Another fail delivery this afternoon; the abrasive cutting discs came in today without the rod holder thing. But I went through my tool box and with a stroke of luck, I found one old holder among other things.

Discs without holder.

An old holder.

Yay!

With the discs, I started cutting all my existing high speed gravers, starting with the 2mm round rods. The ideal length would be 50mm, so 2 pieces of 100mm rods would reaped me 4 pieces to work with. I grinded through the rods just enough to snap them apart by hitting it with a hammer as it was held by a bench vise. They were easy enough to cut.

Now the square gravers on the other hand, took me ages to shorten. I needed them to be at least 10mm shorter to be the perfect working length. Halfway through, I changed a new cutting disc, thinking the edge might have been too worn out. Every few passes I made with the cutting disc, I dipped the steel into water to prevent it from over-heating. The process was long and tedious. The worst part of it all is all the invisible dust I must have breathed in during cutting. After what felt like at least half an hour, I made a cut deep enough on the steel for me to snap part at the bench vise.

That was just one graver done; I still have 3 more to shorten. There is a lot more grinding to be done in the days ahead; I have decided I do not want to breathe in more dust while doing so. To protect myself, I’m going to put on a mask and do my grinding straight into a vacuum cleaner.

Made a nick.

Not exactly the same, but it’s alright.

Almost through!

Perfect!

The 10mm ball bearing came in this afternoon. My existing hand piece barrel is too wide for the ball bearings, so I designed and 3D printed another barrel for the ball bearing. The print came out perfect. Unfortunately, the inside of the barrel is slightly too narrow for the 10mm ball bearing. No issue though, I will slowly sand paper the inside until it is just wide enough.

Then I will fix up the new air compressor and see if I can get more power.