Natural stones for the Tormek? Tips and experiences.

[LarK]

Hello friends!
I recently aquired an old tormek ES-250 natural grinding stone for my T8 and absolutely love the finish and feel of using it. Now I would like to learn more about this and maybe find other natural stones that might work with the T8.
This is more of a nische/fun thing to me that I like to use for special knives or old collectors that deserve a more historical touch with natural stones.

Found this channel on YouTube, and he regularly uses a 6000 grit Rozsutec natural stone, any experiences with this stone here on the forum? Any inputs would be greatly appreciated and also other tips of course.

//Kristian
Sweden

[Ken S]

Welcome to the forum, Kristian.

Natural sharpening stones have a mystique. My knowledge of the Tormek ES-250 is limited to what I have gleaned from a very old edition of the handbook. I gather that the original grinding wheels for Tormek were natural stones mined from the Swedish island of Gotland. For a while, Tormek offered both the natural grinding wheels and the aluminum oxide SuperGrind wheels.

At this point, I am guessing. I suspect that the faster cutting speed of the SuperGrind wheels was popular with users. I also suspect that users who had worked with both liked the faster speed, but missed the finer finish. I believe this was the genesis of the stone grader as a way of providing both with one grinding wheel.

Treasure your ES-250 and use it carefully with your best sharpening projects.

Ken

[LarK]

I absolutely agree with you on this and I use it sparingly. The ES-250 stones pop up every now and then here in Sweden so I will try to get another one asap.
That old feeling and mystique is what has led me to look into other natural stones and the Roszutek peaked my interest. Hope we can find out more about stones like this and hopefully I will be able to test one out in the future.
As always, thank you for your grear input Ken.

//Kristian
Sweden

[Ken S]

Kristian,

In Europe, the Belgian waterstones have a mystique as natural sharpening stones. They are highly praised.

In the US, Arkansas oil stones have that kind of mystique. Unfortunately, they have lost muchof their popularity to the Japanese waterstones. While we all know that waterstones require frequent flattening and dressing, we seem to have forgotten that arkansas stones need this dressing as well to remain efficiently cutting. Av diamond flattening plate is a great restorative for an arkansas stone.

Ken

[LarK]

Great information and tip, thank you