Why is an angle grinder (angle grinder) called a grinder? Not Czech, not Hungarian, and not even Japanese, but Bulgarian?
Perhaps because the first foreign power tools were brought to the Soviet Union from Bulgaria. These were Sparky power tools. Unlike drills, jigsaws and rotary hammers, there was no name for the angle grinder in Russian. The tool was very unusual for those times, but in demand and appreciated according to its merits, and it was simply called the grinder in the country of the manufacturer.
In those days, good instruments were rare in the USSR. I was told by one person, now he is already old, how in Soviet times in their city builders from the GDR erected and finished the building of a store that was large for those times. According to the agreement, the German builders were given Soviet builders to help. This man was one of them. He said that all day he suffered from envy, looking at German instruments. He could not even work, he thought only of pliers, keys and screwdrivers.
Unable to resist the desire to possess them, he began to steal German instruments and took home at least something every evening. He was very ashamed, but he could not help himself. And not only him. This went on for two weeks. And then the German builders just gave them a box with screwdrivers of various calibers. They took the screwdrivers, but after that they somehow began to ask the authorities one by one to transfer them to other facilities. He says that it was unbearably embarrassing to work with the Germans after this incident.
Where are grinders used
I got a little distracted from what I wanted to write. About what can and cannot be cut with a grinder. And for what else can you use an angle grinder (angle grinder).
Grinders are used for cutting and processing hard materials, as well as for grinding and polishing surfaces. For this, special nozzles are used. Few people know that there are crowns for grinders with which you can cut round holes, for example, in ceramic tiles.
In the decoration and renovation of apartments, angle grinders are most often used specifically for cutting materials. It is also an excellent tool for sharpening drill bits or other chopping or cutting tools such as axes, knives and chisels.
How not to use the grinder
The grinder is a tool of a very narrow specialization. Everyone knows about it. It is even stupid to write about how and where this tool should not be used. It is unlikely that it will occur to you to fight with a grinder on the barricades or cut her sausage. Perhaps in the distant future, when due to evolution, the boundaries between the upper limbs of people and power tools will disappear, the brain of people will swell so much that it will seriously consider one of the auditory openings to go outside. Then... What then? I don't know... These thoughts make me feel bad, and I lose the meaning of the story.
Let's imagine another situation. You pick up a non-fictional, real grinder, and with evil decisive steps you are heading towards something or someone. You just need to rummage through your memory and imagine what you would like to cut with it. Represented? Now all the mail from the far corners of your memory is sent to your imagination, and the fingers of your hands reflexively squeeze an imaginary plastic form with a frantically rotating disk. Are you sure that the grinder disk at 11000 rpm will cut off anything. You are blinded by the supposed versatility of the tool. But it is here that your carelessness can turn into a tragedy and sensitively distort your own fingers. Such a case can undermine your reputation as the owner of "straight hands" and faith in the omnipotence of grinders as very cutting, but safe tools for you.
Bulgarian and wood
This is one of the most, very questions that concern the newly converted owners of grinders. Can a grinder cut wood?
Let's say that we cut a wooden board with a metal disc. I had to do this in extreme cases, when there was no wood saw at hand. What is going on? The disc for metal does not have set teeth, which exclude friction of the disc plane against the material being cut. The friction of the disc will heat the wood to such an extent that it will char and smoke. You can check yourself. Just do not do this in the apartment, otherwise the fire alarm will go off.
The stores are full of wood discs of different outer diameters, but none of them have an inner diameter that will fit your angle grinder. Why do you think? Why don't they produce wood discs for grinders? What is this, a "conspiracy" against the Bulgarians? Or are there other reasons?
The inner, landing diameter of the disks for wood is larger than that of the disks for the grinder. It is clear that you will not be able to correctly fix such a disk. But people are very inventive and find turners who make metal adapter rings for them, allowing them to use wood discs with a large bore on the grinder. Then you can turn on the grinder and cut the wood.
Even with a regular “toothless” disc, the angle grinder can jerk strongly when cutting, and your hands will not be able to hold it. You simply do not have time to react in time. Now imagine that you took a large grinder, loaded a wood disk with victorious solders into it, and resolutely got down to business.
The first few millimeters are sawn with a bang, chips fly in all directions and enthusiastic spectators clap their hands. But then the teeth of the disk stumble upon a hard knot, or worse, a carnation. The disk is repelled from him like a sprinter from a low start and flies, dragging the grinder along with it. The worst option would be if the disk rushes to get acquainted with the material from which your body is made. Even if you immediately remove your finger from the switch, it will continue to rotate for a few more seconds. Imagine the consequences, and you will feel uncomfortable.
In today's article, I want to talk about a bad experience with a wood grinder that I had a chance to experience when I was still quite new to repairs. It was in one of the apartments when we worked in the construction team.
Before sawing a grinder on a tree, think a hundred times
The owner of the apartment decided to make a small structure in one of the rooms, namely, to build a vertical cabinet from floor to ceiling from special building blocks. The goal is simple: he planned to put a refrigerator in this very closet, thereby expanding the space in a small kitchen. By the way, the idea itself turned out to be so interesting that I even made it. The closet was supposed to be placed in the corner of the room, so two walls of the room had to serve as its natural walls, and two had to be erected (in general, a “house” or a niche for a refrigerator should have turned out).
