Hello Crowder,
I purchased a small Veil profile grinder new about 10 years ago. I use it to compliment my W&H molder. Here's a link to a pic of a new one from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Viel-Profile-Grinder/dp/B000ROCH6EI haven't checked the new ones down to the exact detail to see if they have made improvements, , but it looks like mine from the pic. Mine was about half the cost of that one back then.
I was hoping I could use the grinder to grind my own knives cheaper than purchasing them from a knife shop.
What I found was that if I got my knife stock for free from my brother (metal worker at the time), I could do OK.
However, there's a learning curve to grinding your own, and I've never been able to duplicate the quality of a professionally ground knife. The only place it's really worked well was when a painter would come running into the shop with a crown molding emergency. Typically, he's been painting an old place, and needs 60 feet of wide crown that he can't buy, and needs it in a day or so, and it's going up high on a building. When that occurs, I can make my knives and run his stock. It won't be as nice as if i had bought the knives. It will take me about 3 or 4 hours to make a 6" wide knife with any amount of detail. The Veil is very slow at removing the waste from a knife to get to the point where you are actually grinding the profile. That time also eats up grinding wheels, which aren't free either. I've thought about the possibility of sawing away the majority of the waste, and even tried it with a jig saw and a metal cutting blade, but it didn't cut the time.
I keep mine, and fire it up once or twice per year. If I need to make just one short piece of trim, I can generally make it by the tablesaw/router/shaper, sandpaper method faster than I can grind a knife and make it. If I need more than say 100 feet, or know (or think) I will need to make this pattern again, I'll push to buy the knife from a pro. The area in between is where the grinder works for me (or at least in my mind, I justify keeping it).
The way I work the purchased knife thing is like this: I recommend to the customer that I purchase a knife for the job. The knife will be charged to their job, but I own and maintain it. If they need more of the same molding down the road, there will be no knife charge. If they want me to make them molding from other knives I've made or purchased, there will be no knife charge. So far, although there have been a couple folks not really like the idea, I don't think anyone's walked out the door because of the policy. There have been some decide that they would use a knife already in the shop and save some dough, which is fine with me.
Back to the grinder. It's a decent machine, but it's very slow, and doesn't do as good of a job (with me operating it) at cutting a knife as a pro grinder and operator. For a job of any decent size, if it's a business, you would be money ahead to purchase your knives from a guy with a machine that costs way more, and a guy who does it every day.
If I had the money I spent on the molder today, and the opportunity to purchase a new one with that money, I wouldn't make the purchase. It just doesn't do enough work to justify the initial cost and space. The guys who make knives for a living do an excellent job, and turn around time is getting better all the time. The painter would just have to be more forward thinking!
Hope this helps.
