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Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
New Wilmont LB-1000 kit grinder
- Thread starter javand
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2010
- Messages
- 2,424
Next, it's time to go ahead and tap these holes. After countersinking them slightly, I clamp them up in a machinist vise. If you don't have a stationary vise you can simply clamp the bar to the side of your work bench or some heavy table. You just want the piece immobile. You need both hands to tap, so you cant just lay this on a table or try and hold it in one hand.
As I mentioned previously, I'm going to be using 1/4"-20 taper, and bottom taps. There are generally three types of taps; taper, plug, and bottoming. The taper tap, as the name implies, has the most taper, which makes starting the tap easiest, but the length of full threads is much shorter relative to the tap length. For through holes, this may not be an issue, as in many cases you can simply run the tap all the way through, however, with a hole that terminates, you'll reach a point where the end of the tap hits the bottom of the hole, leaving a section at the end that's not threaded, and too narrow to accept the bolt (since we drill undersized, to leave material to form the threads) a plug tap, has less taper, and subsequently less area of marginal or non threading, and a bottom tap has basically no taper.
In hard metals, or certain circumstances, it may be necessary to use all three taps on a non-through hole, to get full length of threading. However, in this case, we're working with aluminum, and we've got our holes bored 1" long or more, and we only need ~3/4" of full thread. A plug tap, would likely be sufficiently tapered to start, and even finish this tapping job, however, a taper tap alone, would bottom out before giving us enough length of full tap to work. So I'll be using a taper tap to start the tap, run it till it bottoms out, and then finish up with a bottoming tap.
Here is a photo of the taps I'll be using, with the bottoming tap on the left, and the taper on the right:
And here is a pic of the tap wrench, which is a very nice large sized wrench I got from Travers Tool:
At this point, with these premium quality taps, and the heavy angle of the taper tap, I'm able to easily do the first part of the tapping op without any cutting fluid. The trick is not to use heavy pressure, let the wrench, the taper of the tap, and the angle of the countersunk hole find level, and then use steady twisting. With hardware store taps, I recommend using plenty of fluid regardless of the tap.
If you run into excessive tension, don't force it. This aluminum should be very easy to tap, and excessive or jerky force is what will break a tap, and ruin your afternoon. You should be able to easily turn this with both hands and light force, smoothly. Once you encounter a sudden need for more force, you've probably hit the bottom of your hole with the point of your taper tap, and pushing further will only compound the pressures on the tap, encouraging a break, or atleast damaging your threads. At this point, gently reverse your motion to a counter-clockwise turn. Be careful with the first turn, it will likely need more force than it did going in, as you're breaking through chips you've created on the way down. Just go easy and steady, and it will ease up significantly the rest of the way out.
After the first heavy reverse turn, it should practically float out. Resist the urge to spin the wrench out like a merry-go-round, and once it's super easy to turn, take the tap wrench off the tap, and twist it out the rest of the way by hand, to avoid damaging any of the top threads by your wrench falling over with the tap in it still.
Blow the chips off your tap, and go to the next hole. Rinse, repeat, until you've got them all with the first tap.
Now, we've got nice threads at the top of each hole, so all we have to do is thread in the bottom tap by hand, to get it started, but first, for this tap, we'll apply tapping fluid. For most normal tapping, we won't need a ton, I apply it directly to the tap before starting it:
You'll start this tap by threading in gently by hand to the previously established threads, as mentioned, and you'll continue tapping with the wrench just as with the last operation, however, you'll likely encounter more tension once you get to the area where the tapering tap stopped cutting. Here you can see on the tap where the cutting action was taking place:
As with the previous op, if you feel a sudden change in force needed to turn the tap, stop, you've likely reached the bottom of your hole, this is of course, after the initial pressure change where you transition into tapping further down. Do all the holes, this way, then do your best to clean out the chips.
Slap the bar holes down gently on a flat even surface, etc. You may even want to lightly run the bottoming tap in and out a few times to help clear chips and refine the threads of the holes. At this point, get the bolts you're using to secure the bottom plate, and make sure you can run them all the way in:
The steel bolts will help to refine the holes, so don't be afraid if you have to apply *light* pressure to get them to screw in. However, make sure you're threading correctly, if the pressure gets heavy, you could be stripping or cutting new threads with the bolt as opposed to refining the existing ones. It should be pretty obvious, but if you're having to really torque it, there's something wrong.
