Bearings

I have made a knife making grinder, that includes making my own wheels two 3" and one 4" my problem is finding bearings to insert into them, read somewhere that sliding door wheels are good but cant seem to find any that fit at a fair price about 1" with bore about 3/8 and I dont want to pay for the very expensive ones Any help in the right direction Thank you

Hi John you can try simply bearings

https://simplybearings.co.uk/shop/?gclid=CjwKCAjwtcCVBhA0EiwAT1fY7-UwxEYeZKXSLc30wvZlJqFur9sMRZ0a0u_6V-fmy8VEu3W7fpJ5AxoCiVkQAvD_BwE

They have a very good selection of bearings and the prices are very reasonable. Have you a drawing or pictures of what you are making will help. I assume you will want sealed bearings but will they be supporting the grinding wheels.

David

Hi John, I have used hendesonbearings.co.uk several times, usually free delivery over £10.

Alan

Arceurotrade have 3/8 x 7/8 bearings for about £1.50 each, skate bearings are 8x22mm and they are dirt cheap if you choose the cheapest. Wondering what was the price point you have in mind?

Mike

YOu might find metric sized bearings easier to find and cheaper eg, 10mm x 26mm.

Grinders, counter-intuitively, usually use the steel-shielded bearings and not the rubber sealed ones because grinder motors often don't have enough torque on start up to overcome the friction of the rubber seals. Depends on what kind of motor on your shopmade grinder though.

Edited By Hopper on 20/06/2022 10:10:01

Sounds like a linisher to me ! If you want it to work well for a while then I would buy good bearings NOT cheap ones. Consider the fact of the rotational speed, cheap ones may be very noisy. Noel

The knife guys seem to call them belt grinders for some reason. Probably goes back to Roman broadswords or something.

If I want bearings (or drive belts), I generally pop along to my local stockists. ABC have, or have located, anything/everything I have needed over the past 30 years or so. An alternative source, on occasions, has been one of the local agri-merchants.

Firstly, you would be better off getting metric bearings as they tend to be cheaper than imperial sizes. You should choose sealed bearings considering the abrasive nature of the grinder, 2RS is a common designation in the bearing part number.

 I use Simply Bearings for most of my bearing purchases.

Edited By old mart on 20/06/2022 17:34:25

I agree with Noel buy decent bearings and buy once.

These are the wheels I need to bore out the centre them epoxy the bearing in flush with the side Thank you for your kind replys

Thanks Mike, arcevrotrade is perfect

To me that does look very like a belt linisher.

For that application, commercial grade bearings should suffice.

For precision grinding, the bearings have to be of high quality.

years ago, one of our bearing suppliers "upgraded" the broach grinder, using commercial plummer blocks.

We immediately detected variations in the white metal coating of the steel backed bearings, of the order of 0.00001". before we could taken the supplier to task to rectify the situation, bearing failures occurred. Not only were the broaches having chatter ground into them, but the situation was deteriorating rapidly.

A S Q A visit, insisting on better quality solved the problem.

Rolling bearings can provide those sort of problems.

I remember a problem caused by the the diameter of the shaft being an almost exact multiple of the diameter of the needle rollers, and the brinelling that soon resulted.

Some high precision grinders use air bearings for low friction and increased accuracy.

Howard