Matt Gregory

Great event! I failed miserably with my camera this year... The only salvageable shot just happened to be of my bud Justin, who NAILED both of his presentations:

...next thing you'll tell me is your appendix is trying to kill you, you or something... wish you were going to be there, bud.

Wow, Justin - I'm honored that you'd select THAT photo, and even more wish I'd nailed that shot better! Alan, or whoever is going to do the editing for the addition of the flames, if you'd prefer a full size render of that, or even a different format, I've got the original in RAW, so it can be anything and any size you wish, of it will make it easier. Great meeting all of you, gang - and great catching up with some old friends, too. Sorry I was so out of sorts, but life has a way...

Despite my desire to capture great photos of everyone, I fear my head wasn't in the game this weekend, as I got some bad news just before heading to the event. Regardless, here's a few quick shots which weren't horrible: Tom Walter and Mike Pulack Ric Furrer with his Ulfberht Tristan Zukowski and Mike Edelson AWESOME Tom Ward photobomb Mace and Deker. Knuckle sandwich.

I haven't swung a hammer to make a knife in many, many moons, but I can't stay away from Ashokan any longer. There are just too many folks I've missed for far too long, and recent events have pointed out just how important making time - especially for things like this - is. I'm going to do my best to capture the spirit of the event through photographs of the presenters and attendees. It will be great to see old friends, and with any luck, make some new ones. See all of you in a few days.

There's been a handful of these kits that have made their way to folks, at this point, and a couple tidbits that were beyond my ability to observe have been pointed out. Although I mentioned it in the original announcement post in this thread, it seems to have been overlooked, and this is critical : THE KIT REQUIRES THAT YOU HAVE A 56C FACE MOUNT motor. The motor bolts to the adapter, and without the face mount, it ain't gonna work. Also, guys have said that they had to cut the length of some of their tool arms down, as the adapter bracket won't allow a tool arm to stick past it. I didn't notice this on my own grinder, because I added the additional tool arm slot, which lets the tool arms clear the bracket in the top slot, AND I made almost all my own arms and cut them at 18". I couldn't see any advantage to making them any longer, and I could get four tool arms out of a six foot long bar. Things to keep in mind if you decide you want one of these. Feedback has been beyond positive. Improved tracking, elimination of vibration, and gobs more torque due to the elimination of belt slip. For most, also, an increase in speed when the VFD output frequency is doubled. Figured I ought to pass all this along for people that may want one in the future.

Nice, Justin. Sounds like you're running that in 1x mode. Does your VFD offer a frequency doubler? For my money, I'd choose speed over torque for hogging, as it seems like the better ceramic belts prefer motion a bit, over pressure. Which motor and VFD are you using?

Joshua, I just saw that Frogfish hadn't replied. Pretty sure what he's got there is a MAP arm from Michael Kanter. Don't think they're available anymore, but just in case I'm wrong, here's his website: http://www.adammichaelknives.com/purchase.php

...wonder if you'll think you needed to upgrade to 3hp after you convert to direct drive. Of course, if you can, why not, right? More power never hurts, and I'd bet there's greater torque available at lower rpm, and that's usually where I would need it, anyway.

Josh, most of my mod ideas stemmed from a thread on Bladeforums which David Sharp began on his mods. Not sure if cross-forum posting is allowed, but here's how I guess I'll find out! http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/949335-How-to-make-a-KMG-better-(GIB-content-also) He used a 20 pound strut, I think. Mine is 40. I may, in the future, try a stiffer one, but so far this works great!

One word of note - this kit only bolts to the upright holes where the pulleys were mounted. If you're planning on making your grinder vertical/horizontal, you will likely need to drill and tap another couple holes in this as well as the baseplate for your grinder. I have no intention of doing that mod, so we didn't engineer it into the equation. Shouldn't be a big deal for you to do it, though...

Haven't had it long enough to have one fail, Joshua, but considering how well it works and how cheap they are, I'll gladly replace it before I go back to the spring.

Hi Wayne, This bracket is intended for those of us with motors that DON'T have mounting brackets. The only mounting option I've got to mount my motor is C face. Otherwise, I certainly would have just done it the way you're describing. I'm not certain I understand where you feel this mounting system would have any more vibration than using a motor with a foot mount, but I assure you it doesn't.

My KMG has been a source of angst for me since I got it. The pulley system is noisy, causes a shitload of vibration, and tons of power loss. My skinny ass could stall it, and that just shouldn't happen. It tracked poorly, and I spent WAY too much time dialing things in, checking for runout, lining things up... Some things made differences, but it was never right. So, I called in a friend and we looked into what it would take to make it direct drive. The idea was to make this an EASY conversion, should anyone else want to do this. It assumes you have a 56C face mount motor. Mine is 1725RPM, 2hp, with a KBAC-27 vfd which I run in 2x mode (speed doubled). The adapter plate and motor bracket use the existing pillow block mount holes to bolt to the KMG body. My machinist friend Joe made this prototype. Other than being easy to do, it also means you aren't permanently modifying the grinder, so should you choose to return it to stock, it's simple. One of the issues had to do with the length of the factory pulley shaft - it's quite a bit longer than a 56C face motor's output shaft. We could have just had the drive wheel sticking off the shaft a bit, but that's icky. Joe elected to make a custom drive wheel. This one is 5.5" in diameter, with an offset to compensate for the difference in shaft length: With everything mounted and ready to roll, you end up with this: As you can tell, I've also added an additional tool slot. That sucks up a lot of real estate, so along with moving the drive pulley back AND increasing the drive wheel diameter, you can quickly run out of belt length. My 12" wheel just barely fits. Nonetheless, every one of my attachments works, including my Bader double billy roll, which eats up belt length like there's no tomorrow. The flat platen and contact wheels are a custom rig I made, with a 2" wheel on top and a 3" on bottom. That's one thing my old Wilton got right. Should be a pinch smaller up top (1-1/2" would be dandy), but I had the wheel, so there it is. While I'm at it, here's a couple shots of the gas strut tensioner and the monster custom ape-hanger tensioning arm: Here's a quick vid of the grinder running wide open with the 12" wheel - previous to this modification, that belt would shift as much as 1/8", and it could NEVER have been run at this speed. The vibration was unbearable. Even the noise is reduced dramatically!

I know this isn't exactly what you were asking, but I thought perhaps it might be interesting to you. This is a test of 46 different rust preventatives that an individual put through their paces, and the results were eye-opening, to me. I thought perhaps it might be of help - hope so! http://www.dayattherange.com/?page_id=3667