-----
Now at this point, I departed from the instructions a bit. Before marking the through-holes in the aluminum bar for the side plates, I wanted to make sure I got the bottom bar set up correctly to mount to the bottom plate. So I went ahead and countersunk the corresponding holes for the bar, on the bottom plate.
With these bigger plates, you're not going to be able to use a drill press vise unfortunately. Those of you with smaller drills, you can use a C-clamp, or a quick clamp to clamp these down to your drill table, after you've indexed the quill to center-hole of your drill table, lining up the hole you're going to be countersinking with that same hole. With my drill however, I've got a t-slot table, so I decided to use a riser, to elevate the plate. In this case I just used 4 same thickness ceramic magnets, which worked ok, but not great, but it's hard to clamp things down to my table quickly:
This is one of the few occasions where I'll just hold the work piece. Since this is a big plate, and countersinking isn't as likely to grab a chip, I just eyeballed it quickly, and let the countersink find center. This doesn't have to be super precise, since I'm using an over-sized countersink, I'm just eyeballing the depth. A little more is better than less in this case, but I'll stop and check it against one of the bolts. You want them all to sit at or below the face of the plate, since this is the side of the bottom plate that will be against your bench or stand:
I countersunk them all, then bolted down the plate.
Once I did that, instead of putting the side plate against the bar and transfer-punching the holes, I decided instead of measure the height to the center of the holes (3/4"), and scribed on the aluminum bar, the same as we did to lay out the bottom holes. Then I lined up the side plate, and used the line to mark each of the hole locations. Since these are drilled through, I only needed to mark one side:
Then I repeated the same process of marking these holes with my #5 combined drill and countersink:
And then drilled these out with a 5/16th bit, according to the instructions. This is over-size of the holes and bolts we'll be using, but this gives you some room to shift the plates around a bit if needed. The anodized spacers that will go between the two side plates higher up, have smaller holes, but are drilled very precisely, so that will help to tighten up the whole assembly. This is another example of a situation where Chris and crew thought about how to mitigate the potential pit-falls associated with putting these together with home shop equipment, and limited experience.
Here's the bar drilled out, and countersunk to deburr:
That's it for today.. It takes 20x as long to write the explanations and upload photos than it does to do the actual work guys, so I apologize for the slow progress. I'm also having some problems with google not organizing my photos properly, so sorry if I got some out of order. =\
I'll probably work on this some more tonight but, I doubt I'll have time to post again until tomorrow or so. Thanks for being patient, and if anybody has any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
As I mentioned previously, I'm going to be using 1/4"-20 taper, and bottom taps. There are generally three types of taps; taper, plug, and bottoming. The taper tap, as the name implies, has the most taper, which makes starting the tap easiest, but the length of full threads is much shorter relative to the tap length. For through holes, this may not be an issue, as in many cases you can simply run the tap all the way through, however, with a hole that terminates, you'll reach a point where the end of the tap hits the bottom of the hole, leaving a section at the end that's not threaded, and too narrow to accept the bolt (since we drill undersized, to leave material to form the threads) a plug tap, has less taper, and subsequently less area of marginal or non threading, and a bottom tap has basically no taper.
In hard metals, or certain circumstances, it may be necessary to use all three taps on a non-through hole, to get full length of threading. However, in this case, we're working with aluminum, and we've got our holes bored 1" long or more, and we only need ~3/4" of full thread. A plug tap, would likely be sufficiently tapered to start, and even finish this tapping job, however, a taper tap alone, would bottom out before giving us enough length of full tap to work. So I'll be using a taper tap to start the tap, run it till it bottoms out, and then finish up with a bottoming tap.
Here is a photo of the taps I'll be using, with the bottoming tap on the left, and the taper on the right:
And here is a pic of the tap wrench, which is a very nice large sized wrench I got from Travers Tool:
At this point, with these premium quality taps, and the heavy angle of the taper tap, I'm able to easily do the first part of the tapping op without any cutting fluid. The trick is not to use heavy pressure, let the wrench, the taper of the tap, and the angle of the countersunk hole find level, and then use steady twisting. With hardware store taps, I recommend using plenty of fluid regardless of the tap.
If you run into excessive tension, don't force it. This aluminum should be very easy to tap, and excessive or jerky force is what will break a tap, and ruin your afternoon. You should be able to easily turn this with both hands and light force, smoothly. Once you encounter a sudden need for more force, you've probably hit the bottom of your hole with the point of your taper tap, and pushing further will only compound the pressures on the tap, encouraging a break, or atleast damaging your threads. At this point, gently reverse your motion to a counter-clockwise turn. Be careful with the first turn, it will likely need more force than it did going in, as you're breaking through chips you've created on the way down. Just go easy and steady, and it will ease up significantly the rest of the way out.
