[Dyer, retired]

Canoetrpr,

The advice you've gotten so far is right on.....especially the eye protection. I also try to wear gloves too, but not for keeping hot ground steel off my hands.....I just have a tendancy to grab parts I've just worked on before I realize they haven't cooled down yet. I also learned that a bare finger between the part you're grinding and the grinder doesn't stand a chance....good leather gloves would have saved me a nice war wound.

I have a 4 1/2 angle grinder and it's probably one of the tools I use most often. It can be creatively used for just about anything. I painted the lower quarter panels on my truck over the last few weeks and since it was mostly out of sight paint work, I used a 36 grit sander disk in the grinder to make short work of any rust underneath. I got it down to bare metal quickly and smoothed it all up with a r/o sander and finer sandpaper. My muffler pipe was in the way of working on side at the back of the bed where I couldn't get a sander or the grinder on it, so I cut 8 inches of it off.....finished my paint work, and replace the pipe with a chrome exhaust tip (cutting that 8 inches off was also a good excuse to dress up the exhaust tip a little.)

I used it to cut a pile of steel stock recently for another project using the cutoff wheel and it was like a hot knife through butter. We did some welding on the project and I have never welded before, but when I got done grinding the work later, it looked very presentable.

I wouldn't be without an angle grinder. Dyer, retired