2-26-05 This is an auxiliary tool rest for the KMG grinder. I suppose it could be for any grinder really. It is made of 2” and 1 1/2” square pipe, some bolts, rebar rod and a little square of 1/4” plate. This tool rest will allow me to use it as a guide doing hollow grinds. The 2” work ‘table’ is the perfect size to rest the knife blank on to follow the contour of the blade profile. The height is adjustable for the other wheels I have. I have the 14” wheel mounted in this picture. It gives a very shallow hollow grind that reflects light with more luster than a flat grind does. The 2” tube that is the ‘table’ may eventually end up with a hole or two drilled in the top to hold a grinding jig which is why I went with that instead of a flat plate.

1&1/2” pipe fits inside of 2” with about a 1/4” of slop so the mounting bracket that is bolted to the bench has 3 bolts to keep it from moving around. The adjustable slides tighten up enough to keep it from moving around too much. You may want to use two bolts on each slide if you want it very snug. 

2-26-05 This is my tool tree for the tool arms that are used in the KMG grinder. The upright is 3” square pipe that is 28” tall, the holding brackets are 2” square pipe and it is welded onto a 1/8” plate which is bolted onto the bench. The holding brackets are welded 9” apart, 3 on one side, 2 on the other. These probably could be welded a bit closer, but not by much. It sure cleans up my work bench now. From top down, the flat platen, the slack belt attachment, small wheel attachment which takes wheels from 1/4” to 3”, 8” wheel and 10” wheel. The 14” wheel is currently mounted in the grinder. Tool change out takes just seconds which is a huge plus for the KMG. At the bottom of the vertical tube you can see a square gusset on the front. This is just to help brace and support the upright tree. 

For those of you that don’t weld because you never learned how, neither did I. Well kinda, I taught myself with a cheap 110v MIG weldor. You can too. I’m glad I finally just decided to buy one and try it. For practice material, go to the scrap yard and buy some surplus (don’t call it scrap, they get upset about that - it’s surplus), take it home, weld the hell out of it, take it back and sell it back to them. They don’t care what it looks like or what your welds look like. It will cost you almost nothing to practice in the way of materials.

2-28-05 I’ve just finished roughing out 8 folder blades. I’m using the Kant-twist clamp to hold the pattern to the roughed out blade for drilling and scribing the outline. The Kant-twist works better than a C clamp as it won’t twist the work when clamping pressure is applied like a C clamp does. They are over priced but work pretty good. I’ve used blue layout fluid on the roughed out blanks to help show the scribe line. The carbide tipped scriber is the pen looking deal. It will scratch anything just short of diamonds. You can see the other two pieces of the folder pattern laying next to the blades, the handle pattern with several drill holes and the spacer bar. The patterns are hardened and have the holes exactly where I want them. I will clamp the materials to the pattern and drill the holes where they belong.

After I have drilled the hole, I scribe an outline of the blade. I will then take that to the grinder and grind it to the exact profile line I have scribed. I’ll get 8 blades just the same size with the hole drilled fairly quickly using the pattern.

2-28-05 All of the blades have been ground to the exact same profile following the scribe lines. I’ll give these a clean up on the disk grinder to knock off any flashing left from the profiling and to clean up the blue lay out fluid. After the disk grinder clean up, they are ready to send to Paul Bos for heat treat.