2x72

noseoil

noseoil

Joined
Apr 24, 2013
Messages
408
Almost finished with this one. Belts are on the way now so I can try it out soon. 1 horse motor & built fairly heavy. I had access to some 2 1/2" square tubing & 2" which fits inside, so that's what I used. It's stout but solid.

Had to modify the platen a bit due to a design problem, with a router as a milling machine. The bolt head was hitting the bottom tube for the tool rest, so I decided to mill out the slot. Still plenty of meat left to take the platen & lock into place. Just a wood template & reverse flush cut bit.
Mill_zps2evoqgm6.jpg


The slot worked well enough.
Slot_zpsodimjjyo.jpg


Left side detail of slide knobs for the tool rest & platen, the bolt was hitting the lower bar & binding the head so it wouldn't rotate
Lclose_zpsqpk6gjob.jpg


Left side
Lside_zpseyvzhjzb.jpg


Right side
Rside_zpsxjlrg4bb.jpg


This should make grinding a little easier now.
 
Industrial Metal Supply sells some tubing which is a simple solution to the slip joint needed for a machine. The outer tube is 2 1/2" stock & the inner stuff is 2" but it's 1/4" wall stuff, so it's very heavy & a real booger to cut by hand with a hack saw. The good side of it is that it should last a long time & be bomb proof as far as durability is concerned. The bottom plates are 1/4" as well. I have a buddy who welds, so a trade on labor worked out pretty well on the fab stuff from him. I bought the "good" parts & built the frame to use them, so it should be pretty good for what I'm doing.

Once the parts were all gathered & cut, the welding only took a couple of hours. Assembly was slowed a bit due to the milling job I had to do to make the lower tube slide properly & the upper tube & platen rotate correctly. It went fairly well, considering my lack of metal working skills & a wood worker's approach to problem solving (a router is NOT a milling machine, but it works). All told I have about $600 in it at this point. I may have to upgrade to a higher hp motor & variable speed, but that's in the future for now. I'm living on a fixed income now, so a bit more time is needed until I have more money to spend on a VFD setup.

It should beat the heck out of the HF 1x30 I've been using all year, I just need to do a few more blanks to try my grinding again & get used to a different setup with a bit more power.
 
Looks like it will be a super good machine !!! Good for you ! I like the "over built" thing in this grinder even though I stear away from that in the folders I make.
Frank
 
Just a follow-up shot of the belt in place. Did a little tinkering & fine tuning once the belts arrived, but it works, it's alive & running now. Appreciate all of the posts by others who have shared ideas & their machines, makes building from scratch a lot easier.

Finisheds_zpsxzvgxhx0.jpg
 
Looks great! Nice work. Good idea incorporating the second tool arm slot and air shock.
 
Thanks Josh, having a tool rest is important for me, since it lets the work be repeatable when doing multiple knives in a batch. The strut is a nice way to go for an off-the-shelf option instead of a spring & McMaster Carr has a good selection to choose from. This one is a 5"-7" with 40# of lift. If you look closely, you can see that I drilled & tapped for two locations in the upper arm, just in case I had to "adjust" something in belt length. Again, having other people's pictures to look at along the way really helps. I'm lucky to live in a big enough town that a lot of parts & stuff are available locally & the rest can be found online with a little looking.

Do people usually leave belts in tension when they aren't using the grinder, or is the belt left off until it's time to start grinding? Just curious about belt life & stretching over time for longer running belts. Since everything costs $ which is better, or is there really no difference. The ceramic belts should run a long time & I'd like them to last. Looking forward to the next batch of blades to give this thing a work-out.
 
Correct, it's a good habit to take the tension off your belts when you're done grinding. It can stretch even just slightly and that belt won't track the same. Some belts like the scotch-brute I leave on overnight on purpose though because they're low stretch and in my experience take a while to break in:
 
Just a follow-up on the new grinder from today's work in the shop. Here's the small blade design I'm working on for a run of knives, now that I'm able to grind with a bit more consistency. It's made from AEB-L about 0.09" thick. The blade is 5 7/8" overall & will run at HRC 61. Planning on some 3/16" micarta grips, plus a few odds & ends of hardwood scraps I have in the shop, for a little variety. Will be doing this steel & some 1084 also, but it's basically going to be the same design in two different sizes.

It's nice having a good grinder to work with & some new ceramic belts that cut well. Much quicker & easier to grind to a line with the better table. The jig is just a block of aluminum in this case, tapped for #10 screws & running across the table. I'm having to work on technique now, but with a better table, belts & more HP to turn things, it seems to make all the difference in the world. Guess it was good to start with the 1x30, since I have a new appreciation for this grinder & what it takes to do the work.

Happy camper at this point & looking forward to more blades. Still need some fine cut belts for surface finishing, but right now the 120 grit leaves a nice smooth surface & some better stuff is on the way for finer grits. Anything to reduce the hand-sanding.... WOOT!

SmallBlade-s_zpsrwbhqy9x.jpg
 
OK, here's my first knife. It was done on a HF 1x30 with AO belts & a lot of head-scratching. D2 tool steel was used because I'd read that it's very "hard" when heat treated at 60, with plenty of big, fat, chunky carbides to try to sand. It's an excellent choice for those who are into long periods of masochism for a first attempt at blade making. It had an 80 grit finish with dips & valleys due to bad grinding, a thick edge (nice & strong!) & lots of design ugliness thrown in for good measure prior to heat treat. When it came back from HT the real fun started. Hand sanding D2 tool steel and trying to flatten it out & make it look nice will teach you a lot about pre heat treat finishing & elbow grease. Flattening a lumpy blade by hand is a great learning experience. Made 2 of these.
PH-1_zps7k3mxqjq.jpg


Here's the second "batch" of this profile, but with a bit more finish & understanding thrown in. The plunge is better, the profile has been cleaned up in design & I'm starting to deal with micarta for a grip instead of scraps of wood. I even got some genuine lanyard tube & good slow-set epoxy at the hobby store. This set ran a lot better, was cleaner prior to HT & is a much better design in all respects. Made 4 of this one.
1-d2-2nd2_zps6kcku5tz.jpg


I guess I need to post another image once I get the next batch working, so for now you get the idea of where I am & how it's going. It's a lot of fun, it's frustrating & it's rewarding, all at the same time. Some day I hope to actually sell a knife, which might help to repay about 1% of the time & money I've spent doing this stuff. But no, why ruin a perfectly good relationship with blade steel by making it dirty with money?
 
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