What to use for grinding down steel

[ARWadsworth]

The angle grinder is the only tool that I wear safey goggles for. Even the 4

1/2 inch one.

Adam

[The Medway Handyman]

>>> Its made by Makita & badged 'Site' for Screwfix. @ £19 its a good

Hell that was quick! I bought one for £33, John Rumm spotted the £19 deal, SF refunded me the difference, now its £35 - all since the 14 May!

[Invisible Man]

>>>>> Its made by Makita & badged 'Site' for Screwfix. @ £19 its a good

Dave

I am the OP. Thanks for your advice. I ordered late Sunday night. Order shows:

Pack prices 1 £34.99. Qty 1 Total £19.91

£19.91 is what they put on my card for the grinder. It and a few blades were despatched to me first thing this morning.

[John Rumm]

Me too

I tacked on one an order on Saturday, and its now showing in the order as pack price 34.99 with qty 1 and a total of £19.91...

With some hindsight - might have been worth grabbing 10 to stick on eBay ;-)

[Thomas Prufer]

Advice I have received and followed: By all means buy the cheapest grinder if you like, but buy decent discs. Having one shatter is scary and dangerous.

Wear eye (and ear) protection. The standard method for removing flecks of metal from the white of your eyes is a dental drill...

Thomas Prufer

[Invisible Man]

Got reasonable disks, ear and eye protection. Wife is a H&S professional and I spent 30 years around employers liability claims. Pre that I spent some time in an apprentice training school. Large holes in the ceiling above a flat bed grinder where an overspeed wheel had exploded. Made others nervous forgetting to turn on magnetic bed on grinder and starting lathe having forgotten to remove chuck key - regularly.

[Jules]

I'm not sure where one would go to buy bad discs, TBH - at least on this side of the Atlantic, even the cheapest ones sold by the sheds hold up well; the closest I got was having one bite when cutting a bit of scaffold pole a few weeks ago, which removed a small chunk from the disc but still didn't cause it to self-destruct.

(makes me wonder if the stories of shattering are down to bad storage at some point rather than inherent construction weaknesses?)

Yes on the former. I'm still reluctant to do the latter unless I have to (confined space etc.) - I much prefer to be able to hear other things around me 'just in case', and the noise of an AG in any reasonable open space isn't that bad.

cheers

Jules

[Andy Dingley]

Make your own, by storing fabric-reinforced cutting disks in a damp shed...

Disk explosion hazard goes up as the diameter, and is fairly independent of the wheel rpm (as this is itself constrained by the diameter and the wheel function / material). So it's the big wheels that are the ones that really leave holes behind when they go. Using an angle grinder anyway you should be sufficiently armoured to be reasonably safe against reasonable wheel accidents.

[Thomas Prufer]

I'm thinking of the five-pack-for-two-Euros special. Perhaps the quality control is worse on those than on something less likely to be factory rejects.

Thomas Prufer