After the first heavy reverse turn, it should practically float out. Resist the urge to spin the wrench out like a merry-go-round, and once it's super easy to turn, take the tap wrench off the tap, and twist it out the rest of the way by hand, to avoid damaging any of the top threads by your wrench falling over with the tap in it still.
Blow the chips off your tap, and go to the next hole. Rinse, repeat, until you've got them all with the first tap.
Now, we've got nice threads at the top of each hole, so all we have to do is thread in the bottom tap by hand, to get it started, but first, for this tap, we'll apply tapping fluid. For most normal tapping, we won't need a ton, I apply it directly to the tap before starting it:
You'll start this tap by threading in gently by hand to the previously established threads, as mentioned, and you'll continue tapping with the wrench just as with the last operation, however, you'll likely encounter more tension once you get to the area where the tapering tap stopped cutting. Here you can see on the tap where the cutting action was taking place:
As with the previous op, if you feel a sudden change in force needed to turn the tap, stop, you've likely reached the bottom of your hole, this is of course, after the initial pressure change where you transition into tapping further down. Do all the holes, this way, then do your best to clean out the chips.
Slap the bar holes down gently on a flat even surface, etc. You may even want to lightly run the bottoming tap in and out a few times to help clear chips and refine the threads of the holes. At this point, get the bolts you're using to secure the bottom plate, and make sure you can run them all the way in:
The steel bolts will help to refine the holes, so don't be afraid if you have to apply *light* pressure to get them to screw in. However, make sure you're threading correctly, if the pressure gets heavy, you could be stripping or cutting new threads with the bolt as opposed to refining the existing ones. It should be pretty obvious, but if you're having to really torque it, there's something wrong.
-----
Now at this point, I departed from the instructions a bit. Before marking the through-holes in the aluminum bar for the side plates, I wanted to make sure I got the bottom bar set up correctly to mount to the bottom plate. So I went ahead and countersunk the corresponding holes for the bar, on the bottom plate.
With these bigger plates, you're not going to be able to use a drill press vise unfortunately. Those of you with smaller drills, you can use a C-clamp, or a quick clamp to clamp these down to your drill table, after you've indexed the quill to center-hole of your drill table, lining up the hole you're going to be countersinking with that same hole. With my drill however, I've got a t-slot table, so I decided to use a riser, to elevate the plate. In this case I just used 4 same thickness ceramic magnets, which worked ok, but not great, but it's hard to clamp things down to my table quickly:
This is one of the few occasions where I'll just hold the work piece. Since this is a big plate, and countersinking isn't as likely to grab a chip, I just eyeballed it quickly, and let the countersink find center. This doesn't have to be super precise, since I'm using an over-sized countersink, I'm just eyeballing the depth. A little more is better than less in this case, but I'll stop and check it against one of the bolts. You want them all to sit at or below the face of the plate, since this is the side of the bottom plate that will be against your bench or stand:
I countersunk them all, then bolted down the plate.
Once I did that, instead of putting the side plate against the bar and transfer-punching the holes, I decided instead of measure the height to the center of the holes (3/4"), and scribed on the aluminum bar, the same as we did to lay out the bottom holes. Then I lined up the side plate, and used the line to mark each of the hole locations. Since these are drilled through, I only needed to mark one side:
Then I repeated the same process of marking these holes with my #5 combined drill and countersink:
And then drilled these out with a 5/16th bit, according to the instructions. This is over-size of the holes and bolts we'll be using, but this gives you some room to shift the plates around a bit if needed. The anodized spacers that will go between the two side plates higher up, have smaller holes, but are drilled very precisely, so that will help to tighten up the whole assembly. This is another example of a situation where Chris and crew thought about how to mitigate the potential pit-falls associated with putting these together with home shop equipment, and limited experience.
