Jesse Lange

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, so feel free to move it. Recently, I was looking into buying some Parks 50 and AAA quench oil. The stuff is relatively expensive, so I did some digging and found the manufacturer, and realized that you can buy direct from them for roughly half of what most places charge. Most places charge $250-300 for 5 gallons of Parks 50 shipped, and I was able to get 5 gallons of Parks 50 and 5 gallons of AAA for ~$230 shipped (total, for both). The manufacturer is Dubois Chemicals. Their web store is store.duboischemica

How do you know his location? I don't see it on his profile. Chris, if you are indeed based in the North East, I'd be happy to give you some advice. I started last fall and have learned some things to do/not do to buy/not buy. I also just completed a 2 week ABS Intro to Knifemaking course at the New England School of Metalwork. You don't have to do a 2 week course, but I can't recommend these guys highly enough. Fantastic school, fantastic teachers/ people. Feel free to reach out to me. Jesse

To follow-up on this topic, I took my 2 week ABS Intro course (highly recommend the NE School of Metalwork), and I got to play with quite a few different ginders. Even though they didn't have a Brodbeck, I made the decision to pull the trigger and ordered the Brodbeck Mega Package. They have been a pleasure to work with so far, have given me a ton of their time over the phone, and I can't wait to get the grinder. I'll update you guys once I have it up and running.

To amend my earlier post, I just spoke to Vince from Brodbeck, and after hearing more about their machine, the tolerances, manufacturing process, the reason certain decisions were made, etc I am definitely leaning that way. If you are curious about their products, drop a note via "Contact us" on their site. Vince called me about an hour or two after I did.

I'm in a similar boat. I started blacksmithing/knifemaking as a hobby in the fall, and am actually taking 2 weeks off for an ABS Into to Knifemaking course starting in a week. I too started w/ a budget grinder, a Norse 2x42 from Amazon which I've made a lot of modifications to, and I will likely upgrade to a big boy grinder after my course. From my research I narrowed things down to: 84 Engineering's Gibson 72 Deluxe sold by Alec Steele - leaning towards this one due to the carbide faced platen, cam-based tension system (supposedly even better than ratcheting),