It is clear that it is necessary to erect walls, starting from the very bottom, i.e. from the concrete floor between floors, and not from the parquet that is laid in the room on top of it. It turns out you need:
- Dismantle the parquet in the place where the future cabinet will stand.
- Remove the logs (wooden boards on which the parquet was laid out).
- Sweep up the trash (prepare a place for future walls).
At first glance, there is nothing unusual.
I set to work with enthusiasm. First of all, I drew on the floor the area that I needed to disassemble. But then it was not entirely clear to me. Of course, I could take an ax, cut a hole in the middle, and then just take everything out, but the owner asked me to save the parquet. The removed plinth along the walls did not solve the problem, because the parquet in some surprising way went from below into the walls of the room themselves. As a result, it turned out that not a single parquet board could be grasped from any side. What to do?
Since the apartment was being renovated, the tools were lying everywhere, and I began to examine them and think about how I could pry off the parquet board. And then my eyes settled on the grinder. Eureka! And what if I directly saw the grinder on wood. After all, I sawed concrete and metal for her! So, I’ll take a grinder, take a disk (it doesn’t matter which one, for concrete, or for metal) and just carefully saw off along the line. Thus, the cutting line will be even, while a gap will be formed, sufficient to carefully pry the parquet further and disassemble it.
So I did. I took a grinder, installed a disk and began to saw. I was very pleased with my idea. The disc went through the wood like clockwork. The flat gap began to grow as I advanced.
But here, literally, in a minute, I discovered that a strong burning smell had gone! It began to smolder parquet. So much for cutting wood with a grinder! When I removed the working tool, I found that smoke was pouring out of a crack in the floor, and small red embers appeared in the depths. In a moment, I realized the horror of the situation: I was only at the beginning of the journey, the gap was only 10 cm, but thanks to it, draft was formed, and the air under the parquet began to inflate the coals, while the smoke did not stop.
I dropped everything, ran to the bathroom and got water in a mug. Just as quickly, I ended up near a crack in the parquet and began to pour water - zero effect! The smoke was coming with the same intensity! In desperation, I took another mug, then a third - it did not help. It's good that there was a bucket nearby for preparing cement mortar. I took a full bucket of water and began to pour, pour, pour. A minute later, the smoke began to subside. I had a suspicion that the sparks ignited the logs under the parquet, and since the wood was dry, and even with good traction, the fire quickly set. I was terribly lucky that I put out a fire that almost started in someone else's apartment and at the same time did not flood the neighbors from below.
After this episode, I realized what it means to cut parquet with a grinder. Never do this!
If you encounter a similar situation, then just read my article, and it will become clear to you how I should have acted.
Such non-obvious curious cases during the repair of an apartment can still include the episode that I called:. Read it, you won't regret it - the episode is very close to life.
That's all. Today we learned that working as a wood grinder can be very unsafe in some cases.
Bulgarian is used as a universal tool with which you can solve a variety of problems. Bulgarian cut everything: metal, concrete, ceramics and so on. Is it possible to cut a tree with a grinder?
Arguments against
This tool was not designed for sawing wood and is not optimized for this task. What does this mean in practical terms?
- The wood is soft, and the disc of the grinder can stall in it. As a result, the grinder is able to literally fly out of your hands, and no one can predict exactly where it will fly. It is possible that directly in you.
- When working on wood, the grinder disk overheats greatly. As a result, it loses its strength properties, becomes brittle and brittle. Under such conditions, the slightest skew or excessive pressure can lead to the destruction of the disk. And a disc that falls apart at high speeds is about the same as shrapnel.
- There are no specialized discs for sawing wood for angle grinders (if only a Chinese sample). "Craftsmen" use non-profile discs or try to fit a disc from a circular saw. Due to the high turnover of the grinder, both approaches can be regarded as a complete disregard for safety precautions with all the ensuing consequences.
But still
You can cut a tree with a grinder, but at your own peril and risk. If this is a one-time operation, then the desire to use an improvised tool is understandable. But even in this case, it is easier and safer to get a normal wood saw somewhere.
If the need for woodworking occurs frequently or the scale of the task is large, then it is advisable to purchase a specialized tool. An excellent option is an electric jigsaw.
What, no options at all?
There is a way to cut a tree with a grinder, and not risk your own health. It only consists in converting the grinder into a circular saw.
This implies a rigid mounting of the tool on the bed with guides. The material being processed is fed along the guides to the grinder in the same way as to a circular saw. Similarly, you can make a pendulum saw out of a grinder.
In both cases, it is assumed that a saw blade is used instead of a cutting disc. Naturally, when working with such a tool, you should use all possible means of protection.
But this method also has a number of obvious disadvantages:
- technical complexity;
- The grinder is still not a circular saw - they have different speed and power;
- This approach does not eliminate the risk of disk failure from overheating;
- The start button is on the grinder, and the material must be fed through the guides on the other side. That is, you will need to either hold down the start, which is dangerous, or work together.
Conclusion
Theoretically, sawing a tree with a grinder is possible, but it is strongly not recommended. This is a gross violation of safety regulations, and is fraught with serious injury. Even the grinder does not have full versatility, so it is better to use a profile tool.