X-Head Porting....

Mopar Sam said
Maybe its because I made my living carrying concrete blocks, shoveling dirt, running jack hammers, cutting walls with demo saws, etc. all day every day for 30 years, but I just don't seem to have the problems with the electric grinders. Mine catches and jerks once in a while, but it has never gotten away from me. It is a toy compared to what I did for work.

Anyhow, sorry Dental Dart, that I got this thread into a grinder debate. I will stay out of it now.

Not really a debate on which type of grinder to use MS. DD is struggling to get the finish he wants and killing burrs. That’s 100% about speed control. If he can find a good controller for the electric grinder that will eliminate that issue and he can start making progress.

I’ve only used one speed controller that actually worked. It was huge and bulky. And, if you just wanted to speed up or slow down the grinder you had to stop and turn the knob. Then you would grind again for maybe 10 seconds and then stop again to change the speed again. It was a giant PITA because I can modulate the speed of the air grinder with the hand lever. Once I have it set with the regulator, I just use more or less throttle (as it were) on the grinder and I’m not stopping all the time.

DD is finding what I found a long time ago...that foot switch for a sewing machine isn’t sensitive enough to control the grinder. Like I said, all of them I tried were like grinding with a toggle switch.

This is why guys who try their hand at porting quit. It’s nasty, thankless work and finding a grinder/burr/speed/pressure that works for whoever is grinding is the hard part.

I’ll see if I can find the one speed controller I used that actually worked, as cumbersome as it was. LOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLOL I just remembered one other issue with it. I had that big pig sitting on the bench next to me because I got tired of bending down to change the thing, and I set the grinder down to move the head or something and bumped that big knob. I grabbed the grinder and didn’t know what I did. As soon as I switched the grinder on, it helicoptered the burr, was vibrating so hard I couldn’t slide the switch back to off and it was shaking my guts out. I finally threw the grinder on the bench and just unplugged it. After that, when I had to use that bugger I put it on the shelf below where I was grinding so I didn’t bump that thing again.

That sucked.