The old boilermaker who kept a stump grinder bit in his locker for 15 years

I was working a shutdown at a paper mill outside of Savannah a few years back, and this older boilermaker named Chuck had a beat up stump grinder bit sitting in his locker. Not a tool you'd ever need on a boiler, right? I asked him why he kept it and he said "you never know when you'll have to grind something down to nothing." I laughed it off until we got a tube sheet that was warped bad. He pulled that bit out, rigged it to a die grinder, and smoothed out a 4 inch section in like 10 minutes. The foreman was standing there with his mouth open. Has anyone else run into a guy with some random tool stash that saved the day out of nowhere?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomasb416d ago

A die grinder with a stump bit? That'd be a drill with a keyless chuck actually.

faith276d ago

Oh man, a stump bit is definitely not for a drill, it's meant for a die grinder. Those things spin way faster than a drill can handle, like 20,000+ RPM. A keyless chuck on a drill would just slip or get wrecked trying to turn that little bit.

sagejackson6d ago

Has anyone actually tried running a stump bit in a drill press instead? I feel like that would give you more control than a hand drill or die grinder, but I get why people grab whatever they have handy. @thomasb41 is probably right that it's all about matching the tool to the bit, not the other way around.