Po' Boy's Blanchard Grinder

[Crusty]

I want low rpm torque for milling with larger end mills - tired of picking steel splinters out of my hands for three weeks because I have to run the rpms faster than it should be and making clouds of tiny needles. I think right now with the anemic ½ hp universal motor I top out around 2000 rpm.

I made a holder for my Foredom hand carver on my lathe toolpost and it works fine as long as I take shallow cuts since it's hp limited but a die grinder mounted on the tool post could be a poor boy's toolpost grinder. A die grinder mounted to the quill on a mill is an interesting concept for grinding but I generally prefer to run my mill at low rpm and take out bigish chips with end mills.

Actually I'm not really sure why I'm thinking about trying surface grinding because planing in horizontal mode leaves a beautiful flat finish (here's two 1" thick triangles pinned and planed together) and it's a lot faster than grinding. To speed things up I ganged two cutters onto the arbor for the roughing cuts and then finished with a single cutter to level the surface. It's certainly flat enough for anything I might make.