¡A Great Tormek Day!

[Ken S]

Yesterday I left home early for a two and a half hour drive in sub zero weather to drive to the annual giant tool sale at Hartville Hardware in Hartville, Ohio. The small village of Hartville has the largest hardware store in the US, seven acres (inside). Among the many demonstrators at the show was Affinity Tool, the US importer of the Tormek. When I arrived, Rick and Craig Ursell were still en route from Troy, Michigan. Helping out was Steve Bottorff.

The morning was off to a fine start. Steve is a real sharpening guru. He is very bright, an easy conversationalist, and the real deal old sharpening hand with a Tormek. He is in the process of retiring, having operated his own sharpening service and taught for many years.

Rick and Craig arrived shortly after I did. They are both younger, but with Tormek knowledge beyond their years. I spent the day observing, listening asking questions, and occasionally joining in the conversation with perspective customers. Those who have followed my posts over the years will remember my frequent requests for more in depth training videos. Yesterday was like being involved in a real life training video. It will spark many forum new topics. It was also great fun.

For most of my adult life, Hartville was about a twenty minute drive from my home. Over the years, it was one of my favorite places. I rarely left the store empty handed, especially during sale days. I purchased my first Tormek there, and almost all of my accessories were added during sale days (20% off). I did no shopping yesterday; i was too busy learning. I almost bought a tube of Tormek Honing Compound, even though I have several tubes at home. Sale priced at $8.00, it would have been a statement; New from a dealer can be cheaper than eBay.

They had both a T7 and a T4 running all day. Steve had both running when I arrived. He made the observation that if people see a machine which is turned off, they will just walk by. If the machine is running, especially with the water flowing over the stone, people will be curious and look. Out of curiosity, I touched the tops of both Tormeks during the middle of the day. Neither was very warm. While the T7 seems the clear choice for heavy duty industrial use, the smaller T4 delivered no shame performance all day long. in fact, for essentially knife and chisel demonstrating, we used both interchangeably.

For the benefit of those in the future searching on this site, I will switch to new specific topics instead of continuing to ramble on.

Stay tuned!

Ken

[Elden]

Very interesting.

[stevebot]

It was a great day for me too.  I learned a lot from you, Rick and Craig. I was most impressed with the tomato slicing demo. The tomato is plopped onto the cutting board and a see-through ( about 1 mm) slice is taken off without holding on to the tomato.  It takes a sharp knife!
Our freshly sharpened turning gouge was used by the Buckeye Turning Club to turn a well aged piece of maple.  The resulting finish was shiny and smooth to the touch without any sanding. On Saturday I got a chance to sharpen a gouge with the Ellsworth grind. Piece of cake once you know the formula - 6. 75, A. By way of contrast our gouge was 2, 65, A.

[Ken S]

Steve,

I am most pleased to see you posting. I look forward to an increase in posting, especially in the knife sharpening part.

Welcome aboard.

Ken

[Elden]

Steve welcome to the forum.
I have enjoyed your book and website. They contain a lot of good information.