I guess they're both bad... Just one is more serious than the otherImplant into the wall is ok.
Implant into your face, not so much![]()


I guess they're both bad... Just one is more serious than the otherImplant into the wall is ok.
Implant into your face, not so much![]()
This happened when I was doing some workshop training around 1972. We were making a tap wrench with a ground finish on the jaws. One of tge chaps thought that he could grind the ends by planting them vertically on the chuck. 3/4" square and about 2" long. The instructor took an interest when there was an almighty bang. The brand new wheel was in pieces, and the jaws had left a very impressive dent in the thick end-guard of the grinder.Ive personally had a wheel explode and send the workpiece into the wall using my surface grinder, but in my case it was a too tall workpiece and a weak magnet, which tipped during grinding and became longer as it fell over and got dragged into the wheel.
Thanks for this detailed post! It seems that the more I read the more weird and horrific accidents I hear about SG incidents. Glad to hear at least you weren't hurt!Ive personally had a wheel explode and send the workpiece into the wall using my surface grinder, but in my case it was a too tall workpiece and a weak magnet, which tipped during grinding and became longer as it fell over and got dragged into the wheel. I have the original heavy steel guards but it still threw the 2"x2"x4" steel block across the workshop and embedded in a stone wall and there was pinging noises as stone hit things. Its always good to block things in extra well but I still suspect the magnets on my eclipse magnetic chuck have demagnetised with age. It was a proper brown trousers moment but having the guards etc in place and nothing in the ejection zone that mattered meant it wasn't more serious.
I took my hydraulic pump tank out and found similar slime and blockages, but also the motor was rubber mounted on mine, and the rubber mounts were bad, but generic isolation mounts off ebay did the trick and were cheap.
As mine is a Burdette hydraulic automatic machine (predecessor to the eliott's & J&S designs I believe), information is very difficult to find, but eventually I paid for a manual from lathes.co.uk covering it which is a mine of much needed info such as the hydraulic pressure relief valve pressures on the hydraulic system, running temperature of bearings (its a plain spindle with adjustable bronze bushes) etc. Currently I have a blown hydraulic hose in the knee to attend to and am using it manually though, so its a good time to sort any suspect hoses before its all back together and the dro scales etc connected because of course fixing it post assembly is a pain with all the lines and wiring in place hindering access.
That coolant tank will fill back up of black slime pretty quickly, its just how they are but you know they are working when its in the settlement weirs & just a question of housekeeping to manage it.
I have a table I can set up to use it as a centre grinder, I put it crossways on the table, and rotate the workpiece with a rubber round belt round it off to a drive pulley in a cordless drill, and turn it contra the spindle direction and use the surface grinder's Y feed itself to traverse the workarea on the shaft . I've used this to grind in shafts for bespoke stuff, and until I have a centre grinder (not that I really can justify one, but thats machine sickness, when you get that new machine, then there's always the next capability to be on the hunt for) , its handy to have around.
Having a cheap chinese spindexer is handy too, because you can magnet it the chuck or clamp the bed, and set it to a index position to grind on flats or hex etc. Ive used this to grind cutters for my rotary broaches and other stuff. I say cheap, because anything that goes in the worktank inevitably ends up with black grinding slime inside it and I dont want to put a nice tool in there and subject it to this. I also take my mag chuck off for housekeeping because although its a pain to get re-clocked back in accurately, all sorts of horrid stuff gets stuck between the chuck and bed and causes corrosion hidden away otherwise.
I made a wheel balancer similar to the J&S one myself because of the price people were asking for the originals. I set up two precision knife edges up on stands on my surface plate and verified it with a machine level, and I used the surface grinder with the shaft grinding setup to final grind the taper cone shaft for the hub after I had turned it in the lathe, so that it ran really true.
Long post, but the only regret I have is that the burdette takes odd sized hubs and they are really difficult to find, so changing stone between jobs means taking it off the hub rather than swapping hubs, so rebalancing each time, then resurfacing the stone on the machine spindle to make it run true. If I had lots of hubs, I could just dismount the hub and put it one side, then if I need to put it back on I could skip all this. With a J&S you should be able to find more wheel hubs really easily and its useful to grab them when they pop up cheap rather than when you need them.
Thanks hehe really happy with how the pulleys turned out tbh.Good work.
Those hoses look good. The hoses on mine could probably do with getting replaced at some point too.
However, while they are not leaking, I might as well keep using them.
The pulleys look brand new!
Thanks hehe really happy with how the pulleys turned out tbh.
And regarding your hoses, yeah if they're not leaking I wouldn't worry too much. Are they still relatively flexible? Mine were rock solid :/
Yeah I did notice the pulleys have some drill marks, and even the motor armature seemed to have some weights on the fan. Didn't touch that so should be ok.Good work on the hoses.
Be aware that all the drive elements for the spindle ( motor armature, drive pulleys etc, spindle irself ) are all carefully balanced and even a slight imbalance can introduce herringbone patterns on the work.