Here's the bar drilled out, and countersunk to deburr:
That's it for today.. It takes 20x as long to write the explanations and upload photos than it does to do the actual work guys, so I apologize for the slow progress. I'm also having some problems with google not organizing my photos properly, so sorry if I got some out of order. =\
I'll probably work on this some more tonight but, I doubt I'll have time to post again until tomorrow or so. Thanks for being patient, and if anybody has any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2010
- Messages
- 1,320
Thanks again! You time and effort are appreciate. I also appreciate the tips you're providing on the drilling and other metal work. Funny, but way back in High School, our metal shop teacher (do they even off such classes these days in High School?) told us to use "more fluid" if the drill started smoking...more power and more fluid! Now I know why I drilled so many egg holes!
Thanks again, I'll be waiting for the next segment tomorrow!
Thanks again, I'll be waiting for the next segment tomorrow!
- Joined
- May 25, 2009
- Messages
- 389
Thanks for taking the time to put this thread together. I will be ordering my own little buddy grinder in the near future.
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2010
- Messages
- 2,424
My pleasure guys.
I decided to go ahead and paint the frame pieces today, since I heard somewhere that grinders that aren't painted don't grind as well! ;P
I already got a coat of primer on, and I'm going to ignore the drying time instructions and put the color coat in a bit. Its hot as piss here today, so it should practically bake on.
I'm using spray enamel, not sure what the pros use. I contemplated the high temp enamel but I had some regular already. We'll see how it holds up.
In the interim I'm tapping the top support for the gas spring, and moving on to the tracking assembly.
I decided to go ahead and paint the frame pieces today, since I heard somewhere that grinders that aren't painted don't grind as well! ;P
I already got a coat of primer on, and I'm going to ignore the drying time instructions and put the color coat in a bit. Its hot as piss here today, so it should practically bake on.
I'm using spray enamel, not sure what the pros use. I contemplated the high temp enamel but I had some regular already. We'll see how it holds up.
In the interim I'm tapping the top support for the gas spring, and moving on to the tracking assembly.
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2010
- Messages
- 2,424
Ok well, figured I better update since we sunk down to page 2.
I wanted to mention however, that, I don't see any reason why this won't make just as good a primary grinder as any other basic 2x72, except when compared to a Wilmont TAG-101, or a Twertz TW-90. Compared to a KMG, GIB, Bader, or Burr King, it should be just as function if not more so, depending on how you tool it up.
I'll comment more, after pictures, but after I got the main body assembled, it's obviously extremely rigid, and I expect I'm going to love having it setup as a dedicated flat platen grinder.
It's not designed to do horizontal grinding obviously, but there are only a couple grinders that are, that'll be the big draw-back. That being said, this grinder could *easily* be modified with some fab skills to go horizontal, or it could be setup as a horizontal only grinder, and there is also room to modify it to accept 3 tooling arms.
As a base platform, this grinder has infinite potential, just like a good GI-spec 1911. Sure, a Para or Springfield GI model isn't a high end custom, but they can easily be modified to be one. Don't think Chris and I didn't discuss this exact analogy when he was designing this kit.
Anyway, pics forthcoming.
I wanted to mention however, that, I don't see any reason why this won't make just as good a primary grinder as any other basic 2x72, except when compared to a Wilmont TAG-101, or a Twertz TW-90. Compared to a KMG, GIB, Bader, or Burr King, it should be just as function if not more so, depending on how you tool it up.
I'll comment more, after pictures, but after I got the main body assembled, it's obviously extremely rigid, and I expect I'm going to love having it setup as a dedicated flat platen grinder.
It's not designed to do horizontal grinding obviously, but there are only a couple grinders that are, that'll be the big draw-back. That being said, this grinder could *easily* be modified with some fab skills to go horizontal, or it could be setup as a horizontal only grinder, and there is also room to modify it to accept 3 tooling arms.
As a base platform, this grinder has infinite potential, just like a good GI-spec 1911. Sure, a Para or Springfield GI model isn't a high end custom, but they can easily be modified to be one. Don't think Chris and I didn't discuss this exact analogy when he was designing this kit.
Anyway, pics forthcoming.
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2010
- Messages
- 2,424
I forgot about drilling and tapping the holes in the top red spacer the other night, so I did this quickly. At this point, I feel I've pretty well covered the setup, and actual drilling and tapping processes, so I won't repeat a bunch of info, and I'll let the pictures speak for themselves as much as I can.
I layed this out the same as previous, on the surface plate with a height gauge, but it can easily be done with the calipers.
I scribed a line 3/4" from one side, and then stood it up on end and marked the first at 1.625, then another at 4.625.
