Speaker A
Welcome back to the workshop. It's fabulous to have you here because we have just started what will be a very long project. Making a titanium Damascus katana. And in order to make it happen, I need to do tons of material prep. All
Alec Steele modifies a surface grinder to use abrasive belts for faster material prep in making a titanium Damascus katana.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Converting a surface grinder to use abrasive belts significantly speeds up material preparation.
- Precision machining and angle setting are critical for proper adapter and wheel fitment.
- Practical workshop problem-solving is essential during custom tool modifications.
- Collaboration and learning from other experts (like Salem Stro) enhances project success.
- Efficient material prep improves the quality and workflow for complex projects like making a katana.
What the video covers
- Alec Steele begins a long project to make a titanium Damascus katana, requiring extensive material preparation.
- He needs to convert a stone surface grinder into a belt surface grinder for faster stock removal.
- Alec designs and machines an adapter and contact wheel to fit the belt system onto the grinder spindle.
- He uses precise angle measurements and references YouTube tutorials to achieve a perfect 5° taper.
- The build involves trial and error with spacers, washers, and tensioning mechanisms for belt tracking.
- Alec credits bladesmith Salem Stro for inspiration and techniques on surface grinder conversions.
- He demonstrates practical workshop challenges like broken tools, stuck parts, and quenching methods.
- The video includes a sponsor message for Squarespace, highlighting its benefits for makers and small businesses.
- Alec tests the modified grinder, noting improved speed and efficiency compared to stone wheels.
- The modification aims to streamline prep work for both titanium and Damascus steel components.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Titanium Damascus Katana Project
- 01:01Planning the Surface Grinder Conversion
- 01:38Challenges with Tools and Assembly
- 02:42Machining the Contact Wheel and Taper
- 04:06Spacer Setup and Belt Tensioning
- 07:27Quenching and Workshop Troubleshooting
- 09:44Squarespace Sponsorship and Benefits
- 10:56Testing the Modified Grinder and Final Adjustments
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
of the titanium needs to be ground with clean surfaces before it goes together to be diffusion bonded. All of the steel [music] for the Damascus steel core needs to be ground and fabulous. We need clean, freshly ground material. It
Speaker A
always takes an age doing it by hand here on the grinder. But in here, I've got a beast of a surface grinder. But the thing is, though it's very powerful with an enormous stone wheel, stone wheels are great for precision, but not
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so good for fast stock removal. And we are in the business [music] of needing fast stock removal. And would you believe it, but abrasive belts do that much better. So, I'm going to make an adapter to turn this stone surface
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grinder into a belt surface grinder. This seemed like it was a lot easier right before I was stood in front of it.
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And now it seems quite scary and involved. Take all of you, shall I? Let's go.
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You forgot the most important tool element. Oh, thank you, Jamie. You could have taken that.
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What do you mean? I've got a camera. Thanks, Jamie. Of course, it's the one that I snapped.
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I snapped a 5 mil Allen key the other week, and it's always the one that I need. And now I'm going to have to do it like some sort of like Neanderthal with hand tools.
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Oh, great. That doesn't fit. How did that get assembled if you can't put the Allen key in it?
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Everything's going great. Why are we just off that screwdriver? Just giving it a little rub. It's also too long. Never been told it's too long before.
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A. Woo. Beautiful. What are you doing? What are you doing? Can you just scoot back? Oh, yeah.
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Oh, we definitely missed the spots when we restored this. What's great is we have four bolt holes here. Nice machine flat surface that's 90° to the spindle. Also got three bolt holes here. So, what we're going to need
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to do is we're going to need to build a way to affix a wheel and then a fix a mount and a tensioning and tracking adjustment for it. Getting our steps in today.
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See if I can find the spindle taper. What on earth? Yes. That's why you don't throw anything away. That's the drawing from when I made an arbor for balancing it. How about an angle measurement somewhere, Alec? What? This is the worst
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drawing I've ever seen in my life. Who did this? Oh maybe trying to find something illegal to throw at you.
