In which order to build skills?

[Ken S]

Greg,

I am pleased to hear that you are enjoying your new Tormek. You are off to a good start!

One of the things I like about the Tormek is that it is versatile enough for good results very soon yet capable enough to handle very advanced starpening.

Enjoy the journey with us!

Ken

[wanderingwhittler]

Thanks Ken. I'm enjoying the beginning of the journey indeed.

I completed my first sharpening of a hatchet on the Tormek using the SVA-170 Axe Jig. I'd previously reprofiled my carving hatchet to have asymmetric bevels using a combination of files and stones, freehand and with the KME axe jig. I'd also repaired the edge after damaging it on a nasty knot that I tried to power through without noticing the damage it was doing. This is all to say that the bevels were far from perfect going in. I was quite excited to see what I could do and cautiously optimistic that I wouldn't make it worse.

After two or three hours of work spread across two sessions, I'm thrilled with the result. It's not perfect, but the edge is shaving sharp, the bevels are satisfactory, and I learned a lot along the way. Here's how it looked when I was finished:



The wide bevel is as evenly polished as the narrow bevel, but I got that reflection in the middle while trying to highlight the scratches at the top.

I'll spare you all the play-by-play of the sharpening process, but here are a few notes in case they are helpful to other beginners.

I started with the widest bevel, figuring there was more opportunity to correct mistakes there as I got the settings dialed in to match the bevel and became comfortable with the axe jig. That plan worked well, I think. It was also more uneven than the narrow bevel, so I had a lot of work to do and time to practice and get comfortable with the process.

The jig felt a bit awkward at first, and I was worried that I might not be consistently repositioning the hatchet when I returned it to the jig after inspecting my progress. After a while, though, it felt very natural and I stopped worrying about it. I did have some issues at first with the hatchet gradually working its way off center in the jig as I pivoted it. I think that was from incorrect technique and unevenly applied pressure. As I got the hang of it, that became much less of an issue.

Changes in both the sound and the flow of water over the tool helped me notice when something changed in my technique. I got better at figuring out what was going wrong and could sometimes correct as I went, but sometimes had to stop, reset, and start again.

At first I used calipers to measure the distance from the USB bar to the adjusting knob and that made moving between the settings for the two bevels easy. After a few trips up and down I began trusting the dial and making the required number of turns rather than checking the measurement each time. That made it even easier.

After a few times back and forth between settings I made a mistake and started grinding the narrow bevel on the wide setting. It's not a big deal and won't impact performance, but you can see evidence of it at the shoulder of the bottom half of the bevel in the photo.

A lot of learning came when I graded the wheel to 1000. I found the spots on the bevel that had been slightly unevenly ground because the hatchet had moved in the jig during the coarse work. I purposely moved the hatchet in the jig for a bit to match that. A harder lesson was finding that if my technique was off and I accidentally slightly rotated the bevel into the edge of the wheel rather than the face it scuffed/scratched the bevel. I learned to recognize the sound of that. I mostly ground those marks out, but did leave a couple of traces of them because they won't matter for performance. You can see them near the top of the wide bevel.

All in all, I found sharpening this hatchet to be an enjoyable and educational experience. Next up: moving on to knives. I expect quite a learning curve there.

[RichColvin]

Greg,

The bevel on your hatchet is quite large.  Have you considered the use of secondary bevels (AKA, microbevels) ?

In woodturning, the skew chisel is similar in that the bevel is quite large.  Resharpening the whole bevel can take quite a long time (probably not hours, but certainly longer than I'd like to spend).  Using microbevels, I can resharpen the tool in minutes.  Zip zip, and I'm back at work using the tool.

I recommend this as it is significantly faster at getting you back to woodworking.  And when sharpening is fast, you will resharpen as necessary, not ignoring the need because it is onerous.  Sharp tools lend to more fun in work, and are safer.

I've put some information and pictures about microbevels on my Sharpening Handbook (see the link in my signature below).  Click on the Axes link.

Kind regards,
Rich

[wanderingwhittler]

Greg,

The bevel on your hatchet is quite large.  Have you considered the use of secondary bevels (AKA, microbevels) ?

In woodturning, the skew chisel is similar in that the bevel is quite large.  Resharpening the whole bevel can take quite a long time (probably not hours, but certainly longer than I'd like to spend).  Using microbevels, I can resharpen the tool in minutes.  Zip zip, and I'm back at work using the tool.

