I too, will agree with Ed and Doug, I started with a cheap Grizzly 1x48" and found it to be very
frustrating to make a decent knife with it. So after countless hours searching the internet and this forum, I came to the conclusion to build my own, thanks to
http://usaknifemaker.com.
I purchased the plans for $25 bucks and slowly acquired, through buying ,stealing(just kidding) and horse trading. I finally got a really good knife grinding machine. Good luck.