That's my thinking too, hence the question. I'm not against making tools & there are some beautiful examples of ingenious T&C grinders out there. But on the reality side, a lot of machining time & materials purchased & I don't have a spare motor kicking around... all that adds up & these grinders have some funky geometry that would be a chunk of work to replicate in what are castings (particularly the swivel). then you have the feed dial & various other lead screw-like settings/dials/locks. Basically I want to use it for what its intended & get on with my projects.
OTOH, we are talking a grinder here. What scares me a bit is the horror stories where the guy spins up his HF-type bench grinder & discovers a 0.1" run-out wobble... which he traces back to not the wheel but a warped shaft & tuna can bearings. I guess that's the 'kit' purchasing gamble. I've tried to filter search on some of the obvious keywords like Taiwan or Vertex. Even U2 U3 (what I think are Vertex series) , but I think that designation is also cloned by the clones. Heck, they are even getting sneaky & incorporating words like Vertex like or Mitutoyo like so its a bit of minefield. I'll mull this over for a bit & if I make a leap, will report findings.
U2 clone
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/U2-Universal...995765?hash=item280229f435:g:LLwAAOSwBahVOFiz
Vertex
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Vertex-Grind...309771?hash=item2a54619d0b:g:ndEAAOSwMmBVpoyq
Deckel (seriiously, listing for what my car is worth)
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/LATE-MODEL-1...685307?hash=item3abe0de6fb:g:7tMAAOSwuAVWy4Sn