Stand for Bench Grinders

In early 2018 when I bought a band saw, I installed a bench grinder on the same cart and never liked how much vibration the grinder sent through the saw. I’d been been keeping my eye on Facebook Marketplace for a heavy grinder stand and found one about two years ago, along with a second grinder. It was finally time to clean things up and mount both grinders. I forgot to take a picture before disassembling things, but I did find a really small thumbnail from the Messenger chat that I zoomed in. You can kind of see how rusty things were.

I separated the parts and used a flap disc on an angle grinder and a brass wire wheel on a drill to clean up a lot of the rust.

Then the stand parts got a coat of rusty metal primer.

Then I cut a larger top plate from 3/4″ plywood and chamfered the edges. I drilled out mounting holes for both grinders and transferred those to new holes in the metal top plate. It all got two coats of black paint.

I cleaned up the grinder with a wire brush, but didn’t bother with a new paint job. I bought a new buffing wheel, mounting bolts, and some rubber feet (time will tell if they’re too small). I found some bolts in my bins that were the right size for tightening the stand’s top and bottom to the cylinder.

After the paint dried I installed clips and a hook for the power cords and assembled everything.

Stanley 743 Vise Restoration

This Stanley vise caught my eye at an estate sale last year. I think I paid $3 for it. The jaw snapped at some point and someone did a rough weld job to put it back together. The other side reads 743 – 2 IN.

I finally got around to cleaning it up. Most of the work was done with brass wire wheels on the bench grinder and drill. Then a little hand wire brushing and sandpaper to get the corners.

stanley-vise-restoration.jpg

Do you think I should paint it? I kind of like the bare metal look.