Micro Bevels and Rounding Smoothing Plane Blades

[cpscholz]

I have two questions.

1) In the past I've used the Veritas sharpening jig and the scarey sharp system to put a 1 to 2 degree micro bevel on my bench chisels.  Can the Tormek do this as well?

2) When sharpening my smoothing plane blade, I like to round the edges a bit to prevent tearout.  Can the Tormek do this as well?

Thank you in advance for your reply.

CP Scholz

[Jeff Farris]

Micro bevels are easily created by raising the universal tool support at the end of the second grinding process.

The corners of plane irons can be eased by just spending a bit more time on the outside edges.  With a little practice, you can create an iron with a couple of thousandths relief on each edge.

[lym]

how much should i raise the tool support?

[Jeff Farris]

1.0378565 mm   

Really, it doesn't matter much. About one rev of the micro-adjuster should be sufficient.

[ionut]

Scholz,

If you use the Tormek 220/1000 stone to put a microbevel using the fine setup of the stone, you have to be careful when honing. Honing that small surface may lead you to either not doing anything to it or rounding the edge. Not honing it from the fine setup of the stone is not an option. I would suggest you to either work the microbevel on the classic bench stones, get a 4000 Tormek stone, or if these are not options because extra time or money just hone the entire bevel and forget about the microbevel, if you do a good job honing the edge will be very good.
If you would opt for the 4000 stone, you just put the secondary bevel on that one and the bevel surface will require minimal honing after that to completely remove the burr only and not to eliminate the scratch pattern. With the new shaft upgrade it would be a breeze to change the stone and it will be very likely to have an acceptable offset created by the diameter difference of the stones for the microbevel angle, just by changing the wheels, depending on their wear. If that would not be acceptable I suggest to find the adjusting wheel offset required by the microbevel angle by using the angle master once and finding how much to turn the adjusting wheel.
For the smoothing plane knife, if you want to put a small camber on that knife Jeff already told you how to do it. If instead you want to just round the corners with a small radius and keep the rest of the edge straight, you should do that once before sharpening and you can use anything, files, bench stones or whatever you want and then sharpen normally on the Tormek. Those round corners will be there for many more sharpening sessions and when the radius start to disappear you can put it again. A much longer lasting option would be to round by any means you prefer the parallel edges of the back face of the blade on a 1/2 - 1 " of its length and that will ensure you will always have a very small radius of the corners. For this last choice you can easily use the Tormek machine.

Ionut

[Herman Trivilino]

What's the purpose of the micro bevel?  I thought one of the advantages of the Tormek is that it eliminates the need for a micro bevel.  If you had to hand sharpen the chisel, I could see how a micro bevel would make sharpening much faster.  But when sharpening on a Tormek, all it'll do is force you to remove more steel than what's normally needed.

[ionut]

Hi Herman,

Honing with a 4000 stone is far more precise than with the leather wheel assuming that who hones on the leather wheel does a good job, if grading to 1000 is not properly done  the leather honing will round the scratches instead of properly flattening them and bringing the edge to a real straight edge. If you use a 10x magnifier glass you can still see those scratches even if they are very well polished and shiny and if you look even further with a more powerful whatever you have, you will see that the edge even though sharp as hell still have small spikes where the edge will fail. Putting a microbevel on a 4000 stone of any kind will ensure that the cutting edge is closer to a perfect one there is no way to not remove the burr and is real fast with repeatable results. It is not a matter of how sharp the tool gets, in both ways the tools get extremely sharp. It is just a matter of how long it stays that sharp. All my tools on which I put a microbevel last longer than the ones I didn't but at the beginning they cut in the same way I can't really see a difference. I am talking only about woodworking tools not knives or anything else. If done with a 220/1000 stone I agree it would remove more steel than ever needed, but with the 4000 Tormek stone it is nothing, that stone just polishes the bevel straight on a +1 or 2 degree angle and flatten the edge leaving no place for spikes or id they are there are at a much lower scale. This is one of the reasons why some people when sharpening on the bench stones they don't stop on the 4000, they go to 12000 or higher, and i have too admit there is a difference in between doing the honing on 4000 or 8000 not speaking about 12000 and all the difference which I experienced is again not in the sharpness of the edge, it is only in time that edge stays sharp assuming similar working conditions.

Ionut

[Ken S]

Is rounding over the edge with the leather honing wheel part of the nature of the beast or the result of less than careful technique?

I can certainly see the benefit of using a microbevel with stones.  The benefit seems less so with a machine like the Tormek.

[ionut]

Not in my opinion or at least related to my honing experience. I can't complain and I never been unhappy with the edge just as it comes from the honing wheel. I believe is pretty easy to avoid rounding the edge. Compared with the edge that has been made in the similar manner but which has been finished with a microbevel on a 4000 bench stone it performs in the same way or I see no difference. The quality of the cut on the end grain is the same and the ease of moving the blade in the same material is the same at least for me. I only saw a difference in how long that edge stays sharp as I said before. Of course different people are happy with different levels of sharpening, as long as they are happy that's all good, we all are happy cutters.

Ionut

[Tim H]

I see this topic has been talked about a lot.  Getting a Tormek and assumed that I would just use the honing leather to finish up.  Seems like there are opinions one way or the other.  Probably no one is wrong, just depends on what you are expecting to achieve - sharp, long term sharp, etc.

I took a week long class this year where there were 2 Tormek-like systems, but no honing wheel.  The well known instructor had us grind properly, then do a micro bevel freehand on 2 flat stones. No jig, just get the heel and front edge sitting on the stone, then pull back 2-4 times on each stone, then a quick burr removal on the back.  Easy enough to do since no jig is required, but some confidence that you can freehand properly.  Have to say that the chisels and plane irons came out very sharp and performed well.  With the hollow grind it was suggested that to sharpen a bit more you just needed to redo the micro freehand until it failed.

Tim

[Ken S]

Tim,

Good post, and welcome to the forum.  This is one of those questions which reminds me of the Mark Twain quote, "Man is the only animal with the one true religion, all seven of them."

Sharp is sharp, regardless of the path to it.  I believe, especially when one is beginning, that the best approach is to develop one approach to where it becomes a fluent point of reference.  Once one way becomes solid, you can either stick with it or use it as a basis of comparison with other methods.  i'm not sure the choice of method is as important as the fluency.

For what it's worth, I have found using the Tormek for "grinding" is easier on my hands than using stones.  It is also safer than using heat prone dry grinding.  That's the heavy lifting part.  I am sure Ionut's method of using the second 4000 grit stone is solid.  It is now expensive, with the new $288 price of the stone.  Jeff is quite fluent with the leather honing wheel.  Your instructor is, no doubt, fluent with his method, also.  I believe the key word here is fluent.

I hope you will continue to post.

Ken