[TheForge] RE: belt sanders?

[Bob Ehrenberger]

Justin,

My son is a full time knife maker and has 3 sanders, a 2x48 Kalimazo, a 2x72
Bader #2, a 2x72 KMG.  The Kalimazo is fine for handle material and general
deburing but is a bit lacking for knife blades. The Bader does great at
hollow gitnding but it's flat and small wheel attachments are a pain and
don't track well. The KMG is hands down the best grinder of the bunch the
attachments are easy to change and track. The KMG is also about half as
expensive as the Bader. To be fare he got the Bader used and it had a lot of
hours on it so a new one may perform better, but given the price difference
and the quality of the KMG that's what I'd recommend.

My son doesn't use any special jigs for grinding.  From what I've heard they
are only usefull for large runs of duplicate blades, since they are hard to
set up and adjust.  All the knife makers I know do their blades freehand.

The one modification he made on the KMG was adding a ceramic backing plate
on the flat grinding attachment, it runs cooler and stays flat longer than
the steel backing plate that is standard.

Robert Ehrenberger
Shelbyville, Mo.

----Original Message ---
Message: 8
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:24:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Justin Fellenz <sunironworks at yahoo.com>
Subject: [TheForge] belt sanders?

All,

Can anyone recommend a belt sander that would be suitable for general
purpose and knife making? Grizzly has one for about $300 that a friend
of mine likes, but he uses it on wood and has no need to
gollow-grindblades. I saw one on an instructional video that had a
drive wheel at the back, a pivot wheel at the top, and an idler out in
front that you could get different wheels for for different sized
hollow grinds. I think it also could be set up as an everyday flat belt
sander, with a piece of plate behind the belt.

I've also seen some pretty neat wet-sanding rigs that you put the blade
into and move it on a slider across the abrasive (wheel or belt) to get
a precise grind every time.

So such things come in one machine? I cant find what I'm describing on
google. Anyone know?

Thanks

JRF