Afternoon…
Have embarked on a carving project using my angle grinder but it has got seriously hot within about 10 minutes, and an hour later it’s still a bit warm.. So what’s a good, not too pricey heavy duty one?
Cheers

Whats your current angle grinder ?

Right now im just inside taking 10minutes from wire wheeling a land rover chassis with my makita 4.5″ – it was about 75 quid iirc. Much much better at long term use than the previous performance power thing i had.

So much so my arms give up before the grinder remotely gets hot.

It’s a cheep one from toolstation… Cost about 15 quid….

Yep , not really designed for prolonged use ,odd cut here and there. Mines now 5 years old and gets a pounding periodically …. No use for 3 months then 2 days solid use , i do alot of welding so by proxy alot of grinding

http://www.amazon.co.uk/MAKITA-9554NB-115mm-Angle-Grinder/dp/5666045105

Thats the one i got

It’s a cheep one from toolstation… Cost about 15 quid….

I had one like that, motor burnt out when I used it for more than about 5 mins. Now have a Bosch professional one which I expect to last for ever…..

Get a bosch (blue) or Makita.

you can get them for less than £50.

Run 2 of them if you are going to be using for very long periods. I have 2 makitas so i can keep different discs on each – eg grinder and wire brush when cleaning up parts.

10min should be find though with a decent brand. Just make sure you are letting it rev and not bogging it down with too much ressure.

Another makita user here.

Taken a beating doing what trailrat has just been doing.

SSolid and reliable.

Had to bin my £90 ryobi sds yesterday though. Drive torn to bits and slipping. It’s final duty drilling old rubber bushes out of landy radius arms 🙂 Sad day, it almost singlehandedly built my house the plucky little sod.

Mikita 115 mm here can’t faze it

And yet my tool station jobby has had a serious amount of use (for a 115mm grinder anyway). Bought in a hurry for one job, to be replaced with a Makita when it packed-up…still using the tool station one!

The only thing I’ll never do again is use a cupped wire wheel in one again. Nearly killed me and took months for the scars to heal 😕

The best angle-grinders large or small are Metabo.

tbh i was kind of overloading it as i had a serious amount of well seasoned cherry to remove… will have a look at the makita ones… cheers for the suggestions

His favorite tool.

We hammer grinders at work, can be hours at a time with minimum breaks, my Bosch one lasted well.

My Milwaukee is doing pretty well too.

“The only thing I’ll never do again is use a cupped wire wheel in one again. Nearly killed me and took months for the scars to heal “

What the hell were you doing with it ? Been using one for 2 days solid plus more last month with no issues.

The product of the last 2 days work and 2 days last month. New rear cross member and wirewheeled and painted chassis, big package from gwyn lewis full of suspension arrived today. And yrm supplied new sills and tub panels to replace the galvanic corroded contact points. And a billion bolts for the rebuild.

tbh i was kind of overloading it as i had a serious amount of well seasoned cherry to remove

What sort of cutting / carving disk you using? I used to use the Arbotech ones – if you’re using the same or similar then really, really get covered up. Grinders are really far to fast to use with wood cutting tools and I’ve never really understood how Arbortech get away with making and selling them – I gave up using them them when I had a batch of them that would fragment sending TCT tipped shurikens flying around the room. Visor, apron, gloves are all well and good when the blade whizzes past you the first time, they don’t offer any protection when it bounces off the wall behind and hits you from behind. Having one skim past my jugular from a ricochet I decided to can using them.

His favorite tool.

That is actually pretty neat!

I have a 115 Dewalt one, it was about £55 5 years ago and broke down after about three years and some serious abuse; I later realised this was down to the bushes so replaced them easily myself for about a fiver.

Might you need a 9″ grinder for your stuff? If so there were a couple shops on ebay knocking out high end Hitachi ones for about £60 a couple months ago…didn’t manage to justify one to myself.

Might you need a 9″ grinder for your stuff? If so there were a couple shops on ebay knocking out high end Hitachi ones for about £60 a couple months ago…didn’t manage to justify one to myself.

