Tig Grinding Wheel ???

[fun4now]

i would say production shopits almost a must to keep quality control and speed up. in a nome or small shop i supose its more personal prefereance. HAWK had a small shop and had the PII and i think upgraded from that to the PIII. could be a prefectionest type personality causted it or he just valued a nicely ground tungsten. , i supose that dosent help much dose it. i think if i was going to use thorated a PIII would be a must for dust colection in my thinking but then i dont see the point to useing it anyway when there are better options available that are not RA. i supose ther could still be some contracts that will speck out the tungsten to be used and thorated could well be in there.
for a small not so buisy shop i think a sharpie would be fine, with $30 dubble sided replacement cutting wheels its a fairly cheap to maintain option that will get you repeatable results for your tungsten grinding needs. at the same time many argue none are needed just throw it on a bench grinder and get it close and you are good to go.
tuff call realy, personal preferance has to play a large role in this desition.

[ttype]

What about touching the tungsten with bare hands while sharpening ?
Manuals say not to, but does any one worry about this ?

[fun4now]

i think that only aplies to thorated. but nope, i dont. i tuch it with bare hands to put it in the torch all the time. during sharpening i useualy have a glove one but i dont see it as a problem with 2% lanthanated.

[Bert]

My teacher had retired from Pearl Harbor and all theri stuff is x-rayed. He taught us to use a grinding wheel and just point the tip up in the air, sharpening it like James (fun4now) said. I've tried both, and personally think running the scratches legnthwise gave me a more stable arc. Far as the powder/liquid sharpening stuff, worked real good, but really made the tungsten REALLY skinny!!!!
my 2 cents

[crawler]

Anyone try a disk sander to sharpen tunsten? What kind of abrasive paper do I need or will emory cloth work?

[Sundown]

This is an interesting subject, when I had a sharpie grinder I found, after placing some tips under a microscope, that the machine would grind a swirl pattern to the tip due to the fact that in order to make it work properly you needed to twirl the tungsten. Looks to me like that would be the case with almost any grinder, or method, I ever saw.

I also found that I could get strighter lines using my 6" grinder and a Silo Tig for an investment of $30. Then someone told me to get a green wheel as it would sharpen tungsten better, so I spent another $35 and bought a 100 grit SiCarbide wheel. It did really work great so I told everyone about it, the next thing I know someone pops up with, "don't use that wheel it will contaminate the weld". So now it's relaguated to knife sharpening duties and I am back to using a aluminum oxide wheel.

I guess that diamond is really the only way to be sure, but until I win the lottery, or until my welds turn crappy for reasons that can be traced to grinding tungsten, I will stick to the bench grinder and the Silo Tig.

[fun4now]

some one pointed out this guy as a good option for a 6" diomomd wheel for your bench grinder. its my next purchase.the $ is low enough you could get an 80grit for one side to quick cut and then a 400 or 600 grit to realy polish that thing up nice on the other side
this is the wheel i'm looking at
http://cgi.ebay.com/Diamond-Grinding...QQcmdZViewItem
but he has several options even a 2 grit due disk.
you might want to look into him for a grinder option.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjadecarver

[Sundown]

some one pointed out this guy as a good option for a 6" diomomd wheel for your bench grinder. its my next purchase.the $ is low enough you could get an 80grit for one side to quick cut and then a 400 or 600 grit to realy polish that thing up nice on the other side
this is the wheel i'm looking at
http://cgi.ebay.com/Diamond-Grinding...QQcmdZViewItem
but he has several options even a 2 grit due disk.
you might want to look into him for a grinder option.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjadecarver

I think that must have been Barry as he has a setup like that. I have the site bookmarked for some time now just haven't go around to deciding yet. Thanks for reminding me though.

[phila.renewal]

I watched Ron Covell sharpen his tungsten on a belt sander.

Good enough for Ron, good enough for me. Low buck too.