[TheForge] RE: belt sanders?

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

Bob;
That sounds like a good idea. I glued a graphite fabric surface  on the 
steel backing plate on the big one I built and it's long since  worn  
away mostly...just enough left to prevent the plate from being flat.
Where is the ceramic plate available? What sort of ceramic? Is it 
gawdawful expensive? How does it mount? and questions like that?
......Pete F

Bob Ehrenberger wrote:

>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
>
>
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