Kevin says that, with his hands and strength, he uses both grinders but in different ways.
The smaller 4-12″ grinder almost always as some kind of flap disk (soft pad) on it. He very seldom if ever puts a grinding stone on it because he uses it more as a one-handed tool. So if he wants to grind something small, he can hold the item with one hand and use the grinder to do detail work.
That’s why he likes the little 4,” 4-12″ and 5″ grinders. They’re really small, really easy, really light. This grinder only weighs about 5-1/2 pounds.
But for bigger jobs – getting rust off, clean up a plasma cutter cut, getting slag off, long welds he has to smooth off – that’s what the 7″ is for.
His 7″ grinder isn’t the biggest. There’s also a 9″ grinder, but Kevin doesn’t have one. That’s an even a bigger moose to hang onto.
Even with the 7″ grinder, which weighs more than 13 pounds, when you pull the trigger on it, it wants to jump out of your hand. It has that much torque. That big 7″ wheel is really digging in. It’s throwing sparks, chips, throwing stuff everywhere.
So the larger grinder is great for quick stock removal, contour work on something heavy and hard.
The smaller grinder is great for detail work.
So it all really boils down to the proper tool for the proper job.
It helps to think these things through before you buy an angle grinder, although they really aren’t all that expensive. You don’t have to mortgage your house to you buy one. It sure is nice to have two of them, though, to do various jobs or to have someone else work at the same time.
Kevin is ready to put the grinders away and get out some other tools so he can get back to work, but you might want to stick around for another moment to get a taste of his quirky mind ….