What precautions can be taken to keep your grinder working well through incidious effects of fiberglass dust?......I just s**t canned my second 4-1/2" grinder due to the itchy little kulpret!

Air tools work best when it comes to the dust and longevity.

That said, my Dewalt grinder made it through my entire rebuild. I would switch back and forth between the air grinder and electric grinder, to let the air compressor cool down.

drop a shop vac hose where you are grinding and kick it on, you'd be surprised how big a differance it makes. What kind of grinders are you using? Also get a good quality grinder, I've seen 59 dollar cheapies from home depot last mear minutes. I was out of town on a job and left my Metabo (the Lamborghini of grinders) back at my shop so i picked up a cheap one from one of the big box stores and it was toast within ten minutes. My Metabo by the way has had major use and is twelve years old, has never failed me and has never been apart.

Hey Dave, The 2 that burnt out rather quickly were moderately cheap ones (4-1/2" Ryobi's @ $59 apiece) each lasted about 1 month. I'm burning them out by trying to eliminate all the tabbing that went around the original transom & cockpit sole - ton's of other stuff like scarfing the thru hull exhaust's and the large TRS cutouts before the new transom goes in. I just picked up a new 7" Ridgid for about $150........even if the 4-1/2" Ryobi's didn't burnout (and I'm not sure if it was the dust that killed them or if it was just the constant working them hard) it seemed to take forever to grind a relatively small area of fiberglass. What's a good disk to use on grinding down fiberglass tabbing?.........I've been using norton 40 abrasive disk. They'll cost almost $10 a piece for the 7" Ridgid. I thought about how to apply a vac to all this dust, but never though about just laying it out close to the grinding area...........................will try that thanks.
PS- How's the 27' Sport coming along?

you should really only be grinding with 36 grit, it offers the best mechanical bond. Problem with the cheaper grinders is you cant load them very well, they are using most of their amps just spinning the disk. It also takes forever to grind when you cant lay into it. My Metabo has some kind of zero stall governor thing that kicks in more amps and keeps rpm the same under all conditions, i think i paid $260 or so for it though. Dewalt has some decent 4 1/2"ers in the hundred dollar range that work pretty good. I have one for on site work now and it has held up fine and also has decent performance.

Havnt even touched the 27 yet, heck its still not home lol.

Man, I wish I could find a new one! Grinder I have is dead now, gear reduction finally gave out. I think it may have been a craftsman, but it is at least 35~40 years old. looks more like an air impact, but was a 2 speed electric. you could put a 36 grit 7" disk on it and put everything you had into it and would would just keep digging. Dust, dirt, spilled beer etc.. never once phazed it.

I have a $100 4 1/2 incher i dont even remeber what brand it is. While doing a stringer replacement I was laying into it and I could hear it struggling. I found that blowing the dust out periodically with the air hose helps bring it out of the strugle I also applied the shop vac hose to the area. It got me thru a dusty situaton and then some. I think its 10 yrs old now?

Use Bosch or a Milwaukee they will last for a while.