Recently an Exchange member contacted EOU with regard to the guided Kally knife rest system that was mentioned in an EOU post, and I have previously mentioned a few times in posts that a new rest was in the works for the Kally. This is about the new rest.
First, a bit of history: The first knife rest I made for the Kalamazoo 1SM was many years ago with proof of concept being nothing more than an angle cut on a piece of wood that sat against the belt. Albeit crude, the thing actually worked well enough to warrant continued development.
It then went through five or six other designs which I made and used. Here is an image of the design just previous to the current version.
While all of the previous designs worked pretty well, they all had some issues and areas that needed improvement. So I decided to do a complete redesign to fix any issues and incorporate the needed improvements that were identified over the years.
Some of the features needed in the new rest were:
Allow edge of belt contact up to the knife handle.
0° - 50° sharpening angle using adjustment screw for accuracy.
Graduated angle adjustment gauge.
Horizontal adjustment for perfect belt alignment. (No two Kally’s are the same.)
Quick and accurate screw in/out adjustment of rest distance from belt.
Use materials that will not scratch the blade.
Replace the weak and flexible original tool rest.
Include a platen with a window for stiffer area of the belt.
Rest can be placed in the window of the platen, over the platen or above the platen.
Use heavy gauge steel to eliminate flexing during sharpening.
Simple and quick plug & play installation. Loosen two nuts, remove the old and replace with this.
The new design includes all of the needed improvements and fixes the problems indentified in previous versions. It works very well.
The design started about six months ago with a crude drawing.
It was painfully clear that my child level artistic abilities weren’t up to the task, so I did the design work in CAD. Here are a couple of CAD images of the completed rest and platen system.
From those designs, our own amazing Mr. Mike got the parts made. Here is the unit installed on my Kally. In these images the rest is positioned for sharpening above the platen. The second image shows the holes drilled in the side of the platen to facilitate different rest positions.
I would like to thank Mr. Mike for his invaluable assistance in being a sounding board for design concepts, providing feedback and suggestions, helping me to understand designing for manufacturability, and for the actual production. Without his participation this would have not have happened. Thank you Mike!
First, a bit of history: The first knife rest I made for the Kalamazoo 1SM was many years ago with proof of concept being nothing more than an angle cut on a piece of wood that sat against the belt. Albeit crude, the thing actually worked well enough to warrant continued development.
It then went through five or six other designs which I made and used. Here is an image of the design just previous to the current version.
While all of the previous designs worked pretty well, they all had some issues and areas that needed improvement. So I decided to do a complete redesign to fix any issues and incorporate the needed improvements that were identified over the years.
Some of the features needed in the new rest were:
Allow edge of belt contact up to the knife handle.
0° - 50° sharpening angle using adjustment screw for accuracy.
Graduated angle adjustment gauge.
Horizontal adjustment for perfect belt alignment. (No two Kally’s are the same.)
Quick and accurate screw in/out adjustment of rest distance from belt.
Use materials that will not scratch the blade.
Replace the weak and flexible original tool rest.
Include a platen with a window for stiffer area of the belt.
Rest can be placed in the window of the platen, over the platen or above the platen.
Use heavy gauge steel to eliminate flexing during sharpening.
Simple and quick plug & play installation. Loosen two nuts, remove the old and replace with this.
The new design includes all of the needed improvements and fixes the problems indentified in previous versions. It works very well.
The design started about six months ago with a crude drawing.
It was painfully clear that my child level artistic abilities weren’t up to the task, so I did the design work in CAD. Here are a couple of CAD images of the completed rest and platen system.
From those designs, our own amazing Mr. Mike got the parts made. Here is the unit installed on my Kally. In these images the rest is positioned for sharpening above the platen. The second image shows the holes drilled in the side of the platen to facilitate different rest positions.
I would like to thank Mr. Mike for his invaluable assistance in being a sounding board for design concepts, providing feedback and suggestions, helping me to understand designing for manufacturability, and for the actual production. Without his participation this would have not have happened. Thank you Mike!
