KMG shoppers guide?

[Chef Niloc]

I thought that a KMG grinder buyers guide thread would be useful here as I think it's the grinder of chose? I was looking at there sight trying to find out what a rotary platen was for and I noticed that they make it kind of tricky for a 1st time buyer to get everything they will need, IE no all included packages. So how about you guys post a shopping list?

[sudsy9977]

he sells packages on his site colin....with the motors and different attachments.....ryan

[l r harner]

I have the flat pattern kit wi th vfd then added wheels but they have many kit options and even some you don't see on the site like 3"wide wheel option

[Dave Martell]

It's a bit confusing but after you visit his site like 38 times dreaming of what you want it all starts to make sense.

[Dave Martell]

Colin, also take a look at the TW-90, this one's getting some rave reviews.

http://www.twuertz.com/

[JMJones]

I think the basics would be:

The grinder body
a motor with steep pulleys or speed control (these motors are not interchangable).
Flat platen attachment
8 or 10 inch contact wheel
small wheel attachment with a small wheel

Things that are not necessarily essential to starting knife making but nice to have

A tooling arm for each attacment. I made all of mine out of 1.5 inch square tube
Work rest for some or all attachments (I only use one with the large contact wheel)
Base plate
tree to hold tooling arms close by and out of the way.
Different diameter contact wheels, (this is more critical if you do much hollow grinding)
Different diameter small wheels for small wheel attacment
Rotary Platen
Contact wheel in place of one of the metal wheels on the platten attachment allow doing some contact wheel grinding without the need the switch from the platen attachment.

[Eamon Burke]

As opposed to a contact wheel, couldn't you make curved platens with an eased top edge so you can run regular belts on it, and get the same effect as a contact wheel, or even a huge water wheel?

[Dave Martell]

There's a guy on Bladeforums who makes a 36" & 48" radius curved platens for hollowing grinding that bolt right up to the KMG.

[JMJones]

As opposed to a contact wheel, couldn't you make curved platens with an eased top edge so you can run regular belts on it, and get the same effect as a contact wheel, or even a huge water wheel?

I dont really do many hollow grinds so the large wheel is mostly used with the work rest to do profile grinding. Profiling with this setup is fast, easy and often quicker than using a bandsaw to profile. Profiling on a platen with the work rest is more difficult and much harder on the belts, which reduces belt life. Using the flat platen and work rest for profiling and using a convex platen for bevel grinding is definatly doable but not the easiest or most efficient. To save on cost, poly contact wheels can be bought from us knife maker supply for alot cheaper that he kmg wheels.

For doing hollow grinds on a platen the curved platens

[Delbert Ealy]

Kmg's wern't around when I started, but a little company in NY was and my first serious grinder I bought from them, a Bader. I upgraded a couple of years ago to a second bader with variable speed.
I got a bunch of stuff with mine;
A combo platen with a 2 inch wheel on top and a 5 inch wheel on the bottom
a long platen with the 2 inch wheels on top and bottom
an 8 inch wheel with arm
a small wheel atachment with wheel
with the variable speed and these atachments I can do pretty much anything I want as far as blades go, and in creating many other things as well.