Norton Abrasives - St. Gobain Premium Alundum 38A (07660788283) Type 01 Bench and Pedestal Wheel, Very Fine Aluminum Oxide Abrasive, 1" Arbor, 8" Diameter x 1" Thick

I originally had some trouble with this wheel. Chuck from Wood Tech gave me a call when he saw my review and offered to make things right. He has done that. This company sent me a new wheel with a different style bushing and it helped solve my problem with the original. Kudos to Chuck and Wood Tech Tooling for their stellar customer cervice. I am updating this review in recognition of a call from Chuck, from Woodtek. He assured me that this was a Norton wheel and that they are labeled as 'Packard Woodworking'. He also agreed to send me a new wheel to try and fix the problem. In view of such great response, I am confident that this company stands behind its products. This call was not solicited. I was surprised by the concern he had to make it right. We will see if the new wheel solves my problem, but the customer service is excellent in my book. Original review This wheel says something about Packard Woodworking on label. It's not well balanced, it wobbles excessively. The hub is 1 1/4" not the stated 1" and the cheap plastic 1 1/4" to 5/8" bushing is a sloppy fit. I wrapped a layer of blue painters tape around the bushing and it still slid right into the hub. Poor product,,,false advertising. Don't buy this wheel.

I bought this mainly as a finer grit alternative for sharpening lathe tools on a wheel. It has been in my shop for years now, and I am totally satisfied with it. It leaves a finer finish than the regular "fine" wheel your bench grinder came with, and while ALL fine wheels create more heat than coarse wheels, I don't feel that I'm scorching tools too fast with this stone. It is probably also a little faster wearing than the basic fine wheel that comes on your grinder. But not too bad. I use it frequently as I make bowls, as it is my primary sharpening solution for those tools. I still have at least 7 " of wheel left I think. I am pretty cheap so I would not like it if it wore away too easily, even if it did a great job grinding. You can do even better by touching the tool with a fine diamond hone or a fine sharpening stone after using this wheel, but you can absolutely do fine turning wood with just this wheel on your grinder--nothing else is really necessary.

Nice wheel for sharpening drill bits and tools. The first time I put it on my grinder, it wobbled and looked like the wheel was not true. So I loosened the shaft nut readjusted the wheel and the next time I ran the wheel, it ran perfect. I think the plastic bushings are not the ideal set up for a grinding wheel and you have to play with it a little to get it square on the arbor. I would buy another.

I'm running this grinding wheel on a Balder 8107W, which weighs 99 lbs. The wheel was grossly out of balance when I received it. I shut my grinder off after about 20 seconds because of the severe vibrations. A few minutes later, I turned the grinder back on and at least a pint of water came pouring out of the grinding wheel. It literally looked like I had a hose connected to the grinding wheel for about 30 seconds. I questioned whether it was safe, and I thought about sending it back. The wheel stopped expelling water and it seems balanced. It works great now. I would give it five stars but I'm not sure that it's safe. It passes the ring test.

