Using a Variable Speed Angle Grinder as a Rough Lathe

I figure that saying, "Don't try this at home" wouldn't mean much here ????

Wear full metal jacket, gloves, eye and lung protection. Perhaps, if you use something stronger than rinky dinky screws to hold the piece it might be safer than an actual wood lathe.

You might find your angle grinder will burn out in short order if you do this very often.

Reason, build up of wood dust inside machine restricting cooling air? This is a panel beaters curse sanding off filler material.

Right tool for the job comes to mind.

A bit rough and ready but you achieved your objective.

Using a spokeshave might have been a little more orthodox.

Thanks Wal, I have a spokeshave, great to fit handles in spades, shovels, etc but it would never have done as good a job as the grinder did on this round piece.

The biggest surprise to me is that it is nearly a month later and nobody has tried it yet. Following the pictures of arbortech disks in the posts here, I even put it on the arbortech facebook page. I put it on make magazine's site and their web person liked it and asked me to start a page about it on their wiki. Practical farm ideas web person liked it and passed it onto their editor but nobody tried it yet. I put it on the german work and technology museum page and some other angle grinder page and same deal.

So there is some interest but it seems not enough to make anybody get off their computer chair. All I can say is that it is pretty sad that people ( even those with an interest in selling expensive disks and people in the business of selling the more expensive variable speed angle grinders) are too darn lazy to even try this method. It is all very strange. Just seems like such a no brainer. Show your disk or grinder lathing a piece and sell more of your product.

When I did the pulser pump video it took 50,000 views before someone else made one. Pretty awful statistic, eh? So with this it is 500 down, 49,500 to go. It is piss easy to try. I am guessing someone will try it in 2015. Brian

That was resourceful. Similarly, I have sometimes used a drill press to turn a workpiece while shaping with an angle grinder, followed by file or sandpaper. Ya do what ya gotta do....

"It would be interesting to see it optimized with a disk designed just for doing this."

Google "Arbortech woodcarver" for a disc specifically designed for this task. I have used these discs for over twenty years as roughing cutters for wood sculptures. But be sure to buy a dressing stick for sharpening when you buy the disc. When sharp they are an excellent tool but if blunted they can ruin your work piece. There may be other makes on the market but I have had such good results with this, that I have never looked for an alternative.

Apparently chainsaws work well too.

If you don't have a chainsaw then this...

I have a blade like this for my 4 1/2" angle grinder. My wife is an artist and sculptor, but fears power tools. That one she liked so much I bought her an angle grinder of her own. My blade came from Harbor Freight, but I can't find another one like it, there, so I think it must have been a product overrun for them.

I'll tell you this. Those blades can "hog off" a swarm of wood FAST, and do great work at near-flush cutting along walls and such, when you need to remove an entire floor of a room. I had to use mine to remove a bathroom floor I was replacing, and it did the job too well before I learned to control it.

My wife used it to hollow out a green half-log that came from a tree about 20 inches in diameter, with the section being about two feet long. She didn't really make anything out of it, just wanted to see how the tool would work. That's when she fell in love with it. Then she caught her hand on the spinning blade AFTER she shut it down, and now she has a whole lot more awareness of what a hog it is. But she still uses it.

Great invention, but like any power tool, it's hungry, and it makes a grinder omnivorous.

I absolutely dreaded grinders when I first started using them! My boss had a thing for taking off the guard so you could cut deeper and putting 7 inch blades on 5 inch grinders. Absolutely out of order! But lately, because I am independent and buy my own, I have been using 7 inch variable speed and 5 inch variable speed grinders. They are slow start too so they don't "jump" when you start them and if you are using fragile rock or doing fine cutting, you can just slow them down to get the control you need. (I am a stone mason so it is mostly rock cutting). Rock can break halfway through and jam the blade and the horsepower of the grinder will then give you a kick. Depending on your use, grinder disks can also go in a circular saw and you have more safety and depth of cut then. I think grinders are inherently dangerous but I would still like someone to try the lathe thing! I have 2 own brand rona 7 inch grinders. They popped the price down to 100 dollars and I guess nobody trusted that price for a variable speed grinder. They don't sell them anymore. It is amazing how much work I have done with them. Guys burn out the expensive macho man grinders all the time on the first or second stone patio. These things must be up to about 10 each by now!

Brian