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Ow. Right, that's it. That's cool. Camera, you're done for. [laughter] There we go. 5°.
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Got to turn this slab of aluminium into that to be our new contact wheel. This is what the belt is going to run on.
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[music] So, I've got my hole board, but that is the hole size. At the small end of our taper on our tapered spindle, we need to turn it into a taper that is 5° and perfectly lines up to that point. But
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how am I going to make it perfect? What do I have? I have one fivederee angle block that's loose in the air. I have gradations on my compound. How could I indicate the compound in to be dead nuts
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5°? I need to watch a YouTube video. I bet somebody's done this on YouTube.
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Show pie always delivers the goods. Yes, now I understand. 9 10 11 12 13 14. So the setup to get the angle is a trigonometry problem. We set up the angle at 5° and when we then travel along it 3 in, we'll know what
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the right angle of the triangle should finish off at. And we just got to line it up to match. Now we cut our taper.
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Got it out of the lathe. We've got the taper made. The trouble is obviously I can't take the surface grinder to it.
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We've got to take it out of the chuck. Ooh, that's a good noise. See how she fits.
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Oh yeah, I think we're golden. Right, let's flip it around. Out she comes. Just going to make a little steel washer.
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[music] There we go. Here we go. Washer screw. Let's go test fit. Okay. On. Lefty tighty. Righty loosey.
Speaker A
Beautiful. Although I did not design a way to then subsequently get it off. I have no way of clamping the wheel such that I can then loosen it when the time comes. Now we've got to design the rest.
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And it's about time to say I take absolutely zero credit for what I am doing and I'm about to do. Salem Stro is an just like a worldclass bladesmith [music] um in the Pacific Northwest in the US and he spent a lot of time thinking
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about and using surface grinders converted to belts. [music] Thank you Salem for your input. He's got a great YouTube series on it that you should check out, too. All credit to Salem.
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[music] What the hell is going on? Well, we're going to be using these bits of paper as spacers so that we still get enough clearance for it to go up and down. That's what's going on.
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[music] So, the paper's there to provide us clearance for it to slide smoothly without too much play when it's done.
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However, with the paper there, there's no clearance for it to slide out smoothly. So, we've now got to get it off.
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Not a chance. I'm going to have to burn it off. Classic. That is my new quench drum. I have one of the world's nicest quench buckets made by my friend Yuan the Cooper.
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However, I often run into the challenge of not having a long enough tub of water to quench in. And have a look at what I've acquired. 55 gallons of water holding goodness. And check this out. Oh no, I dropped something. Fear not, for
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it can be reted. I learned this trick for a French blacksmith, Julian Pu, years ago, and I never implemented it in my life. And I've cursed myself for not implementing it every day that I've dropped something in a bucket of water for the last 15
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years. Okay, maybe I should have used thicker card. Doesn't seem to be coming out. If only there was somebody to tell you that this did not work.
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Well, like you. I'm going to cool the inside of the [music] pipe with a hose.
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Yes. Do you see that? It moved. Yes. That worked a treat until it didn't.
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Wow. Great job, Alec. Ow. My life. [screaming and groaning] It's over. Yeah, mama. She's out of there. Great job Bob.
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This press just will not cease to move. You see what's wrong with it, Jamie? If you have a look at it, it's not square.
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
and code forge at checkout will get you 10% off your purchases. That includes your domain, too, 'cause it's an all one platform. I love it and I hope that you give it a try. Let's get back to it. Are
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you ready now? 1 2 3 4 [music] [music] Should [music] we see if this fits? It's going to be awkward if it doesn't. You don't want to see if it fits. It's like shredding as cat. If you don't put it on the machine,
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you never have to find out if you messed up your measurements. I can read a tape measure. Fabulous.
