Crowned CBN Grinding Wheels

We have long been a proponent of hollow-grinding chisels and plane irons, because it makes honing so much easier. However, for many folks even high-quality bonded abrasive wheels are too dusty, difficult to maintain, or challenging to dress.

Crowned CBN (Cubic Boron Nitride) grinding wheels provide a precise, clean, and cool-running alternative to bonded abrasive grit wheels. Our CBN wheels take the technology forward by adding an important tradition feature. Unlike other CBN wheels on the market our wheels are crowned. That is there is a very slight radius (a few thousands of an inch) on the wheel going from side to side. It is nearly impossible to put an edge square again a flat wheel. One side of the tool or the other gets into contact and heats up quickly. The traditional solution to this is to put a very slight crown on the wheel so your corners are protected. As you move back and forth on the face of the wheel you will find the crown liberating and you will grind even cooler and straight across.

On a traditional friable grinding wheel the crown is put in by dressing the wheel. CBN wheels are never dressed (it would destroy the wheel) so we had the crown machined into the wheel profile. It's tiny, nearly invisible, but it does the job brilliantly.

Our wheels are designed to fit most bench grinders, just match the diameter and bore. Our 80 grit wheels will grind very cool and get your edge tools ready for honing. The wheels also have wide hubs so the flanges on your grinder will fit properly. Properly fitting flanges ensures that your wheel is properly spaced on their grinder arbor and will not interfere with the guards. These wheels are designed to be a replacement for stock friable wheels and are used with the grinder flanges and stock guards in place.

We've got a CBN wheel mounted on the bench grinder in our workshop, and it's a breeze to use. The slight crown of the wheel gives a predicable first contact area for free hand grinding and gives loads of extra control to grind predictably. It also prevents accidentally overheating the corners of your tool. Because the machined aluminum wheel is precisely round, there is zero tool chatter, and the grinder itself runs more quietly.

CBN is the second hardest material in the known universe, second only to diamond, but in powered grinding applications it is actually more durable than diamond because it doesn't react with iron - as the carbon molecules of a diamond will. That means you can grind to your heart's content on a CBN wheel - HSS, A2, D2, Powdered Metal, O1, W1, even carbide. It has another welcomed property that bonded abrasive wheels don't have: CBN and the aluminum wheel absorb heat instead of reflecting it back into the tool. This makes for very cool grinding, and with care you can even grind to a wire edge without dunking the tool in water (although we don't recommend it, cowboy). Do not use a CBN wheel for grinding any non-ferrous metals or unhardened steel. Typically people put one CBN wheel on their grinder for edge tools and keep the order side stock for grinding everything else.

If you've been looking for the next evolution in grinding for woodworkers, this is it.

Made in China to our designs.