Tool Grinder import from the USA

Can you guys buy from Harborfeight in the US

See:

Simon

MikeH_QB wrote:

when you consider the yank price of about =A370 .....

and if one was available here for that price ...it seems hardly worth while going to the trouble of converting another grinder ... the wheels will be specialist and mega expensive ..

the materials ..the time etc ...look at it that way .......and at the end you would of wished you had waited-out for it to come to the uk .

there are similar second hand ones on ebay ..british made ...but they are mega heavy and large and three phase ...and cant be put on a spare bench top like these grizzley ones.

all the best.mark

FWIW ~ there's a very good website in the US where the guy has excellent quality pics of various small scale engineering operations. He describes a toolpost grinder and the mods he's made. it's not from Grizzly but it may be of the same parentage. Elsewhere on his site, he's somewhat scathing of the quality of Grizzly products.

Yes, I did wonder about the cost of the wheels.. And it is true that the low cost of off-the-shelf things like this is so low comparatively to gettting the 'bits' yourself its not always worth the trouble. It boils down to whether or not you can get your hands on the ready made unit you want in the first place! Directly imported, I bet it wouldn't come into the UK at =A370, more like =A3270 I bet (I've never quite understood that, who makes all this extra profit by simply putting in a container bound for the UK instead of the US?) Ah well, back to to 'sharpening' some drills with my wibbly-wobbly 'Draper' =A312.00 jig. Mike

If you have any old drills beyond repair, it's well worth while teaching yourself to sharpen drills by hand. It's not really that difficult - the main trick being to rotate the tip against the wheel, maintaining the trailing clearance, then hold up to the light and rotate to check for evenness at both sides. Repeat until correct.

Not quite so accurate as a machine, but most people use two drills to get an accurate final size anyway, so a few thou unbalance isn't usually that important...

Chris

Years ago I built a few of these from single phase 1/4 horse 2,800 rev fan motors. Fitted a bolt on flange so it could clamp a wheel so no worries about it unscrewing, fitted a dished wheel of whatever grade and made a simple tilting table from a bit of alloy and two bits of dexion.

Sounds crude but they did work and do a decent job at the time, remember there were no cheap imports about.

Photo of the last one in captivity.

I heard some where once that a huge amount of chinese exports to europe actually land on the US west coast, get transported across the US and then shipped to you from our East Coast.

Wes

At John's price, this has to be appreciated as the whole caboodle is less than a motor!

I went down a different track. OK I had a Quorn and a Kennet but when a Clarkson Mark1 came up on Flea Day for just over =A3100 I went down and bought it. Fine, it didn't have all the bells and whatnots but holders can be made of wood until something better arrives. Mine had a 2880 rpm single phase and apart from adding safe wheels was running in minutes thereafter. Eventually, I got more tooling and a magnetic chuck and my Quorn and Kennet are sort of gathering grit.

Was this a lucky one off? It would seem not as there seems to be more now.

This makes mockery of the US stuff at whatever price.

Highly unlikely due to import tariffs. US to UK is 15% China to UK is 3%

Don't know what China to US is but say 3% the same then it costs 18% against 3% to come direct.

Are you overflowing with chinese stuff yet? We in the States sure are.

Wes