Anyone ever...

[bigben]

modify the old style Universal Support by threading one of the legs and adding a nut to work like the new style?  It looks like a 1/2" X 13 or 1/2" X 20 die would work.  Any reason why I shouldn't try this?

Thanks.

[Jeff Farris]

No reason not to try it, Ben.

You'll lose the plating, so you'll need to be very careful about wiping the threaded arm down when you're through sharpening to prevent rust. 

I would chose the coarser thread.  A fine thread would be a pain when making a gross adjustment.

[bigben]

Thanks, Jeff!  I'll give it a try and report back.

[oldwood]

Ben
I thought about doing this too, and then bought one of the threaded arms.  My concern was keeping the die true and managing to turn it with the other arm in the way.

Apart from the obvious gain of the threaded adjustment, I got two bonus's. One was that the Support was ridiculously stiff to move in the vertical bushes -Jeff suggested that if lubrication and cleaning weren't the solution, putting the two Supports into the bushes and checking for parallel might show something.  It did - a small amount of distortion of the casing was throwing them out and just a bit of persuasion got them back in alignment, and hence easy Support movement.  OK could have been done with any two suitable bars.

The other thing is that I now can permanently have a Support for back grinding and one on the front sleeves for grinding from the front.  OK again not that critical, but I reckoned the price has been justified.

Rob