After clearing out an old garage, I found a 6" Kingston Conley Bench Grinder and decided to give it a bit of a refurb. Mechanically, it's sorted but I wondered what gauge wire I should use for the Mains connection?

The plate is stamped with 230V and what appears to be 1.8A? The Amperage seems a little low I thought as it's a heavyweight old girl.



Either way I wanted to use a wire of sufficient gauge to ensure I don't set the place on fire. Any ideas?

Also wondered if wire of sufficient size could be got (and would be safe!?) in old cloth covered vintage style mains cord, to look a little more period?

Thanks!

Haha, thanks, but I have a fair bit of experience using grinders, just not on wiring!

Suitable precautions will be taken

You could use the cloth covered cable that is used on Irons, it's only 1.8 amps so fuse it appropriately.

Thanks for the advice guys. Much appreciated.

Hence why I'm refurbing it. It's built like a tank compared to today's cheap Chinese crap

Something is just wrong with 1450 rpm and a 6" grinding wheel. Way too slow.
If you want to sharpen a drill bit you will wear the wheel away quite rapidly.
That slow rpm will make the wheel act as if it's very soft. It's not dangerous
but it's just not standard practice. 1450 rpm would be about right for a 14" wheel
or up the rpm to about 3300 for a 6" wheel.

anything above 0.75mm sqd will be fine.

regards

An electrical engineer.