioned this already, but look at Kingsley-North. they are a great source for all things lapidary…Rob
I feel you on the shipping costs/taxes/duty issue! It’s usually super expensive for me to ship things into Canada from the US (no free shipping for me), plus the hassle of figuring out if duty will be applied. What looks like a great deal to someone living in the USA doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great deal for everyone alas.
I’m not sure where you’re located but I didn’t mean to imply that North America/Europe are the only areas to get quality tools from. The world is a big place and you’re totally right, there are great companies everywhere. It often makes sense to purchase equipment/tools made in your local region - the voltage will match, less waste spent shipping things around the world etc. And sometimes it makes sense to purchase something made far away (like my purchase of my current buffer), and we should assume that people have weighed their options and made the best choice for their situation. Haha and that’s my rant!
Hi Roy,
I considered getting a separate grinder for grinding wheels but was hoping I could do two-for-one with this double buffer with a grinding wheel on one side and polishing buffs on the other (shop space is at a premium for me!). Luckily there’s lots of grinding wheels with 5/8” compatible plastic brushings, it’s just finding a compatible tapered spindle that’s causing a bit of a hassle.
But glad to hear you’ve had success with an economical choice. I’d love a beautiful expensive Baldor motor but for my current usage right now I’m just going for something that spins lol.
Hi Don,
I’m definitely still in the “make do” stage - I don’t make a living off my jewelry, so it’s definitely a matter of picking and choosing which tools to invest in. I’ve invested in things that are a bit more jewelry specific (casting equipment mainly because I was not brave enough to DYI that!) so I’m definitely cutting corners on the buffer because frankly right now I just want something that spins the buffs. I’m not entirely sure if this buffer will get that much use so I need to test in out in my process before I decide whether to invest the real money.
Glad to hear you had such a long relationship with your old polisher. Gotta love tools so old it’s like they’ve developed their own soul.
Hi jpavlicek,
Cutting off the threads sounds like a definite option for one of the arbors (the side I plan to use for polishing buffs on a tapered spindle). I checked and the unthreaded part of the shaft is a true 5/8” so without the threaded bit it would be very easy to find a compatible tapered spindle (and the shafts on this machine are quite long so loosing a bit of length cutting off the threads would be no problem at all).
Thanks for your suggestion!
Hi Elliot,
So a super annoying fact of being in Canada is that I literally CANNOT see the American Gesswein site - it automatically redirects me to the Canadian site which seems to have different (and I think far fewer) products. So I can’t see the link you posted (just takes me right to the homepage of the Canadian site).
I could set up a VPN to hide my location and try the American Gesswein site, but I’ve never gotten around to it and not sure if they ship to Canadian anyways…
I’m going to call Canadian Gesswein today and ask if they have any suitable spindles. There is a possible contender on the Canadian site but I’m not sure if the threads will match my machine.
How did you attach the spiral spindle to the threaded shaft on your Harbor Freight grinder? Do the set screws land on the solid part of the shaft or on the threaded part?
This machine is actually sold as a buffer, not a grinder, and has two arbors and variable speed (2000rpm and 3450rpm) so it seems fairly close in that respect to a lot of the polishing lathes sold by jewelry supply places. It’s just the arbors that are quite different than the jewelry-specific machines.
I definitely plan to make a dust hood for it because as a nurse I am super paranoid about lung health! My husband is working on making a plywood hood for each arbor and they will be attached to my fume/dust system that vents straight outside, plus I’ll keep wearing my respirator and face shield cause better safe than sorry!
One thing that will help you and you probably already know this; support this little machine firmly to a bench. Light weight power tools are a greater danger to use that are heavier tools. Bolt it to a hefty piece of wood with enough surface area to allow you to clamp it to a table or a Black and Decker Workmate or something similar. Good luck with your craft. It is buckets of fun.
Once you grind below the threads, there is nothing to thread the buff on to unless you get the taper rethreaded. Might as well buy a new polishing lathe.
By now if you have read many of my posts you know I am a bug about shop safety.
You mentioned, or perhaps I misunderstood, grinding off the threads to take on a tapered spindle. I would think long and hard about doing that. The reason high quality. high RPM motors last so long is they are balanced to such an extreme degree of accuracy. Grinding or filing off the threads could very well throw off the balance enough to be dangerous to the polisher and dangerous to you.
It’s usually super expensive for me to ship things into Canada from the US (no free shipping for me), plus the hassle of figuring out if duty will be applied. What looks like a great deal to someone living in the USA doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great deal for everyone alas.
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