Screwfix is selling the 9″ and 4.5″ hitachi grinders for about £90 together. I think a lot of people are buying the set, keeping the one they want then flogging the other on eBay (thats what I did anyway)

Maccruiskeen… I’m using a sabertooth carbide burr… I had an arbortech one but took it back to Axminster as it was awful, it was apparently the first one to have been removed. Once the majority of stock is removed I will be going back to bladed tools for the finish….

they look interesting, never come across those before. Look like they’d be more controllable than the arbortech ones – they tended to either skim across the surface or suck themselves into the workpiece and take off far more material than you wanted to.

Yeah… Seems to work pretty well… Have got the extra corse and the fine, was the first use yesterday so needs practice, oh and they make a serious mess!

I also use Makita.

Saw this yesterday, £37 delivered. LINK

Nice one Neil… That might be the one for me

Just done our refresher training.
http://www.aviva.co.uk/risksolutions/help/faq/answer/1466/

Had a cheap angle grinder fail on me in a most spectacular way: put a new disc in and went to spin it up to make sure it was bedded in. Unfortunately the start-up torque was enough to break the grinder’s handle! The whole thing fell out of my hand and continued to run, bouncing around the garage as if possessed, while I did a great riverdance impression trying to keep out of its way.

Thankfully it chomped through its own cable, coming to stop with a nice blue flash & a bang!

you had much milage out of the hitachis maccruiskeen ?

i was tempted by the 9inch but was put off by the many reviews saying many of them just didnt work out of the box or failed in short order.

Shame as i like hitachi stuff.

My Hitachi grinder must be 15 years old and still going strong. Not sure if the new ones are built to the same standard but I’m happy with it.

Just read a few reviews of the makita ones… Seems to be an issue with the switches…

it operates different to normal – it needs a firm push to switch it on – and it needs a light touch/push to switch it off.

its not a standard slide switch as found on some grinders – i like it as a safety feature – hard to knock on but easy to knock off.

you had much milage out of the hitachis maccruiskeen ?

I kept the 9″ and sold the little one. The 9 has been great- cutting my way into shipping containers and chopping up a big steel film set of a power station. It replaces a hitachi I bought ex-hire in 1993. So certainly the old ones last but I’ve probably only done 20 or 30 disks worth of cutting with the new one.

I may have to find a way of covering it as I was getting sawdust building up under my one which stopped me being able to switch it off…

The only thing I’ll never do again is use a cupped wire wheel in one again. Nearly killed me and took months for the scars to heal

Was that a screwfix cupped wire-wheel? I used one in mine (no idea what, got it from metals4u. The hold-switch is a PITA) and at first it seemed so inbalanced I couldn’t hold on the grinder. I had to use the wheel in short bursts and once most of the wire had thrown itself around the garage I could use it more comfortably.

I had one of these shatter on me once.

i trust you all had your PPE on when these shatterings happened….

dont do owt without mine anymore – and i wear my safety specs generally when in the garage (although they are prescription bins). see too many safety bulletins at work these days about eye injuries

btw – knotted wirewheels are far better than those metal cup brushes – ESP when your using cheap ones , cheap cup brushes are notorious for being out of balance and lethal !

What I need is some kind of dust mask that doesn’t make my glasses steam up…. Any suggestions?

The only thing I’ll never do again is use a cupped wire wheel in one again. Nearly killed me and took months for the scars to heal

It was one of these:

I’m very experienced with grinders, in industry and home use, but don’t normally use these. This one was fine until I caught the thin edge of some 6mm x 150mm flat bar. It kicked/twisted the grinder back at me, caught my wrist (cutting through) which obviously left me holding it one handed, so it continued backwards and embedded itself in my chest. All happened in a split second, and there’s a lot of torque to try and stop with one hand. My t-shirt eventually stopped it as it wrapped itself up in the wheel (further embedding it in my chest leaving a 100mm bloody circle of a thousand cuts). Didn’t let go of the trigger as quickly as I’d like (or you’d think)!

A freak accident I guess, but I’ll never use them again. Made a mess that’s for sure!

Regarding discs shattering, I’ve used thousands and the only ones that shatter have been those that are out of balance (usually cheap ones). A quick blip of the trigger with the grinder pointing safely away usually highlights this and I remove and bin them straight away.

And yes, I wear a visor.

Ouch , its storys like that , that make me get really riled when i see folks being complacent with them. No ppe at all in some cases, holding it all wrong for the cut in others.

I dont like those cup brushes anyway they dont last long

Had much less balance issues with them and they last 5 times as long if not more.