The day I switched from a wire wheel to a flap disc on rusty steel changed my whole morning

I was working on an old storage tank last Tuesday and kept fighting with loose wires flying off the wheel. After two hours of that mess, a guy on the crew handed me a flap disc and told me to try it. The difference was night and day. I got the same rust off in about 45 minutes instead of two hours, and no more wires sticking in my sleeves. Has anyone else made that switch and seen a big time savings on heavy prep work?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice_wilson732d ago

Have you ever thought about how much wear and tear that wire wheel puts on your drill or grinder bearings over time? I had an old Makita that started sounding rough after a few heavy rust jobs with wire wheels, and when I switched to flap discs the tool ran way smoother and quieter. Plus those flap discs don't throw off little metal splinters that get stuck in your forearms for days, which is a bonus for my dry skin that hates picking them out. So it's not just time savings, you're probably saving your equipment from premature death too.

nora_park722d ago

Read somewhere that wire wheels actually create a lot more vibration because the bristles are constantly hitting the surface unevenly. That vibration gets transmitted straight into the bearings, which explains why your Makita started complaining. Makes sense when you think about it, flap discs are basically sanding with a consistent flat surface so the tool doesn't have to fight that constant jitter. And yeah, those wire splinters are the worst, like little needles hiding in your skin. I remember a buddy telling me his Dewalt finally gave up after years of wire wheel work and he switched to flap discs and said it was night and day difference in how smooth his grinder ran.