Now, it would probably be more appropriate to do this by attaching the spacer to a 1-2-3 block or some such, to make sure it's held vertically for precision work, but I wasn't shooting for perfect, and figured it would be fine. It probably would have been, if I had made real deep marks, and drilled it immediately, but I forgot about it, after marking it the other day. I'll get into that further later.
Anyway, I punched where I thought the marks were, pre-drilled and then through-drilled with a .201 bit, as usual:
And in this case, I lightly counter-sunk both sides, since I was tapping through the whole piece:
Then I vised up, and tapped with a 1/4-20 taper tap, the aluminum is so soft and easy to work with, I did it dry. Because I'm tapping through a thin piece of stock, there was no reason to use the bottom or plug taps, I just ran the tap as far down as I could, which was well into the full thread area of the tap:
Next I laid out my parts, to begin assembling the main body of the grinder. Now we start to see some real progress. I primed and painted these parts yesterday. I'm shit at painting, so I won't go into details, and I can guarantee you that my threshold for low quality in this area is very high. Still, the flat black looks nice, and I'm glad I did it, although I have my doubts as to how well it's going to hold up. I used the "Premium" Rust-Oleum Primer and Enamel paint, but I'm sure there's a better option for those in the know:
In the last photo, you can see I already bolted the main bar to the base plate. Next I set the right side plate up, and put 4 2.5"x1/4" bolts and washers through.
The bolts slide through easy, and have some room to line up since the holes in the bar are bored over a bit. Since the pre-drilled spacers are accurate, they'll act to line up everything when we tighten it all down later.
Next I put the same size 1/4" bolts through the first and third vertical rows, then middle row will take longer bolts later to accommodate the tooling arm levers, at this point I also use a 90deg magnet to help hold the side plate on while I added the bolts:
Here you can see the longer bolts are in the middle column:
Next we add the spacers, making sure to put the top spacer which we drilled and tapped (this is for the gas spring mount) in the correct location:
I missed a photo here, but after putting the spacers on, you have to put what's referred to in the current instructions as a "specialty washer" on each of the bolts. These washers are a smaller diameter, and slightly thinner than the main washers, and are used to slightly expand the width between the two side plates. This is a thoughtful feature, which allows you to easily slide 1.5" tooling arms into the slots, no matter how much you tighten down the side plates. This allowed me to really torque down all the bolts, which resulted in a super tight frame. When I did this with my GIB, I ran into problems with the tooling slots being slightly too tight, and ended up having to go back in and file them out a bit.
Next I carefully slid the left plate over the bolts. I was able to do this without knocking the others loose by first getting the bottom bolts on the plate, with the plate angled out at the top, then I used hand pressure on the right (head) side of one of the bolts on the bottom spacer, to lift the whole spacer level and in line with the next set of holes, then repeated for the next spacers. This way it was very easy to get them all in:
Once I got the plate on, I made sure to push all the bolts through from the right side, so I wouldn't knock any out, and I went ahead and put washers and nyloc nuts on the bottom row, and tightened them down, so that I wouldn't be fighting with everything during the next steps:
Then, I put the two small "Handle/Nut Retention" plates, on over the longer bolts in the second column. This is a really slick design feature, that I would have never personally thought of, which keeps you from having to tap the side plates at all, which is nice since it can be difficult to hold down the larger pieces to drill and tap.
Note: If you paint these pieces like I did, be aware that the fit may be "snug" from the paint inside the holes. I ended up taking these off and "coaxing" the nuts in with a hammer.
Finally, another piece fits over the two, securing the nuts in:
Kudos to Chris and the gang, I find that to be a super clever design element.
Finally, we put washers and nyloc nuts over all the remaining bolts, and tighten them down. I snug them all down first, then work side to side torquing them down so as not to get anything out of whack. Here are some pics of the main body assembled, with a piece of 1.5" square for a tooling arm, which slides in easily:
As I said previously, I was able to really torque the nuts down. I'm observing no flex or give in any part of the main body, it's solid as a rock.
So, at this point I was going to go ahead and put the bracket on for the bottom of the gas spring, but recall I mentioned a caveat earlier about the holes I drilled in the top spacer for this purpose? We'll, long story short, I punched what I thought was the the mark for one of these holes, that wasn't, so they're about 1/2" father apart than they should be. This however is nothing to freak out about, and in the next installment, I'll show you how I'll deal with it, without having to take anything apart, or drill any more holes, and in such a way that everything will still look "professional" when it's done.
Cheers!
I layed this out the same as previous, on the surface plate with a height gauge, but it can easily be done with the calipers.
