One of the things I have to make on a semi regular basis is valve seat cutting pilots for cylinder head work. They are about 6" long, 3/8" upper diameter which the seat cutter runs on and the bottom 2" is the diameter of the valve guide i/d - usually between 5mm and 8mm for most modern heads. In a perfect world they are hardened and ground but most of the time I use 3/8" silver steel and just turn the bottom diameter in the lathe and use them soft. They don't last so long but do the job ok.
I'm thinking of moving to a different seat cutting system which uses some daft pilot diameter of 0.386" if I remember right - anyway, nothing you can get pre ground silver steel in. Each size new is £80 which is equally daft so the only option is make them out of 10mm silver steel, harden and grind to size.
I quite fancy a small cylindrical grinder anyway but the budget doesn't run to much. A few hundred quid would be nice but maybe a bit more if I have to. Is there anything around that might do the job to a decent accuracy (a tenth or two), not take up too much space, ideally be single phase but I can run it off the phase converter if need be and not cost too much? It would only have to handle tiny items like these.
One option is to mount a grinding wheel on the lathe but the cross slide screw is pretty shagged anyway and even if it wasn't it's a fairly coarse pitch to be doing accurate grinding work on. I suppose I could make a fine pitch screw and nut but it would be hassle swapping that back and forth every time I wanted to do a grinding job.