I’ve owned and regularly used my 8 inch bench grinder for close to 50 years. The original aluminum oxide wheels have served me well for light-to-medium grinding operations but I was recently placed in the position where I could see myself having to quickly shape and sharpen lots of high speed steel cutting tools, something the old gray aluminum oxide wheel struggled to do without overheating the steel and/or glazing the surface of the grit. I needed to finally take the step into a softer but more aggressive abrasive to reduce the time in front of the wheel and reduce the heat generation while shaping/sharpening the tools. All my research into an appropriate grinding wheel pointed me to buy this one. It took me a long time to pull the buying trigger and when the wheel did arive I hesitated to install it for several months because I remembered the time I spent making the original wheels run true and produce minimal vibration. Enough procrastination, I’m now willing to remove to ‘easy glaze wheel’ and install the new one. Let’s go! To preface the task I made sure I was not going to overspeed the new wheel and with the motor rated at 1725 RPM and a 1.5 overdrive belt pulley ratio my grinder was approximately 1000 RPM under the safe max speed of the new wheel’s rating. I removed the old course-grit oxide wheel and took the new 60-grit wheel from its box. I did the ‘ring test’ on it months ago but did it once more just to be sure nothing had changed. A gentle strike with a plastic handle on a screwdriver confirms there’s no cracks or defects. It rang clear. I cleaned the old wheel’s paper blotter off the faces of the large wheel flanges and gave the flange faces a gentle rub on some course abrasive paper on my non-powered belt sander so all the old blotter from the original wheel was completely removed. Nice flat flanges🙂 From reading reviews of other grinding wheel buyers that complained of imbalance and wobbly wheels I made a preliminary check of the blue shaft bushing that Norton provided with this wheel and sure enough, the wheel rotated with obvious eccentricity! The potential for high vibration was clear and even attempting to true the wheel with a diamond truer would be wasteful and possibly dangerous. I removed the wheel from the grinder’s shaft and inspected the blue bushing assembly. The sleeves used to construct the Norton bushing were all very thin on one side making for an eccentric bushing. Was this done intentionally to allow for making the wheel run true by rotating the bushing sections in relation to each other so one bushing compensated for the off-center behavior of the others? I don’t know and wasn’t in the mood to play with this component so instead I took the known-accurate red plastic bushing from my original wheel and installed it into the new Norton wheel. It was a direct fit and when installed on the grinder’s shaft and hand-spun, the accuracy of the wheel was infinitely improved! No need to play with it any further as the side wobble AND radial runout were visually absolutely minimal. Just snug down the securing nut and time to spin it up. How tight to make the nut? The instructions warn not to make it any tighter than necessary to secure the wheel to the shaft. I held the edge of the wheel with my bare hand and gave the wrench a firm tug. Once this is all trued up I don’t want to wheel to shift (as it has done in the past with the original wheel) and lose the accuracy of the rotation that it will acquire after truing with the diamond. As per safety recommendations I started the motor and while it was gaining speed (it’s only 1/2HP so speed builds slowly) I quickly walked away. When I was maybe 10-15ft from the grinder I heard a strange noise and turned around to see the fine-grit wheel (on the right side) walking off the grinder spindle, following the nut to the concrete floor three feet below! Something had instantly locked the grinder’s shaft causing the momentum of the right wheel to loosen itself and spin onto the hard shop floor. Everything went quiet. No hum from the stalled motor, no spinning wheels. I flipped the grinder’s switch off even though I detected no sign of power to the motor. Looking on the floor I wasn’t surprised to see the shattered fine-grit wheel but I was shocked to see the brand new Norton wheel split exactly in two, which jammed itself against the wheel guard. The guard is only cast iron but survived and contained the explosion perfectly. So now I’m without a tool I depend on almost daily. The new wheel is split and my original fine-grit wheel is trashed. I guarantee the spindle / wheel RPM did NOT exceed the maximum rating and how am I to tell if I used too much torque in tightening the wheel nut? No torque specification is suggested, only a comment to make the nut only as tight as needed to secure the wheel. Exactly how tight is that? There was no sound from the wheel that told me it cracked during installation. This catastrophic failure is *not my fault*! Please see photos. Please advise.

Wonderful grinding wheel. Way better then the stock wheel on my grinder. Cuts much cooler then other grinding wheels I have used. The plastic shims are worthless and I ended up making my own out of wood to make it run true. At this price I cant complain though.

Yikes, talk about wobbly. Not round. Made 8" grinder shake the whole workbench. Used dresser to get it round, then had to drill out some on heavy side, finally reasonably balanced. Check youtube for videos on how to properly balance one of these beasts. After the effort, it now seems to be a decent very fine (150) and pretty soft wheel, and should be useful. Wish they would have made it right in the factory!

This stone runs smooth out of the package. Like all new stones it still needs minor dressing.

As expected of Norton products, this is well made and as described.

Cumple perfecto, entrega antes de lo esperada.

The white grinding compound for high speed steel does not get the tool as hot as regular grey carborundum does. This wheel works as it should. I am giving it one star because I had to bolt the grinder to the bench as it vibrates so bad way worse than the cheap wheels that came with the grinder.

Product arrived with a chip in the edge and the wheel appears warped.