Ski Builders Forum

Thanks Rockaukum for the grindrite!

Works great. So so so stoked to have my own base grinder. So stoked that I think I am going to turn my spare bedroom in to a board tuning room.

Dude, NICE. Having your own base grinder is the BEST!!! (I use mine for all sorts of stuff now, not just ski grinding... wood, metal... I love it).

Just make sure if you use it for anything other than board grinding, you do something to keep the dust/whatever from getting in the coolant. I just tape over the drain and turn the water off.

Which model is yours?

If you need belts, Econoway Abrasives is pretty damn cheap, and the ceramic belts rock (closest thing you can get to a stone grind from a belt)

http://www.econaway.com/

Damn you. How much you pay?

Let's just say it was a good deal. And a couple hundo for freight.

Grindrite ST-600.

What grits do you use twizz? Especially the ceramic. What material do you use for the other normal belts?

That's the same grindrite I have as well. It is sweet but I am still learning how to use it. I follwed twizz's advice and bought from econoway. Fyi-if you need parts don't call winterstieger they charge more. I bought many parts online. I also have the manual for it if you pm me your email.

Twizz, where do you get your coolant or do you use car coolant?

COsurfer wrote:Twizz, where do you get your coolant or do you use car coolant?

I bought my coolant from Sun Valley Ski Tools. They're a ski shop supplier, but if you send them an email they can help you out with coolant.

http://www.svst.com/

For what its worth the stuff I got from them smells exactly like car coolant. It's very concentrated, which is nice, 25:1 mix ratio with water. The gallon I got should last me a lifetime. In the bottle it looks orange, but once diluted completely its a flourescent green, again just like car stuff.

I got the finest grit ceramic Econoway has, 120. For the other belts, I've tried silicon carbide and zirconia alumina. I'm not sure which one is better, they both remove material... I'm certainly no ski/board grinding expert though, and haven't done enough to really say if one is better than the other. Once I get my new skis made (hopefully within the week) I can do some fresh grinding and see which one I like best.

I don't think I would use car coolant.
Car antifreeze is designed to lubricate your water pump, doesn't evaporate and would stay a sticky mess.
I'm not sure but I would probably just use water.
It cools just fine and dries fairly clean.
If you have very hard water you could use distilled water.
Just my thoughts but I would not use antifreeze!

sam

Holy shit! Do not use antifreeze/”car coolant”!! You get covered in the overspray when you grind, and antifreeze is very, very bad for you.

“Coolant” is a fairly generic term here, though more accurate is “cutting fluid”. It’s goal is not to keep the water from freezing or to keep it “cool”, like antifreeze. It serves two purposes: helps your belts cut better than straight water, and it’s an anit-rust agent that keeps the machine from falling apart.

Buy the stuff from SVST: it won’t kill you or the environment and it works well.

Also, on general machine care, you want to hose it down well after each use, with the water & cutting fluid mix (thus the hose on all of these) and be sure to get all the base material out of there. The base material has a nice fine mix of metal dust from your edges in it, and leaving it there will promote rust on the machine. After you wash it down, help dry it off a bit inside and out.

Hmmmm, I guess putting it in my tuning room won't be a good idea then. I got to figure out where I'm gonna put this thing. It's in my outdoor carport now, which is fine, but I expect my neighbors will get sick of hearing me running it, and I just don't have room for it in the garage. It didn't make much of a mess today when I ground a board, but I didn't think about rinsing it off, and I suspect I may want to increase the water flow somehow.

I can store it for you DBS

cool learned new things on here...
we use "wintersteiger emulsion fluid". Is this the 'coolant' u guys are referring to?

We've run straight water thru it too. Regarding antifreeze. Yea dont, dont do that, that's gonna mess you up and its nasty on your hands, and body/face etc. I'm covered head to toe in crap when i grind a board.

How much of the fluid are you supposed to run? I "glug it a couple times" into a full pail (10 gallons)? Just enough to change the tint of the water.

2-3 boards later it wants to be changed.

If you're using antifreeze, and you dump it later, you're going to kill your neighbors animals and wild things, ethylene-glycol is highly poisonous, and animals like the taste!!!

I've got like three layers of this felt filter material I got from mcmaster in the first catch-tray on my grinder, so the coolant stays nice and clean. I just clean the filters from time to time. Like I said, the SVST stuff I have is 25:1 mix ratio with water, so you don't actually use much of the stuff.

replaced the water pump with a 1/2 hp submersible sump pump. Sprays like a champ now.

Now, I need to order some new belts and maybe change the water fittings to direct towards the belt a little better.

So far so good.