Recent build, used for all kinds of work but as you can see from the jig mainly knife making. No need to say my welding is awful I am well aware, most of it is tacked together using a crappy Chinese gasless welder which I can only adjust wire feed speed/current. Not confident in my ability to build everything to tight tolerances I made everything adjustable, motor position left/right and angle, pulley/countershaft position forward/back and angle, tracking wheel hinge left-right, platen in-out etc etc. It’s not perfect but I have got it to run straight and true and I’ve been able to make some decent looking blades with it and it is a strong powerful grinder, powered by a 3hp single phase motor. PS temporary workshop (conservatory) as our 12mx3m brick workshop is under slow construction.
Very nice. Maybe consider a simple sheet metal shield in front of the motor: the belt looks inline with the motor fan grille so all the off-flung debris may go into a bad place.
This is on my list of things to make, quite fancying the Jeremy Schmidt design with all the accessories
Temporary while I build the new workshop, it’s working for the time being. If I can build it, I took my time, then anyone can!
I will definitely do that, thanks for the tip. The good thing is the fan on the motor blows most of the dust to the other end of the worktop! It’s an enclosed motor so the dust is only going over the outer casing but I take your point and see it as an improvement, thanks.
I looked at loads of videos and photos and ended up taking effectively the simplest method for each section and drew up rough plans myself and just mocked it up as I went along. Best tip I would give for building is cut and tie a length of string the length of your belt and use that for determining location of the wheels. I made the front D plate larger than anything I had seen, the platen is 300mm long from memory there is 430mm between idler wheel centres. I don’t have a mill so it took some time drilling and filing the D plate, but I made it from a 10mm 300mm square plate that cost about £7 from brundles rather than buying one for around £80.
Looks good. I have started using a 2x72 and didn't realise the sparks come back around on the belt. With mine it's mounted at a height where the sparks hit me in the face. I had to make a little guard in front of the top roller above the platen.
@h-dom I like that, a lot. I have all the bits/stuff to build my own, but it kept slipping down the 'projects' so far that I bought is one off eBay for iirc £57 as a stop-gap . I'll get one of those 'roundtuit' things eventually and can flog the Kobe on....
There is a cheapy in Lidl at the moment. Not bought it though as it’ll force me to get on with build.
Just depends on if you've got the time to build one! I'm going to sell my Clarke one soon as I haven't used it in some time
