Anybody here

[Shawn]

have any experience with Reeder Products 2x72 belt grinders? I'm looking into stepping up my belt grinder from my 4x36 adapted to a 2x48.
Belts are cheap for my setup now, but I am limited to a flat platten and a 5 inch contact wheel. Not to mention it's single speed that is about 1750 fpm from a 1/3 or 1/2 hp motor.
I have been looking at the ones on the bay that are cheaper for the frame, but with overpriced shipping and then still needing to set up a motor and step pulleys to make it "variable" speed, I'm at least if not over the price of the Reeder. Also the Reeder looks to be better built with lower shipping. About a third of what some of them want.

So just curious if anyone has used or seen one in use before.

 

[32t]

I'm here. No experience with that grinder.

With Covid ,riots, and looting,etc I have been a little distracted.

 

[RezDog]

There are a lot of good looking grinder bodies out there. I look at shipping costs a lot. Made in Canada was almost the only one I could find where the shipping wasn’t as much or more than the grinder. In the end the one I got works like a champ. Setting them up is the time consuming part. I also used the steppped pulley to co trol the speed. The variable frequency drives are a little pricey, and I have very dirty power, so pulley System made more sense to me. I looked up the grinders you are looking at. If the $ makes sense to you then it looks very sensible.

 

[Shawn]

Running the title from part of the question looked a little better when the boxes were together making the post..

Other than finding toilet paper and wearing a mask, things are about the same for me out in the middle of nowhere. I intentionally don't watch the "news", so I tend to forget some are getting hit a lot harder.
However, my daughter and grandson are stuck in Erie because of the "protests"... Once they start to turn to riots like that, the guard and/or military should be called in and every one of them arrested. I am all for protests, but these aren't.

 

[verndahl]

I'm still here too, just waiting for someone to post something. I would but i'm kind of at a standstill with my brush turning project. (making one from smoking pipe bowls of which i need to find another. More on that later hopefully).
As for the grinder question i can't help you either. Wish a had one though.

 

[Mike Blue]

Shawn, I have a few different ideas. Start by looking in the surplus machine tools area for belt grinders. I think 72 inch belt lenght is the grinder world joke on knifemakers. All the standard belts begin where you have and then go to 60 inch or 90 inch or 132 inch. Why invent a belt length that the rest of the industrial world does not use? I love my 132 inch belts. They run much cooler and the abrasive simply lasts longer because of less heat on the best adhesive.

If you could find a motor and drive unit you could build your own easy enough. Every AC drive I ever had got converted to either a DC motor and control unit or a VFD to save time having to fool around with belt drive changes to get a different speed.

Think of this as an investment in your future skill. BTW I started on a router motor and 1x42 inch belts. I could rip the abrasive off a small belt on an A2 blade in about 5 seconds. I was motivated to change.

 

[cangooner]

+1 to the build your own suggestion if you're so inclined. When I built mine, the two best sources of info I found were:

https://dcknives.blogspot.com/

and a facebook group called "Home Built Belt Grinders". It helped plenty with my build but also has regular recommendations for complete or kit grinders. If you're not on FB, let me know and I'll see if I can find some recent recommendations for you to check out.

When I built mine, I first went with a treadmill motor and home-made speed controller. It worked fine then let the smoke out despite my best efforts to protect it from dust. Then went with a TEFC AC motor with a good VFD and have not regretted it one bit. But I would never subject myself to belt changes.

 

[Shawn]

The only problem I have with building my own, is time. I have a bit of money to spend towards the shop and I have been thinking of where to best put it. I have been considering a new anvil, heat treat oven, or grinder. Right now I am spending the most time grinding. This is the point where all of my projects bottleneck. With the limited time that I have to actually get to the shop, I want to make this part of the process more efficient.
Any time I spend building a grinder, is time I'm losing working on projects. I built my forge and the burner Mike designed for me, so I have the ability, I'm just stuck with not enough hours in the day to try and source parts and get them all put together plus work on projects that are overdue.

 

[cangooner]

That totally makes sense.

From a quick look, in addition to Reeder (which is frequently recommended), the FB group members have also suggested:

OBM
Ameribrade
Vashti (they're up here in Canada so you get the benefit of the exchange rate but likely higher shipping?)

I'm sure there are other great grinders out there these days, but those seem to be the ones most often recommended. Also, I should note I've never used any of these - this is just what the hive seems to recommend.