I scribed a line 3/4" from one side, and then stood it up on end and marked the first at 1.625, then another at 4.625.
Now, it would probably be more appropriate to do this by attaching the spacer to a 1-2-3 block or some such, to make sure it's held vertically for precision work, but I wasn't shooting for perfect, and figured it would be fine. It probably would have been, if I had made real deep marks, and drilled it immediately, but I forgot about it, after marking it the other day. I'll get into that further later.
Anyway, I punched where I thought the marks were, pre-drilled and then through-drilled with a .201 bit, as usual:
And in this case, I lightly counter-sunk both sides, since I was tapping through the whole piece:
Then I vised up, and tapped with a 1/4-20 taper tap, the aluminum is so soft and easy to work with, I did it dry. Because I'm tapping through a thin piece of stock, there was no reason to use the bottom or plug taps, I just ran the tap as far down as I could, which was well into the full thread area of the tap:
Next I laid out my parts, to begin assembling the main body of the grinder. Now we start to see some real progress. I primed and painted these parts yesterday. I'm shit at painting, so I won't go into details, and I can guarantee you that my threshold for low quality in this area is very high. Still, the flat black looks nice, and I'm glad I did it, although I have my doubts as to how well it's going to hold up. I used the "Premium" Rust-Oleum Primer and Enamel paint, but I'm sure there's a better option for those in the know:
In the last photo, you can see I already bolted the main bar to the base plate. Next I set the right side plate up, and put 4 2.5"x1/4" bolts and washers through.
The bolts slide through easy, and have some room to line up since the holes in the bar are bored over a bit. Since the pre-drilled spacers are accurate, they'll act to line up everything when we tighten it all down later.
Next I put the same size 1/4" bolts through the first and third vertical rows, then middle row will take longer bolts later to accommodate the tooling arm levers, at this point I also use a 90deg magnet to help hold the side plate on while I added the bolts:
Here you can see the longer bolts are in the middle column:
Next we add the spacers, making sure to put the top spacer which we drilled and tapped (this is for the gas spring mount) in the correct location:
I missed a photo here, but after putting the spacers on, you have to put what's referred to in the current instructions as a "specialty washer" on each of the bolts. These washers are a smaller diameter, and slightly thinner than the main washers, and are used to slightly expand the width between the two side plates. This is a thoughtful feature, which allows you to easily slide 1.5" tooling arms into the slots, no matter how much you tighten down the side plates. This allowed me to really torque down all the bolts, which resulted in a super tight frame. When I did this with my GIB, I ran into problems with the tooling slots being slightly too tight, and ended up having to go back in and file them out a bit.
Next I carefully slid the left plate over the bolts. I was able to do this without knocking the others loose by first getting the bottom bolts on the plate, with the plate angled out at the top, then I used hand pressure on the right (head) side of one of the bolts on the bottom spacer, to lift the whole spacer level and in line with the next set of holes, then repeated for the next spacers. This way it was very easy to get them all in:
Once I got the plate on, I made sure to push all the bolts through from the right side, so I wouldn't knock any out, and I went ahead and put washers and nyloc nuts on the bottom row, and tightened them down, so that I wouldn't be fighting with everything during the next steps:
Then, I put the two small "Handle/Nut Retention" plates, on over the longer bolts in the second column. This is a really slick design feature, that I would have never personally thought of, which keeps you from having to tap the side plates at all, which is nice since it can be difficult to hold down the larger pieces to drill and tap.
Note: If you paint these pieces like I did, be aware that the fit may be "snug" from the paint inside the holes. I ended up taking these off and "coaxing" the nuts in with a hammer.
Finally, another piece fits over the two, securing the nuts in:
Kudos to Chris and the gang, I find that to be a super clever design element.
Finally, we put washers and nyloc nuts over all the remaining bolts, and tighten them down. I snug them all down first, then work side to side torquing them down so as not to get anything out of whack. Here are some pics of the main body assembled, with a piece of 1.5" square for a tooling arm, which slides in easily:
As I said previously, I was able to really torque the nuts down. I'm observing no flex or give in any part of the main body, it's solid as a rock.
So, at this point I was going to go ahead and put the bracket on for the bottom of the gas spring, but recall I mentioned a caveat earlier about the holes I drilled in the top spacer for this purpose? We'll, long story short, I punched what I thought was the the mark for one of these holes, that wasn't, so they're about 1/2" father apart than they should be. This however is nothing to freak out about, and in the next installment, I'll show you how I'll deal with it, without having to take anything apart, or drill any more holes, and in such a way that everything will still look "professional" when it's done.
