Hey Trav and Clinebarger, vintage Wissota 8A bench grinder coming home!

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P10crew

P10crew

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I just finished an online auction here and I am the proud winner of a vintage Wissota 8A bench grinder.
I'm stoked. Been on the hunt for many years for this exact grinder. Made in Minneapolis many many moons ago. Not sure if you have been lucky enough to use a wissota yet but these grinders of old were balanced to the inth. What ever the inth is. I gotta pick it up after noon tomorrow will post as found pics tomorrow. 8A has the super wide wheel on the right side. It was made with this option for sickle sharpening. This grinder will replace my 1977 Baldor 623E after restoration.
[Linked Image]
 
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Holy mackerel! I knew I wasn't alone!
At the end of the auction there was a dude as interested as I was. Shannow I'll post pics and we'll go from there! Thanks
Which one you got?
 
The pic is my baldor that is gettin one upped! By the wissota. Older is always better ....,, hopefully.. fingers crossed.
 
Originally Posted by Shannow
You need my books to go with it...
Left one is 1958
Right one is 1963


Interesting!

I don't have anything related to those....

the "Hunt" now begins.....
 
My dad worked in the machinery business from roughly 1935 to 1970 with a break for WWII...he had a few interesting toys at home as a result.
He had a grinder/wire wheel combo mounted on some kind of stand in the basement and I loved to mess with it, and I don't remember him ever telling me I couldn't use it. Don't know if it was a Wissota...
Combined with the nearby vise and all the tools he had in his workshop, I had the means to conduct a great number of "experiments" into material properties in my formative years.
I remember one time I somehow picked up a large bronze coin from ancient Rome that could barely be recognized, could just faintly see that there was a bust on one side and some kind of standing figure on the other.
I decided at the time that it was Nero from the shape of the head, but it had no collector value no matter whom it was.
Being a destructive youngster, I eventually stuck it in the vice and started trying to bend it...to my shock, it snapped in two before I could get it to bend! It was more like a crystal than a piece of metal after all those years.
A friend of mine knew about the grinder and came up with this plan for us to make a lot of money...take pennies, grind the backs off, and glue two together to make two headed coins to sell for 50 cents.
Invest 2 cents, make 50 cents...what a great ROI!
Of course, he didn't factor in labor....we couldn't figure out how to hold the pennies effectively to get the grinder to take the backs off. We then spent all day working on the pennies with hand files, messing up our hands while getting basically nowhere.
The big plan was a financial failure...sounded good to me at first. We never even got to the point of figuring out how to glue two heads together.

Enjoy your new tool!
 
I have a Wissota bench grinder. It was ordered from a hardware store early 90's? Maybe earlier. Was expensive. They make a point about why they had to stop making them in this link. They also tell the other brands that were made by them like Snap On, if one wants one in a different name used to look for. Baldor was also top notch and expensive, even more so maybe. Thanks for nothing outsourcers of American manufacturing and know how.

https://wissota.com/about/
 
Man, that's a nice Baldor. I don't know much about grinders, but I know Baldor makes a nice one, and if the Wissota is an upgrade, it's likely way out my league!

I've been looking for a 6" grinder to add to the garage, but my budget has me looking for an old Craftsman block grinder.
 
I always thought Baldor benchtops were top of the line
grin.gif
Never heard of Wissota before......But if they made Snap-on benchtops in the past, I've probably used one & didn't know it.

My dad has a Mac branded benchtop from the early 70's that has been beat-on by 100's of mechanics in his employ.....Still goin' today! Now I'm curious who made it!
 
I didn't get pics yet but it's not the 8" it's a 6".
Looks like it's 100% complete. Both bearings are rough. Looks like the ole boy bought it new and didnt use it much. It still has wissota grinding wheels on it.
DOM is 1971
 
Originally Posted by Virtus_Probi
My dad worked in the machinery business from roughly 1935 to 1970 with a break for WWII...he had a few interesting toys at home as a result.
He had a grinder/wire wheel combo mounted on some kind of stand in the basement and I loved to mess with it, and I don't remember him ever telling me I couldn't use it. Don't know if it was a Wissota...
Combined with the nearby vise and all the tools he had in his workshop, I had the means to conduct a great number of "experiments" into material properties in my formative years.
I remember one time I somehow picked up a large bronze coin from ancient Rome that could barely be recognized, could just faintly see that there was a bust on one side and some kind of standing figure on the other.
I decided at the time that it was Nero from the shape of the head, but it had no collector value no matter whom it was.
Being a destructive youngster, I eventually stuck it in the vice and started trying to bend it...to my shock, it snapped in two before I could get it to bend! It was more like a crystal than a piece of metal after all those years.
A friend of mine knew about the grinder and came up with this plan for us to make a lot of money...take pennies, grind the backs off, and glue two together to make two headed coins to sell for 50 cents.
Invest 2 cents, make 50 cents...what a great ROI!
Of course, he didn't factor in labor....we couldn't figure out how to hold the pennies effectively to get the grinder to take the backs off. We then spent all day working on the pennies with hand files, messing up our hands while getting basically nowhere.
The big plan was a financial failure...sounded good to me at first. We never even got to the point of figuring out how to glue two heads together.

Enjoy your new tool!


My Dad told me during the depression people would file a little silver off dimes and quarters and return a roll of them to the bank. Onto the next roll.
 
I had both wheels off and pretty obvious what makes a good grinder smooth. The shaft diameter where it passes through the bearing is 7/8"
Much easier to control a harmonic with beef!
Just gotta love American made iron when the engineers best tool was the slide rule.
 
The rest on the right side is the factory sickle sharpener...... I don't fully understand what exactly they were doing with the sickle. Standing it up in the tray and the angle on each side of the center of the wheel was correct for a sickle???????? Not sure
 
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