I have a Pheer in either 1 or 3/4 hp (I honestly forget lol) and it works great. He uses the blue anodized discs from Tru Grit and it holds up nicely, at least he did when I got mine about 4-5 years ago, which is around when he just started offering them. I bought it also having it in mind that I would just get a work rest for it later on. I was fortunate enough to find a maker selling his mint KMG work rest set up for $200, which is less that half they charge. Its table and arms are solid steel so it's pretty heavy, so you definitely need to have the disc motor bolted of clamped down when using it. I personally find a number of uses for the work rest, mostly for squaring up scales and blocks and stainless steel for preparing to cleanly fit and layout guards. I like my work rest since I got it for a relatively good price.
The nice thing about the KMG rest is that it quickly slides off and out of the way and no brackets are in the way to use it to flatten bevels/blade flats, which is a big thing for me.
If I wasn't able to get the work rest at such a good price I would probably go this route now days and have someplace cut out these CAD parts (and maybe use a friends welder, or just use my cheap harbor freight one) to build this one designed by Kevin Powers, as it would be quite a bit less expensive than the KMG rest and it looks like a better, more versatile design IMO as well:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/disc-grinder-sander-wip.1309537/
Here is a link to the CAD plans as well:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1q0edBhnQ3FUDNrRHBCZW5qbms/view
Something else to keep in mind with disc rest design is the rest hanging past the disc face on the sides, as Cris Craswford discusses in this recent video:
The one above designed by Kevin also has this feature which is nice and I could see it coming in handy. If I really personally wanted/needed this feature on my KMG rest I would just simply clamp a thin sheet of either g10 or micarta (etc.) the the top of the rest with a cut out in the middle in order slide the sides past the disc's face.
Also, fwiw, something I noticed at first was cutting the paper
cleanly after sticking the 9x11" sheet to the face takes a little getting use to make sure you don't cut into the edge of the aluminum, at least it did for me, so that would be one nice thing about the Nielsen detachable discs with being able to actually lay them on the back of the paper and just use the disc and a template to cut around, but I certainly don't need it.
I also "break" the outer edge of the paper on the disc with a cheap ceramic sharpening stone by pressing is against the edge of the disc at about a 45 degree angle to the face while it's spinning. I learned this from one of Nick Wheeler's videos, it helps keep the paper at the edge of the disc from digging into the bevels or flats and such.
Anyway, in short I'm happy and content with my Pheer disc grinder as it does everything I need it to and has more than enough power, though at times it might be nice to have a slight bevel on the backside of the edge of the disc for getting into tight spots as shown in the video above, but I can always get a different disc later on if I really think I need it. For now I'm good with my set up.
~Paul
My Youtube Channel
... (Just some older videos of some older knives I've made in the past)
