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Hot take: a belt grinder is not a beginner tool, and the guy at the hammer-in in Ohio who told me otherwise wasted 8 months of my learning
I know this goes against what everybody says. When I started 3 years ago, everyone online and at my first hammer-in near Columbus said skip the file and sandpaper, just get a 2x72 and learn on that. So I did. Spent $1,100 on a grinder before I could even forge a decent taper.
Here is the problem. For 8 months I let the grinder hide my bad hammer work. Plunge lines everywhere, burnt tips, uneven bevels because I never learned to read the steel. A retired smith named Dale watched me at a meet last spring and said son, put the grinder in the corner for a month. So I did. Files only. My bevels got straighter in 3 weeks than they had in 8 months.
Not saying grinders are bad. I love mine now. But telling new folks it is the first thing to buy feels backwards. It lets you skip the part where your hands learn.
Anybody else get pushed into a power tool too early and have to unlearn bad habits?
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the_henry10d ago
Learned this the hard way too. Files teach you what the steel is doing, grinder just lets you cover it up faster.
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