Grinding Room Pros and Cons

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Augus7us

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Oct 9, 2014
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Hey Gang,

I'm currently remodeling my new shop and I've decided that part of the remodel is going to include building a grinding room. I'd like to put my current grinding equipment (2x27, surface grinder) along with a horizontal grinder and maybe one other future purchase.

I don't want to make it too big, I'm thinking around 10'-12' x 15'-20', but I haven't measured this out yet. I'm redoing my floor and now that I have everything on one side of my shop, I'm going to use some masking tape to lay it out.

My goal is to isolate dust, in my last shop dust got into everything.

So if you have a grinding room what do you like about it? What don't you like? I know size is going to be my biggest problem, I want to make it comfortable but I don't want to sacrifice any more space than I have too.

-Clint
 
Mine is 9x14' and I have a buffer, horizontal grinder, disc grinder, and vertical grinder in there along with a belt rack, filing cabinet and set of free standing shelves. I plan to rearrange it a bit in the future, and ultimately have the two 2x72s, 2 disc grinders and 2 buffers (one with convolute wheels just for deburring). I have a shower curtain in the doorway and an exhaust fan in the exterior wall. This summer I'll run PVC dust collection to each machine as well.

Pros: Definitely keeps the dust down in the rest of the shop. 4 white walls and ceiling close together means it's easy to make very well lit. Nice to have a spot for anything related to grinding - the filing cabinet is where I keep buffing supplies, some grinder tooling, discs, etc. The shelf is where I stage blanks if grinding a bunch or where I can put tool arms that don't fit my rack.

Cons: Shower curtain isn't heavy enough. If the exhaust fan isn't running and the wind blows the wrong way the grinding room can become positive pressure relative to the rest of my shop (even though the fan is louvered). Going to replace it with heavy vinyl. Also, if I'm doing bench work and just want to hit this thing on the disc quick or whatever, I have to get up, walk to the other end of the shop, do it and come back, but that's a minor inconvenience and you begin to plan around that without even thinking. Space- the only time I feel cramped is when working on something sword length. Anything 24" and under I have plenty of room. Also it's the other side of the shop from my water spigot, but I could plumb a line over if it got to be real bothersome.

I'm very happy I did it this way over all. I wish it were possible to do something similar to wall off my forging area which creates it's own dust either from angle grinders or scale and flux, but I don't have enough room for that.
 
i have a grinding room and a buffing room. they were made with heavy gauge extra tall clear shower curtains and pvc clear plastic. so far its all pros and no cons. i do not use an exhaust, a dust collector is outside the room so it keeps dust from sneaking out the cracks. saved the rest of the cellar from getting a layer of dust on everything.
 
Set aside space if you want to add a surface grinder eventually. It's very nice to isolate them from any other machine tools, as the grit from belts and stones will destroy the ways of precision machines.

Buffers need to be in another room if you use them for fine finishing. Grit will contaminate your buffs and ruin finishes. On the other hand, they don't produce metal powder like grinders do, so you can pretty easily just tuck them in a clean corner elsewhere. I personally like to keep mine close to where I do all my hand finishing.
 
i plan on resetting up my grinding room and woudl have to get a tape out to get the size for you but my KMG mini mill wood mandsaw and buffer are in there with room for a blasting cabinet 2 KMG and maybe more depending on how i have it set up. i used butchers curtain as my room devider and it works great worth every cent
 
Ha !
Our shop is filthy from stem to stern, proud of it and like it that way !! We keep our shop somewhat backward of your proposal.
All dirty work is one big room. Forge, beltgrinders, drillpress, etc.
“Clean room” for precision machines and work. Lathe, mill, surface grinder, etc.

btw, maybe my example is skewed.
We are not exclusive to knives, thats about 25% of our overall metalwork...
 
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Currently I have my shop unpartitioned (as its too tiny to add walls) but organized from dirty to clean. On one end wall I have my belt grinder, my buffer, and the surface grinder. Next up from that I have my workbench, the drill presses, and my big vertical bandsaw. Then at the farthest end from the grinders is the lathe, milling machine, and EDM.
It works quite well for me, but I have extremely good dust collection which keeps things rather clean. If I didn't have such good dust collection, it would absolutely require keeping the grinders separate.

In my next shop I may have a dedicated grinding room, but I'd have to see. It is rather nice having my belt grinder 4' from my bench ... If you could pick one or the other, I'd personally invent in powerful and effective dust collection before building walls
 
Thanks for the replies !

I'm glad to hear a grinding room does in fact help with the dust. I'm putting a lot of effort into my new shop remodel and one of my goals is a clean shop. Isolating the dust is probably my biggest issue.

My second is going to be my forging area... As much as I would like to build a lean-to on the side of my shop, its not in the budget right now. However, a lot will be done on the inside and I am excited about that and really having grinding withdraw...

So in an attempt to go beyond the dust room I put together a quick layout using the free Grizzly app to give you guys some insight into what I'm planning. Its not perfect as I couldn't find all the icons I needed but it will do until I find something better.

The square in the bottom left will be my forging area (the square itself is the forge). As of now that can't change! It will be around 160 sq ft of space which should be room for my current equipment, a bigger hammer and a press.

The office is top center, left is the future bathroom/sink for now, right is the dust collector/compressor and below that is the grinding room. The walls will be permanant so size is critical!

My current items going into the grinding room:

2x72
1x30
SG
Coldcut saw
Table/tool box

Future Additions:
Second 2x72 (unlikely, I want a NRT and will probably sell the KMG)
Horizontal 2x72 (Almost certain, I want a dedicated horizontal)
Abrasive chopsaw (for when I don't want to f up the cold saw)

In the drawing the room is 10'x18'. I still haven't chalked it out, life has been getting in the way.