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Delightful. And hopefully nice and rigid. You see, I had to do this little dog leg here because again, according to Salem's instruction, it's beneficial to have this whole assembly on a slight angle. And without the dog leg, we would have been fouling on the
Speaker A
inside of the belt.
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And we need a way of pivoting that wheel so that it has tracking. How do I do this?
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Is it really going to be quicker to just do this by hand? This is how the tracking works. This is a spring.
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Let's go test it. [groaning] It's too bloody long. Dang it. ALMOST. [screaming] YAY. OKAY, getting that belt to track now.
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So, as I tighten this bolt, this top tracking wheel pivots and moves the belt.
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I think that's tighter than it needs to be there. Right. Wish me luck. Three, two, one.
Speaker A
[music] Not bad. Gave it a little bump of power. Cracked the belt a little bit.
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SICK. YEAH, BABY. We done DID A THING, BOYS AND GIRLS. GOT a half used 36 grit belt on. Bit of mild steel on the mag chuck. Let's see how she goes. On goes the spindle. [music] Oh, we're touching.
Speaker A
That is dignified, boys and girls. That would be possible with a stone, but I think a little bit slower going with a shallower depth of cut. [music] All right. OH, IT'S ICE COLD. THAT'S MEANT to be one of the great advantages
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of uh these belt conversions. I can't believe that. Um, I want to measure how much we took off in one very, very quick pass. The belt looks great. We took off.1 mm pretty quickly. Fantastic. All right, concept proven. It works. But we
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now need to tart it up, make it better. You see, when it's fully compressed, it's a bit like jammy, getting bound up in there. Need to fix that. Also need a handle that we can turn without a wrench. And I need to hide these awful
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welds so that you will not [music] leave comments about it. Bloody hell. All right. Nice job, Alec. That looks great from where I last saw it.
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I said it look great. Bloody hell. Crap. [laughter] We can also cut off our unused excess over here. Now we know we don't need this.
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[screaming] I pinched my finger. Ow. Damn. Isn't that sick? Those welds aren't much better.
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Much smoother. Need a little pad here. I was going to need some grinding. Oh, that's it.
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No, no, no. Not worth showing it. Come on. No, no, no. Don't be like that.
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I would like a way to compress [music] this because it's really hard to do by hand when it's up there on the surface grinder.
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Uh-oh. Uh-uh. [music] [music] Oh yeah. LOOK AT THAT, BOYS. LET'S GO. GREAT. I wasn't recording.
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All right, here we go. The belt goes on a lot easier now. crushed a bit of pipe for my tracking knob. On with the spindle.
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There's the tracking working. We can get it to go right on the edge there.
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Perfect. And what we've now got is we have five pieces of 1080 steel here. And we're going to see how long does it take me to clean up both sides. Has all this effort to build this surface grinder
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modification actually paid off in making life easier for me. With that, let's go. [music] This is also now the first time I'm using these scary looking buttons to do the uh in feed for me as well automatically. So when it hits this that
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wheel spins and it's all very violent and quick now trusting this 64y old machine to you know do the job for me. Now this machine also has two speed settings. One speed setting 1400. Then another one 2,800. Do
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I risk it? Well, didn't one of them not work? Yeah, but then I think it started working. I mean, it's doing the job fine. It's just it's not as sparky as you'd expect. Ouch. The sparks are still hot, though. I can show you guys the
Speaker A
swarf that's coming off of here. Have a look at that grinding swore. The stock removal rates with this are clearly much higher than they were with stones. Thing is that we need a good thumbnail. So, I feel like you need to turn up the
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sparks. Well, so we can get more sparks. DAMN, SON. [screaming] LOOK AT THAT GO. NOW WE'RE COOKING WITH GAS. How good is that? Definitely an improvement in surface finish.
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See that pile of swarf over there? Woo! Oh, there we go. That's why we don't use the high speed, guys.
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We got the thumbnail low. Yep. We also might have broken my machine. I don't like that.
