Love the idea, Charlie - an excellent budget conscious way to get into grinding - I figure once you outgrow this setup, you've confirmed that you like doing this and may be worth a bit more investment - but this is really cool.

Have you thought of putting an arm and a contact wheel where the platen is and making it a 72" belt? You could slice the 2" belts in half and get some really cool stuff going!

I'm still thinking about the high speed though - any way to put a dimmer switch on the motor, or use a bigger drive wheel?

Mark