Cheers!
- Joined
- May 7, 2010
- Messages
- 1,066
Awesome man!
Not sure if you know (or if it has been mentioned) but this thread has been linked to on the LB-1000 page on the Wilmont website. Someone there agrees with all the positive comments in this thread!
Can't wait to see this thing up and running.. I'm curious to see how the tracking assembly comes together. I'm a little confused with the provided manual where it says to tap a 5/8 hole on the tracking wheel holder. Makes more sense to me that it would be a 1/2-13 hole?
Not sure if you know (or if it has been mentioned) but this thread has been linked to on the LB-1000 page on the Wilmont website. Someone there agrees with all the positive comments in this thread!
Can't wait to see this thing up and running.. I'm curious to see how the tracking assembly comes together. I'm a little confused with the provided manual where it says to tap a 5/8 hole on the tracking wheel holder. Makes more sense to me that it would be a 1/2-13 hole?
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2010
- Messages
- 2,424
Wolf, I haven't gotten there yet, but the instructions at this point should be considered an early WIP also. I was amazed at how good they were, but Chris asked me to take note of anything I thought was wrong or lacking. I instead went nuts and decided to do my own WIP here.
There are some other minor issues I've noted and chatted with Chris about. Also, as a testament to how commited he is to making this the best kit available, and to not only sell, but continue to refine, when I mentioned a concern regarding one of the tracking assembly pieces, he immediately started looking for a way to not only fix, but replace those pieces.
I'll get into in further detail later, but the jist is, the laser cutters did a shitty job on some of the thicker plate pieces for the tracking assembly, which wouldn't stop them from working, but could make it a pain for less experienced builders getting everything square and perfect, so Chris is already getting new pieces waterjetted to replace them.
At this point I have a sneaking suspicion I'll end up with 1 or 2 more of these little guys in my shop in the not-so-distant future. I was planning on building a couple from scratch, but it might just not be worth my time, when I can build one of these so inexpensively and mod to suit.
There are some other minor issues I've noted and chatted with Chris about. Also, as a testament to how commited he is to making this the best kit available, and to not only sell, but continue to refine, when I mentioned a concern regarding one of the tracking assembly pieces, he immediately started looking for a way to not only fix, but replace those pieces.
I'll get into in further detail later, but the jist is, the laser cutters did a shitty job on some of the thicker plate pieces for the tracking assembly, which wouldn't stop them from working, but could make it a pain for less experienced builders getting everything square and perfect, so Chris is already getting new pieces waterjetted to replace them.
At this point I have a sneaking suspicion I'll end up with 1 or 2 more of these little guys in my shop in the not-so-distant future. I was planning on building a couple from scratch, but it might just not be worth my time, when I can build one of these so inexpensively and mod to suit.
- Joined
- May 7, 2010
- Messages
- 1,066
Looks like mine shipped yesterday 
I'll just keep reading until then, and probably follow your methods for my build. I've never done anything like this before, so I will have fun with it and learn a lot on the way!
Getting excited!!!
Thanks again for this WIP!
I'll just keep reading until then, and probably follow your methods for my build. I've never done anything like this before, so I will have fun with it and learn a lot on the way!
Getting excited!!!
Thanks again for this WIP!
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,125
looking good. keep us posted. want to see final product.
scott
scott
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2010
- Messages
- 2,424
Sorry guys, all night knife making, bourbon drinking sessions going down. I can WIP that if you want, but it's a bit less/more glorious than grinder action, YMMV.
Maybe tomorrow or the next day I'll finish, but i'd like to be clear that, regardless of how slow I am on this build, I have other grinders running already. I spend less than an hour on each build segment, and a couple hours posting pics. Someone motivated to get a grinder running could build this in one evening easy.
Maybe tomorrow or the next day I'll finish, but i'd like to be clear that, regardless of how slow I am on this build, I have other grinders running already. I spend less than an hour on each build segment, and a couple hours posting pics. Someone motivated to get a grinder running could build this in one evening easy.
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2006
- Messages
- 784
Keep making the knives buddy!
Not to hijack but....
I got a little excited when I got a certain package in the mail today... and a little over 5 hours later
hey good deal! how did you find the build to be?
jake
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 1,043
I'm loving this grinder. Looks like it is slightly more costly than the GIB, but it also looks awesome-r.