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[screaming] People have been asking for one for months. [music] I had to dig really deep there, Jamie.
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The people have been waiting so patiently. I don't care what the people have been waiting for. If it involves scaring me, great. That shouldn't have happened.
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Have I just broken my surface grinder? Yeah, but look on the bright side. We got the thumbnail.
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I'm worried about why that wheel just stalled. Maybe I'm taking too far of a step over with this auto step over. So, how quickly would this have taken if you were on the stone? On a stone, this would have taken at least three times
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the time. I'm going to guess here. Cuz on the stone, it's not even a given that you can get through that skin in one pass. Whereas here, we've just we gone right through it.
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What bell was it? 32. 36 grit. What is the equivalent grit of the stone that was on it?
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I think it was a 60 WA 60 KV. But again, it's not the equivalence isn't the same.
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Like they just simply don't have the same stock removal rate. But they're significantly more accurate. Here, if I want to hold 10 microns, it's going to be a lot harder with a belt than it is with a stone. We will never achieve the
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same flatness with belts. But that's not the idea. The idea is faster stock removal. The idea is I slap my titanium down on that chuck. We clean it up. Save tons of time. Okay, that's 14 minutes to do one face.
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There was some uh calamity in there as well. Yes, there were some moments of excitement and fear. Hatred.
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Hatred? Yeah. What could have caused that? Just cuz your machine stopped twice does I don't think you should hate the machine.
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Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't the machine. Look at that surface finish. Not bad for a 36 grit. Now we'll do the other side.
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29 minutes. That is the total time to clean up one mag chuck worth of steel.
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Now, since we are currently engaged in the process of trying to make a titanium Damascus katana and that's the whole reason for wanting to do this is being able to clean up not only our steel better, but our titanium better. So, why
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don't we have a look see? Let's put our titanium on the magnetic chuck. And uh should we try and clean it up, shall we?
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Oh, wait. Titanium's non-magnetic, so we can't put it straight down on the chuck. We're going to have to glue it or double-sided tape it. But I don't want to do either of those things direct to the chuck. So, I'm going to cut a little
Speaker A
bit of scrap steel, then use the magnet to stick the steel down, and then glue this to the steel and see how this performs on titanium. Little spot of super glue.
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I think double-sided [music] tape is going to be the best option for this long term.
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But you haven't got any at the moment. No doublesided tape at the moment. How does a workshop not have any double-sided tape in it? I don't know.
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Damn it. Ah, it's not stuck. Right. If you just grind it, I'll just hold this corner.
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Yeah, just keep your finger there while I grind. Thanks, Jamie. Do you mind just putting some fingers on this? Like holding it how I'm holding it.
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Where are you going to go? Nice try. Nice try. Try what I need to do.
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The oldest trick in the book. I need to go do something. How long do I have to wait for this to set? Fresh melt. Oh, look at that change over.
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Start the timer. [music] It's spinning at a slower RPM than my regular grinder, which is great for zero heat buildup, but it means that we don't get pretty titanium sparks.
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[music] Yummy. That was about 25 minutes. I had to take a couple of passes. Invariably, the way it's mounted and the superglue is not super flat, so I had to go a decent ways. I think it's going to be a lovely
Speaker A
surface finish for stacking up our titanium billets and getting really clean welds. I'm feeling very hopeful. I think this is a great modification.
Speaker A
Thanks again to Salem. Check out his YouTube channel. Salem truly does set the bar for worldclass blade smithing.
Speaker A
And if you don't follow his work, I think you should. Be sure to build yourself a website with today's sponsor at squarespace.com/forge.
Speaker A
You can even grab one of my t-shirts by going to my Squarespace website. Appreciate you all.
Topics:Alec Steeletitanium Damascus katanasurface grinder modificationabrasive belt grindermetalworkingbladesmithingworkshop toolsmaterial preparationDIY tool adapterprecision machining
