Grinding Wheel find?
 

I post these pictures hoping someone can tell me how this grinding? wheel was used, exactly. What throws me is the 1/4" deep groove in the centerline on the face of it. If it is in fact a grinding wheel, why the groove? It runs all the way around it, as if it was there to hold something.

Weight-about 40 pounds; Material-appears to be sandstone; Diameter-19 & 3/4"; Thickness-1 & 3/4";

And what's up with the striations? Those grooves on the side about 1/4" apart?

I found this in June of this year in a "New Hampshire" body of water-not Winni.

Any help appreciated.

Looks like a grinding wheel to me. It would have sat in a stand with a horizontal axle, and rotated by a foot pedal and a "bell crank" arrangement. It would have been used to sharpen farm implements..axes...etc and perhaps knives.

The groove may have been there to channel water from a container located above the wheel. The water drip/dribble would have been used as a coolant/lubricant during sharpening and also to clean the grinding particles off wheel as it rotates.

It either still has.....or did.. have an iron hub in the center.

Another explaination for the "Groove" in the grinding face of the wheel could be the person using the wheel only sharpened one type of tool every time and wore the ""groove" in the grinding face through choice....or negligence.

Todays "Powered" grinding wheels are routinely "Dressed" with a special wheel dressing tool every now and then to keep the wheek grinding surface clean and flat....and the wheel balanced. An Unbalanced wheel in todays "powered" world can actually "Explode"...ie: come apart... if it's not kept in balance. With a foot powered wheel it wouldn't matter. :look: NB

My impression is that the grooves on the edge of this wheel took an awful lot of effort to make when the wheel was made. I suspect that the grinding was done on this broad face. The groove on the edge may have carried the belt that drove the wheel.

Perhaps the working part of a flour or grain mill?

It looks like the grove would be work off a tractor belt pulley - I remember something like that in our old barn when I was growing up.

Clutch disc?
 

Could it have been some kind of clutch disc for the winch?