I went with 180/360 on my new grinder and left the 80 on the old one for reshaping. Only time I ever use the 180 now is when I reshape one before putting it on the 320 for sharpening. The 320 puts a very good edge on my tools.

Allan Miller wrote on Oct 15^th, 2018 at 7:08pm:


That's almost exactly what I was going to suggest..
Keep in mind that you only purchase CBN wheels one time. They stay true and don't wear, this give a reliably consistent grind every time.

If you are getting only one, then the 180 will do for 90% of what you will need. For a second one, I would go with 600. I do have a 320 grit wheel, and don't have a lot of time on it. Main reason to skip up to 600 is that the 320 isn't really a big jump from the 180. The 600 does provide a good clean edge for difficult tear out prone wood. For the skew chisel, you still need to hone it to remove the burr. The 180 does leave a nice burr on scrapers, and I can't really tell any difference between the 80 and 180. The 180 is generally good for minor reshaping. If you have serious reshaping to do, like starting from a square end blank that you want to turn into a skew chisel with your own special profile, you need a 36 grit belt sander, or a lot of time. Even the 80 grit is fairly slow on that. Some saw sharpening shops will have that, or keep a 36 grit wheel around just because... Other than that, you need a good grinder to push these heavy wheels. Best bargain out there is the Rikon 1 hp grinder. The smaller 1/2 hp one just doesn't have the guts to push that much weight... Of course, you could have 2 or 3 or 4 grinders, all with different grits..... There is no end to the vortex, well, maybe no bottom.....

robo hippy

I use a 180 for my scrapers and a 320 for all my gorges and skews.  Woodturner's wonders typically has aggressive pricing.  They're worth the change.