CBN wheels and Trend Lapping fluid
robo hippy
Another on going experiment.... I was at Terry Gerros's shop (Salem OR woodturner and organizer of the Oregon Woodturning Symposium) shop, and he did one of those 'hmm, why don't I try this', and put some Trend Lapping fluid, the blue stuff, on his CBN wheel that was kind of dirty, then we sharpened some more. Well, it really cleaned up the wheel. So, I have been doing that a lot more since then. For sure, it pulls off a lot of that deep down black on the wheels. The other interesting part is that it seems to pull off metal build up on the wheels for when I grind soft metal on the wheels, or in the case of grinding my Big Ugly tools, if the wheel is wet, I get no build up. Yea, I know you are not supposed to do that, but I took one Big Ugly (top is tantung, bottom is cold rolled steel) and reshaped the main bevel which meant that I was grinding a fair amount of soft steel on the wheel. Well, I got no build up at all. That part of the wheel did look more 'shiny' than the rest of the wheel, which could be that it was just cleaning off gunk, or that there could be some minor build up. No way to tell for sure since I don't have a microscopic type of camera available. It didn't make the wheel cut like it did when it was brand new. Again, a test for the microscopic cameras.
Now, I am not suggesting that you put the fluid on the wheel and grind anything you want on them, but this does have some interesting features. Cindy Drozda did have an old video up on You Tube where she put a cheap paint brush on the wheel and kept it wet to keep the wheel lubricated and prevent build up (it was an old Woodcraft Diamond wheel with 3/16 inch of matrix bonded to an aluminum hub, the fore runner of the electroplating). The wet wheel seems to prevent build up, and may keep the metal dust down. Too wet, and you get racing stripes on you if you are in the line of fire....
robo hippy