What are some of the pros over the GIB? For the instructions, do they include the dimensions and whatnot?
What are some of the pros over the GIB? For the instructions, do they include the dimensions and whatnot?
- Joined
- May 7, 2010
- Messages
- 1,066
It wasn't too bad at all!
I'll admit, I didn't do everything quite as precise.. and that probably caused me a little more frustration at the end. But the most important thing is to keep your holes on the 1.5" aluminum bar properly centered and straight because there is NO play where it mounts to the bottom plate. The 5/16" through holes on the sides give you plenty of wiggle room however, as do the rest of the through holes. I did ALL of my holes as through holes because I don't have any bottoming taps. I had no problems doing this, so don't worry if you don't want to tap into blind holes!
Read carefully! I drilled the two holes on the red spacer on the wrong end the first time, so I had to drill another spacer again but on the correct side.
There are also some extra holes on the vertical pieces that hold the tension arm, and I had to mount mine lower than stated in the instructions to allow for a proper angle on the tension arm.
Don, there are quite a few dimensions given in the instructions, and a set of calipers makes life a LOT easier for scribing lines for holes. I don't have any layout dye handy so I just used some sharpie where the lines would be and wiped it off after.
Remember this is a new product and it hasn't been around for very long and there are bound to be changes made and little things that the first people building them are going to find. As Javand mentioned some of the tracking pieces were a tad "mangled" from the laserjetting, but only aesthetically, all the pieces worked just fine.
The platen itself is smaller than you would get with a GIB. I talked to Jaime and the GIB can take up to a 10" platen using 2x 2" wheels. This one is limited to a ~6" platen. I already have an idea to modify mine to accommodate a longer one so I can "surface grind" medium sized fixed blades.
I have a little list of suggestions to change parts of the guide which I will email off to Tim soon.
My last suggestion, just be sure to tap STRAIGHT, and use plenty of fluid and high quality taps for the 1/2-13 holes. I hated tapping those... but managed to not break any taps
Also with the tapping. Make sure to check the thread size before you tap compared to the instructions. I believe it stated a 1/4-20 for the Tracking adjustment knob, but it in fact already drilled and needs to be tapped for 5/16-18 to match the knob. The hole for the tracking wheel is also 1/2-13 and needs to be re-drilled for a 27/64 hole to tap properly, same with the platen holes!
I'll admit, I didn't do everything quite as precise.. and that probably caused me a little more frustration at the end. But the most important thing is to keep your holes on the 1.5" aluminum bar properly centered and straight because there is NO play where it mounts to the bottom plate. The 5/16" through holes on the sides give you plenty of wiggle room however, as do the rest of the through holes. I did ALL of my holes as through holes because I don't have any bottoming taps. I had no problems doing this, so don't worry if you don't want to tap into blind holes!
Read carefully! I drilled the two holes on the red spacer on the wrong end the first time, so I had to drill another spacer again but on the correct side.
There are also some extra holes on the vertical pieces that hold the tension arm, and I had to mount mine lower than stated in the instructions to allow for a proper angle on the tension arm.
Don, there are quite a few dimensions given in the instructions, and a set of calipers makes life a LOT easier for scribing lines for holes. I don't have any layout dye handy so I just used some sharpie where the lines would be and wiped it off after.
Remember this is a new product and it hasn't been around for very long and there are bound to be changes made and little things that the first people building them are going to find. As Javand mentioned some of the tracking pieces were a tad "mangled" from the laserjetting, but only aesthetically, all the pieces worked just fine.
The platen itself is smaller than you would get with a GIB. I talked to Jaime and the GIB can take up to a 10" platen using 2x 2" wheels. This one is limited to a ~6" platen. I already have an idea to modify mine to accommodate a longer one so I can "surface grind" medium sized fixed blades.
I have a little list of suggestions to change parts of the guide which I will email off to Tim soon.
My last suggestion, just be sure to tap STRAIGHT, and use plenty of fluid and high quality taps for the 1/2-13 holes. I hated tapping those... but managed to not break any taps
Also with the tapping. Make sure to check the thread size before you tap compared to the instructions. I believe it stated a 1/4-20 for the Tracking adjustment knob, but it in fact already drilled and needs to be tapped for 5/16-18 to match the knob. The hole for the tracking wheel is also 1/2-13 and needs to be re-drilled for a 27/64 hole to tap properly, same with the platen holes!
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 1,043