Why isn't there a 250mm leather wheel?

[3D Anvil]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to be that it would be so much more useful to have a 250mm leather wheel, as opposed to the Tormek 215mm wheel, at least for knife sharpening.  In order to use the 215mm wheel with any knife over c. 3.5", you have to remove the water trough and grinding wheel and replace the wheel with the spacer and nut.

But with a 250mm wheel, you could avoid that with most knives -- up to the typical 8" chef's knife -- without removing the grinding stone.  That's because, when you're honing towards the grinding wheel, you have to start lifting the handle before it would hit the wheel.

As an added benefit, you could grind and hone with very little adjustment.  You could use a FVB, grinding away from the edge, and then just flip the USB to hone.  At most you'd need a couple turns of the micro adjust to account for stone wear.

[cbwx34]

Or, why not make this model again?

[tgbto]

I purchased a 250mm leather honing wheel from schleifjunkies.

This way I only have to remove the leather wheel (no spacer needed) when I sharpen very long chef knives whose blade heel would hit the honing wheel while sharpening.

Cheers,

Nick.

[Ken S]

Adam,

I read through your thirty one posts. You are asking some good questions. Several parameters come to mind:

We need to strike a balance between sharpness and the time (labor cost) and capital needed to reach that level of sharpness. Let's consider the standard Tormek equipment and technique as a good starting point. By this, I mean SG graded both coarse and/or fine as needed and the leather honing wheel with PA-70. As shown in the Tormek online classes and Wootz' Tormek only with FVB, this method is quite capable of producing very sharp knife edges in reasonable time without having to purchase a lot more equipment. Granted this best applies to typical kitchen knives which are not damaged or extremely dull. A professional sharpener should add a surcharge in extreme cases.

Part of this balance is reasonable customer expectations. I believe a customer should expect a workmanlike job for a fair price. This is the typical farmers market customer. Wootz established some very high end customers as part of his business. That's nice work; however, most people do not require or want to pay for olympic level sharpening.

We need to differentiate between Tormek and third party equipment and techniques. I do not mean to imply that Tormek is necessarily better, only that it is sometimes different. I have been a BESS user for many years. I think BESS has much to offer; however it is neither a Tormek product or part of the orthodox Tormek technique.

The same applies to Wootz' equipment and technique. I have always thought quite highly of Wootz and his research methods. Over the years, I have purchased several of his products and have been very satisfied with them. However, we must remember that even the FVB is a Knife Grinders product, not a Tormek product. The Tormek honing technique, as is amply demonstrated in several online classes, is handheld honing. Even when Wolfgang demonstrates removing the grinding wheel, he states that he never does this. He holds the knife at an angle. There is nothing wrong with jig held honing; it is just not the only method.

We also need to remember that the T8 and T4, unlike the T1 and T2, are not knife sharpening only machines. They are sharpening systems which work well with knives.

I encourage all new Tormek users to master the basic SG, leather honing wheel, and technique before adding more gear.

Ken

[Ken S]

After posting my last reply, I realized that it really belongs in the How sharp topic. Sorry.
Regarding this topic, I like both CB's reference to the very difficult to locate T4000 and Nick's reference to the 250mm SchleifJunkies leather wheel. Just keep in mind that your SG will gradually diminish in diameter.

Ken

[3D Anvil]

Thanks for the replies, Ken, whichever thread they fall under. 

As far as Tormek vs third-party stuff, I get what you're saying, but it's not really part of my calculus.  I'm just trying to achieve the best result I can in a relatively short amount of time ... without resorting to a belt grinder.  I may end up adding a half-speed grinder to the arsenal, but I'm trying to avoid it as I'm somewhat limited as to space.

[jvh]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to be that it would be so much more useful to have a 250mm leather wheel, as opposed to the Tormek 215mm wheel, at least for knife sharpening.  In order to use the 215mm wheel with any knife over c. 3.5", you have to remove the water trough and grinding wheel and replace the wheel with the spacer and nut.

But with a 250mm wheel, you could avoid that with most knives -- up to the typical 8" chef's knife -- without removing the grinding stone.  That's because, when you're honing towards the grinding wheel, you have to start lifting the handle before it would hit the wheel.

As an added benefit, you could grind and hone with very little adjustment.  You could use a FVB, grinding away from the edge, and then just flip the USB to hone.  At most you'd need a couple turns of the micro adjust to account for stone wear.

Hello,

although using a 250 mm honing wheel seems like a good idea, I would like to remind you of a phenomenon that occurs when using wheels with different diameters. This also applies to traditional stones, which decrease in diameter over time due to "unsharpened" material at the edge heel, which then interferes with honing.

This phenomenon was first described here by Gilles: https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=4326.0
Video with detailed description is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_qRUvSvcLQ


jvh