Thanks all.
To be honest, I learned what not to do previously by destroying a perfectly good Victor 340. I tried to do too much to it and it got away from me pretty quick. That one is not savable, trust me. (see below) The Victor is a good intake but it's too short for my particular application anyway which is why I had to go with the S.V. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until the damage was already done. Chalk it up to a learning experience I guess.
I'm almost embarrassed to post this... pour some beer on the curb before you take a swig for this one...
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This time I went easy with the grinder and kept the speed lower which was a major epiphany. Slowing things down prevented gouging out low spots which in turn eliminates having to even things out to the lowest point. I've learned that's exactly where things get out of control and you start going beyond whats useful. The job actually went much quicker this time as well since I wasn't covering up mistakes. Sounds corny but sometimes you have to fail to succeed.
Going slow also helped when creeping up on the scribe lines. At the very edge I used small hand files to keep the shapes on the lines. There was a lot of material to remove behind the surface opening so it can get a little dicey around the edges if you're not paying attention.
To start, the overall shape was roughed in with a conical burr then I'd switch to a straight one to remove material behind it. Whether that's the correct method or not I don't know but it worked for me. I am using aluminum-specific burrs I got from Summit.
Roughing in the shapes. I leaned the tip back to get closer to the line but stopped short of it. Pay attention here because if you go too far it's toast. That raised lip enables you to see how much material needs to be removed behind the edge. Have to blend it a couple inches in to retain a smooth taper to the larger opening.
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I used a small hand file to get the bottom edge sharp. That's almost .125" to grind away. Don't get carried away though.
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This is the burr I used for general material removal.
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I also have this cartridge roll kit for smoothing the surfaces. They give you a mandrel in the kit which is cool. I have a longer one too but it's a bit awkward.
To be clear, I spent way more time this go round making sure the port shapes were as accurate as possible - garbage in, garbage out as they say and that was certainly the case on my last intake porting attempt. Transferring the shapes from the head to the intake was probably the most tedious/difficult part of this job. I didn't want to do the dowel pin thing (drill a hole through the intake into the head and insert a dowel to lock the locations exactly before marking anything) so there is still likely going to be some slight mismatch but it's way better than it would have been had it been left alone.
Essentially, I made a pencil rubbing of the head port shapes and locations with poster board. Rubbing the paper with your finger causes the shapes to get embossed nicely into the paper and I was able to cut them out with a really sharp Xacto knife. Once the shapes were cut, the paper was transferred to the intake and the cutouts were traced onto the intake flange using measurements from the heads and scribed lines for reference. Again, I'm not sure if this is the right way to do this job but it worked OK for me. You can't see anything with the intake bolted on so this is as close a physical representation as you can get.
Arts and crafts.
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Embossing.
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Template.
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Tools of the trade. It takes a steady hand...
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Perhaps this inspires others to try this out for themselves. If you go slow it's not a big deal and does not take that long. Working the plenum is a differnt story but port matching is probably the best place to start anyway. The tooling investment is not that much, just need a die grinder and the desire to do it.
I used my old air grinder here but I do have an old Du-More jewelery grinder which is a nice tool. (got the idea from John/PBR) Mine's just INOP right now becaue for the life of me I can't find the correct carbon brush for it.
More comments/suggestions welcome.