I recommend this as it is significantly faster at getting you back to woodworking.  And when sharpening is fast, you will resharpen as necessary, not ignoring the need because it is onerous.  Sharp tools lend to more fun in work, and are safer.

I've put some information and pictures about microbevels on my Sharpening Handbook (see the link in my signature below).  Click on the Axes link.

Kind regards,
Rich

Hi Rich,

Yes, definitely. I completely agree with you that enabling quick, frequent touch ups is the way to go. I fully intended this work as an initial maintenance/setup task to establish the bevels I want rather than something I'll do every time. The bevels weren't very precise before, so it was a lot of work, but I consider it an investment.

For session-to-session sharpening, I'm going to try something new and see how it goes. With the hollow ground edge, I should be able to very quickly and accurately sharpen the edge with a flat stone and establish a small flat grind at the shoulder and apex of the bevel. As with the microbevel, it should be quick to touch up because there is very little metal to remove. It should also be accurate because the stone will be guided by the flats on the shoulder and apex.

Over time, of course, that flats will get wider and the sharpening will take correspondingly longer. When that becomes an impediment to quick maintenance, I can re-establish the hollow on the Tormek. That's the theory anyway. I'm keen to try it in practice. Given how infrequently I use that hatchet, it'll probably be a good long while before I can reach a verdict.

Thanks for drawing my attention to your Sharpening Handbook. I actually spent some time looking through the homemade jig section last night. It looks like there's a wealth of information there and I intend to spend more time browsing it. I'll make a point to visit the axe section soon.

Regards,
Greg

[wanderingwhittler]

Over the past ten days I've been working my way through this progression with at least one Tormek session a day. With that experience in mind, I wanted to add a few closing thoughts to this thread.

First, I'm glad I did it this way. The chisel exercise allowed me to become comfortable with basic Tormek operation with as few degrees of freedom in the jig as possible. It didn't take long to go through a few sharpenings and, crucially, it gave me a baseline for the sharpness results I should be able to expect from other tools. I'm not saying that I've mastered chisels or that I won't be able to get even sharper edges on chisels in the future, but that I knew there was no excuse for not at least attaining shaving sharp edges going forward. The machine is more than capable of it; I just need to build the technique.

The hatchet worked well as a second step. The old bevels were uneven and there was a lot of material to remove, so it afforded plenty of opportunity to learn the axe jig technique before the grinding got near the edge. It was also an opportunity to start really learning the sensory feedback cues of the Tormek. I began to be able to tell when things weren't going well based on the sound and the flow of the water over the tool. I began to be able to feel when the coarse grade needed to be refreshed. I was very pleased with the eventual result and that gave added confidence as I began to learn to sharpen knives with the SVM-45.

After relatively easily won initial successes with the chisel and axe, moving on to knives was a humbling experience. As everyone says, there's a pronounced learning curve for knives and it took a lot of practice and a couple of botched attempts before I was even approaching being satisfied with the results. But, that was OK and expected. I'm happy I had those early successes with other tools as a base and a motivation to keep practicing. It also helped to have a big base of knowledge here to lean on and to be able to get help with a question I had about proper SVM-45 technique. Thanks CB and Rick!

I've now begun sharpening knives that I care about and it's going OK. Not the best ones in the kitchen yet, but ones that I do use and want to have a nice, well-performing edge. The bevels aren't perfect, but they're somewhere between acceptable and satisfactory and the edges are the best that these knives have yet known. Time will tell how well they hold up. I'm happy about getting to this point and excited to continue to practice and learn and get to producing results that are beyond satisfactory.

Soon I'll attempt something with the SVM-00 Small Knife Holder and then the initial exploration/progression I'd charted will be complete. I still have a lot of work ahead of me with all of these jigs and their associated techniques before I'd consider myself having reached proficiency, let alone mastery, with any of them. Fortunately this is a fun journey of learning and I'm not in danger of running out of things to learn or becoming bored any time soon.

Thanks for reading and for all the help you have given me so far.

Happy Sharpening,
Greg

[Ken S]

Greg,

Seeing your skill grow is gratifying. You are off to a great start; your solid foundation will serve you well. Do keep us in the loop with your sharpening.

Ken

[wanderingwhittler]

Thanks Ken. Will do.