You can also buy just the frame from several companies and add the motor / VFD of your choice. If you go that route, DCknives has a really good page on motors/VFDs for grinders.

Good luck. Getting my 2x72 set up was probably the single best improvement to my shop apart from building a better forge. A good grinder with plenty of oomph is just so useful.

 

[Bruno]

If you're looking at that kind of money, why not look into Bader? Yes they are expensive, but they are rock solid. I've used them and imo they are well worth the money.

I get Mike's point about the belt length. 72" is a funny length. In Europe, grinders are built for 2 meters which is 82" because that is industry standard.

 

[Mike Blue]

It's hard to pass up the opportunity to share a "rule" from Howard who got it from Alfred Pendray. "Make your own tools." Building something gives you a unique perspective on what's in the tool and if it breaks, you built it, you know how to fix it.

Okay, that's out of my head an into yours. My time is valuable for doing many things. For example, I can make tongs. They aren't pretty and like Shawn suggests, they take time away from other jobs to make them. They are functional and my good friends who are better blacksmiths laugh at me. It's much cheaper for the money and the time to buy tongs from a fellow I know who does nothing but tongs. They are functional and pretty. He gets to feed his family. I've bought enough that I can tell him over the phone what modifications I need and we have a good thing going. Same for grinders. Personally I like Bader and I know the people who run the company. Relationships are important with people who make gear for you. I know some good grinder companies with lousy customer service. The tools are great until you need help.

The nice thing about my Bader III is that if I want to run 82 or 90 inch belts, I modified some square bar to add length. Easy. Okay so I have to take a half step extra to turn it on or off, or change the belt. The extra length runs cooler and saves grit. Which means more grinding effort spent more effectively. Funny how those longer belts can be cheaper from the belt company too.

 

[Shawn]

I have looked at Bader machines as well as Travis's machines. They are still out of my range though. I don't doubt that you get what you pay for on either account, but they are still out of budget at this point in time.
I am going to look into the 82 inch belts though. I saw some grinders set up to run them. I'll have to check machine size though because very limited space is another problem for me.

 

[Jfk742]

That may be another reason to build your own, money. In hindsight I wish I had built mine. Though having a basic grinder made me realize I had put too much stock into bells and whistles. The biggest problem with mine is lack of mass. The tracking is pretty solid but could be better, plus 1 to Mikes suggestion for using longer belts. Space shouldn’t be too much of an issue, 2x72’s are pretty compact as it is. Worst case scenario you just push the tool arm in when not in use. Width can be largely cut down by going with a direct drive variable speed set up.

I will eventually make my own and probably retire the other to either full time horizontal for profiling or flat platen work. It still needs some stiffening but nothing a couple of hours cutting plate and welding can’t fix.

it was pretty overwhelming trying to design my own, I did a cad drawing and took some of the features from some of the highly regarded commercially built machines, had McMaster Carr opened up the whole time to make sure all my fasteners and bearing would fit and then drawing it all so it fit correctly. Long story short I spent well over 50 hours just designing, building it would have taken another 30 or so hours, then tooling. My advice is to make something cheap and simple but spend good money on a vfd and a 3ph motor, you can always make a newer better version later and just swap the motor and vfd.

Talk to Victor or Charlie, they both made solid grinders on proven designs. Both look simple enough without have a shop full of tools. The more difficult stuff like the tracking mechanism can be bought on its own too and just welded or bolted on to the tracking wheel arm.

 

[Bruno]

If you are making blades regularly, you can really use multiple grinders. I have 1 grinder dedicated to just grinding with a 4" grinding wheel because that does the most work in terms of hollow grinding. The other one is used for flat platen, small wheels and an 8" wheel. I really want to add a 3d, and possibly a 4th to save more time.

 

[Shawn]

Looks like I'm going back to the build it myself ideas..... Got a deer on the way into work last friday that took out my plastic front and the intercooler.....
Darn hunters are slacking I"m telling you...
Insurance is paying most of it, but still have my deductible to cover, so there goes my extra cash.

 

[Mike Blue]

That stinks. There are more deer in North American than before humans population increased. Game management is another government oxymoron.

 

[32t]

Did you get a month of meat out of the deal anyway?

 

[Shawn]

Too small. Still had it's spots. I'm actually glad it wasn't a big one as I was 35 miles from home and drive a Cruze. It has already been the victim of an adult deer and it wasn't being driven after that one. That car is a freaking deer magnet...