The bottom right of the shop is my tool chests and benches. I probably wont end up with that many benches but I plan on having a welding table on castors in there somewhere, probably in the bottom right corner.

I'd love to hear you guys input on how you would lay things out. What you think about the size of the grinding room? Any dream ideas you would do if this was your shop? I'm shooting for the moon here fellas!

My only stipulation is I must be able to pull my truck in the center and work on it, there must be room for a potential two post lift and while the room sizes can change, I don't think I'm omitting any of them.

Looking forward to your ideas

Layout_r1 by Clint, on Flickr

-Clint
 
In the new shop I plan a grinding booth that will be 12X10. Two walls are the building and a 10 foot half wall will have an 8" Plexiglas window down it. The open side will have welding curtains. There will be direct air exhaust from the booth to create negative air pressure, with an outside air return to bring in fresh air. It will have a 24" deep "L" shape bench with various grinders and similar equipment on it. That would give me 20 feet of available bench top.

Buffers will be on flip-out mounts on the half wall. These are simply a 60" long hinged 2X8's with folding braces that allow the buffer to tip out and be 48" away from the wall and at 36" above the floor. This put nothing below or behind the buffer area. When not in use, you merely lift up on the buffer and it swings up and sits flush to the wall.

Walls behind the grinders will be cement board, and all bench tops will be stainless steel.

Grinders and bench will have a dust retrieval system made to handle sparks. This will vent directly outside, and not into the shop-vac system. The shop-vac system will allow a hose to be connected in many locations for vacuuming the floor and bench tops.

I will roll in the welder cart and a welding table to do welding in the booth as needed.

Clean respirator breathing air will be supplied to PAPR respirator helmets from an overhead manifold with quick connects for the hood hoses. The manifold is fed by a filtered breathing air blower upstairs. It is the type used for paint booth umbilical hoods. It supplies more than enough air for four people to plug in at the same time. Blower sped is variable to deliver the correct air flow to the hood.
 
Thanks Stacy, good stuff as always.

I would have responded sooner but the last couple of days have been spent grinding my concrete floor. I thought grinding knives made a lot of dust!

Your post reminded me that I want a window in the office and one in the grinding room. I don't want to feel closed in and I think a window will help with that. For the door I was going to use either those plastic "flaps" they use at the grocery store or a small roll up door like a storage unit has. At this point, whatever is cost effective, these upgrades are starting to add up.

A question for you on the cement board; I'm not familiar with it and I was planning on using the sheet rock you use for garage walls that are also interior house walls (fire resistant stuff). Would you still put cement board behind the grinders with that kind of sheet rock up already?

The paint booth respirator is genius, I'm definitely going to look into that. May be too expensive to implement now but I want to make provisions for it.

And finally I think I settled on a size for the grinding room. I had to rip up my tape to move all my crap to the other side of the shop so I'm going to remask it and make sure before I buy lumber. But I'm thinking of scaling it from 10x18 to 8 or 9 x 15. I think that will give me enough room without taking up too much floor space. I'm going to put the SG in last so if I need more room it will be the item that comes out.

-Clint
 
A few years back I had a retail in front Cutlery knife shop here in town and a dirty work shop, with my three 2 x 72” grinders and other dust making tools in the rear...———————-I used plastic strip curtain like they use in a super market where you reach in Through the curtain to get your Eggs, Milk etc At the market with a collector with filters in it.. ——————— worked like a charm!!
 
You can use the gypsum board with little risk. It is fairly light and cheep.

There are two types of cement board. Cement board is called Hardie board or Hardie siding ( named after inventor James Hardie), as well as some other brand names.

One is called "Hardie cement backer board", and is usually found in the tile section. It usually comes in 3X5 sheets, and in 1/4" and 1/2" thickness.. This works fine for a fireproof wall above the workbench, with a gypsum board wall behind the bench (floor to the bench height).

Another type is called "Hardie cement board siding" and has a surface texture and grooves down it to look T-111 siding. It comes in 4X8 sheets 1/2" thick. It is a bit heavy, but you can do the outside of a fireproof building with it. Inside, it can also be placed as a half wall above gypsum board to make the upper wall behind the benches fireproof.

You need 1/8" carbide drill bits to drill the nail/screw holes in Hardie board.

Other Hardie sidings are made to look like cedar siding.
 
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Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
You can use the gypsum board with little risk. It is fairly light and cheep.

There are two types of cement board. Cement board is called Hardie board or Hardie siding ( named after inventor James Hardie), as well as some other brand names.

One is called "Hardie cement backer board", and is usually found in the tile section. It usually comes in 3X5 sheets, and in 1/4" and 1/2" thickness.. This works fine for a fireproof wall above the workbench, with a gypsum board wall behind the bench (floor to the bench height).

Another type is called "Hardie cement board siding" and has a surface texture and grooves down it to look T-111 siding. It comes in 4X8 sheets 1/2" thick. It is a bit heavy, but you can do the outside of a fireproof building with it. Inside, it can also be placed as a half wall above gypsum board to make the upper wall behind the benches fireproof.

You need 1/8" carbide drill bits to drill the nail/screw holes in Hardie board.

Other Hardie sidings are made to look like cedar siding.
Click to expand...
I don't know about the siding, but the cement backer board for tile doesn't require pilot holes. You can nail or screw right through it.
 
Yes a nail gun will slam a nail through it, but a hammer will most likely bend the nail. The backer board is softer and thinner than the siding.
 
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