New heavy duty Harbor Freight english wheel

Stop listing to us Go to your local Harbor freight when they put a floor model out with a piece of tin and try out the freakin floor model I did this on there shitty metal shear they were selling and thank god I did the thing was junk. Also if you weight for about 3 months it will be from $500 to $200 just like the yellow one went from $400 to $199 or what ever it is

 

Kenb .....Thanks for the info about the runout on the wheel this means alot more about the product than most people know.....

 

Thought I might add that I picked up the unit from Grizzly and am happy with the purchase and the price is not bad at $1200.

I haven't made anything massive and clever, but I did make a few compound curve patch panels and such. Worked good.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Professional-English-Wheel/G0496

 

I would think that this approach would get old fast; you start wheeling a panel. Then you take the wheel off to put on some other device and then have to put the wheel back on. While you are wheeling a panel, it is possible to go back and forth between several machines.

 

if you don't care to hear our opinions, then why the fuck did you ask?

i've used their anvils, see below.

i'm a machinist by trade, and even i figured for the price, the HF anvils would be an OK starting point, being i could true them up myself. i was wrong. i would have been plenty happy with 5 or 10 thou runout, but they were much worse than that, more like 30-40 thou. complete crap. from the get go i planned on making contact flats on the anvils as they should be, some of the anvils were so bad that i would have a 1/2" wide flat on one side, and no contact yet on the opposite side. junk. i gave up on them. it wouldn't have been as bad if the bearing bores were at least somewhat concentric, which they are not.

yeah, the bearings are shit too.

on the plus side (haha) at least the anvils were made of good hard steel. which is meaningless considering they suck in every other way.

 

if anyone is interested my upper wheel has .006 runout and the anvil has none, well maybe.00025

 

AMEN!!! It's all crap

 

Question; Does this new $559 E wheel come with the same anvil die set that comes with the $200 small (yellow) E wheel?

If that's the case, they're asking $359+ for the larger frame, which I could make for less than that. I could buy the small setup, make my own large frame, but then I'd still be working with wheels with runout problems.

Can the wheels be brought to specs with a spin on the lathe? It's all sounding like a LOT of wotk to make the Chinese crap work!

I'm kind of feeling that starting from scratch with a good set of dies, then making my own "Lazze" frame is the way to go.

 

the simplest frame i have seen was at the aircraft museum in Victoria, its was a 3ft piece of 2ft I beam, i think its was 1/2 thick wall, all they did was cut part of the center out and mount the wheels.

 

what he said, quit supporting that cheap bullshit

 

Yes, because all expensive tools are well made.

While I have no doubt that the HF wheel in question is a POS, just because a tool is more expensive doesn't mean it will be any better.

Case in point:

I have a buddy that has a set of those super cheapo safety wire pliers, cost like $19.95 or some such. They weren't bad, not great finish, but the jaws were hard and the twisting mechanism functioned and was pretty damned smooth.

Now, I have occasion to need a set, but I don't want to buy that "cheap bullshit" (to borrow your quaint turn of phrase ), so I dropped $70 on a set of Proto safety wire pliers. Made in the USA, ought to be the cat's furry behind, right? Not so much.

For my $70, I got a roughly finished set of pliers, with a twisting mechanism that doesn't have a spring return, and the damned handles don't even have a non-slip coating on them.

In other words, I got taken.

They are certainly functional, and I do not doubt for a second that the jaws are quite hard and will wear for years. What I'm saying is that the quality of the tool was not 300% higher than that of the El-Cheapo-Special, but the price sure as hell was.

In this instance, I most certainly did not "get what I paid for", and I am finding this to be true more and more often.

That is not to say that all things cheap are good, nor that all things expensive are rip-offs, but rather that there are no givens in the tool market anymore.

Name brands you used to be able to count on have gone to shit, no-names that used to be a rip-off are now great values, stuff made the US is sometimes shit for quality, and sometimes stuff from China carries a quality of finish that is not normally associated with that country of origin.

Take that as you will, but blindly buying high dollar stuff because expensive = good in your mind is as retarded (or more so) than paying $700 for anything that comes from Harbor Freight.

 

Hungry? Out of work? Eat that foreign made crap. That's what wrong with this country. Have pride in America, support it.

 

How the hell can we support it when the bastards keep closing the plants in america and building plants in other countrys ?? Save a buck and lay off the workers here so the ceo and his cronies can make more big bonus!

 

It does get old fast!
I built a very sturdy unit that I could swap e-wheel parts for planishing hammer parts.
I'm only doing this for my projects, not for a living, so time isn't a cost factor.
However, the first time I used the hammer and switched to the wheel I thought.. oh well, I'm in no rush.
THEN I found that I wanted to hammer it a bit more, and after that I had to switch back to the wheel.
That ended that. I have a more permanent setup for each now.

 

Right on, Ray. My thoughts exactly, quit supporting China. It'll take a little more thought, but you'll be happier in the end when it works correctly, costs the same or less, and you have the pride under your belt of fabricating your own english wheel.

 

some snap-on tools are made in china..

 

I find the terms "heavy duty" and "Harbor Freight" totally incompatible.

 

Since everyone is talking but nobody knows squat here goes:
HF Heavy Duty EWheel
Frame wall thickness - 5mm steel plate
Upper Wheel runout - less than 0.002 inch
Lower Anvils runout - 0.001 inch
Frame vertical stiffness - 20,000 lb per inch (This is stiff)
Anvil and upper wheel surface finish - mirror
Anvils are not hardened
Anvils are full radius
Wheel and anvil mounts - crude (typical HF)
These are measured numbers from my wheel

It needs some mods and finishing but I couldn't build it this cheap.

John C.

 

That attitude is the problem.

 

What a bunch of judgemental women behind these keyboards looking down their noses at others.

 

It's kind of hard to believe that guys who follow traditional ideals to the point of "cuteness" would even consider using stuff made by virtual slaves. Hot rods were never built with stuff from China or other unworthy trading partners. Ever. By the way, there is a link to Harbor Freight on the Garage site. How nice we have such "pals'.

 

This is the one sold by KMS tools for around $500. Anyone use it and what were the results?? Apparently they have been selling like crazy.

 

This is the one sold by KMS tools for around $500. Anyone use it and what were the results?? Apparently they have been selling like crazy.

same one at Harbor Freight is $199.00 some one is crazy to be paying $500.

 

Thank you! My Dad gave me a cheapie angle grinder (HF) going on 15 years ago. Still works. I've bought Bosch, and Makita tools that have lasted less than 1/15th that time (under a year!).

I'd love to support (I'd venture most of us would), the "quality" companies, and continue to do so, but when our government has sold our industrial world out from under us and we now live in a "global economy" situation, how do you know where your money is going anyway?

Pride in America? You're damn straight I do, in the ingenuity department and can-do spirit of the INDIVIDUALS of this country. In our government and big business'? uhhhhh, NO.
Sorry Rush, big business as a model is OK, in reality(?).....maybe not so much.

I'm much more interested in plans on how to make your own english wheel, and sourcing the hard parts like dies and bearings. I just get tired of the Chinese bashing.

 

C'mon Jeem, we don't have to roll over and buy into the "global" baloney unless we want to . Who is Andy Williams?

 

Check my albums on Allshops.org

I detailed the construction of my English wheel,
including quick release and bearing numbers.

Made my own anvil wheels, not too hard if you can use a lathe.

I also documented a simple, easy to make, compact lower adjuster for an English Wheel,
made from a PTO coupling. IIRC, that is in the Wheeling Machines forum.

 

Lots of plans and info out there, no need to feed the Commies.