Hi guys...
Well I think I might have gotten the deal of a lifetime...
A friend of mine is set up to weld stainless steel and made me an 1/8", round frame, horizontal cut curd knife.
I was talking to him a couple of weeks ago about wanting to buy a set and he said he would be more than happy to make them for me, other than stringing the wire.
He does run a commercial manufacturing business (that employees about 20 people) so he has to keep his expenses down. Since stringing the knife would be so time consuming he didn't want to do this part of the process.
What he did instead was to "notch" the edges of the round bar so that I could then wrap and twist the wires to the frame which not only worked out pretty well, (the notches aren't exactly perfectly symetrical), but will also make for an easy replacement if and when one of the wires break.
Now here's the good part...
He made me the horizontal cut frame which I just finished wrapping with wire.
He is also planning on working in a vertical cut knife, the next time he sets his wire feed up for stainless.
I did use Wayne's idea of stainless steel trolling line that I purchased from Cabela's. This worked out really well, even though it poked me in the end of the finger several times which really hurt like a b***h.
But wait.....
That's not the good part. I'm not a sadist afterall.
The good part is that ALL of this work is being done for the low low price of one, two pound wheel of Gouda!
I nearly fell out of my chair when he told me this.
I asked him if he would be willing to do some stainless welding for me and his response was "are you willing to give me a sample of the cheese you make?". Well of course my response was, "you bet".
He initially asked for a 100 lb. wheel of Gouda but said he would settle for whatever I had ready to go. Since a 2 lb. wheel of Gouda was all that I had ready he said that would work.
It will probably be a couple of weeks before I get the vertical knife, but here's a shot of the horizontal.
It just came out of it's first run through the dishwasher.
As I said, the notches (which space the wires) aren't exactly perfect but it's MUCH better than what I've been using for the horizontal cuts.
I can't wait to give it a try this weekend.
By the way...
The spacing of the wires is 1/2". If I need a smaller cut I can simply get a little more agressive with the knife.
Dave