TT-50 Results

[G R Miller]

Hello fellow sharpies

I'm a brand new Tormek user.  Got a new T7 yesterday afternoon, and have spent 3 hours practicing on 2nd tier planes, chisels, and knives.  I have a question that I don't find answered in the literature.  (While waiting for delivery, I printed up the .pdf manual, and read it - concentrating on the jigs I would be receiving.)

I've trued the wheel a few times.  The last time, I noticed grooves in the surface.   They're fairly obvious, so I don't think they were there on the first couple of runs.  I can see them with water on the wheel, and they really stand out when the wheel is stationary.  Perhaps this is normal, since I can't find anything I'm doing that isn't in accordance with the manual, and it doesn't seem to affect the performane of the wheel.  Also, they go away pretty quickly after some grinding and grading.  I might not even wonder except that it's a change from the initial result.  Any ideas?

Rich

[Jeff Farris]

They're normal.  More than likely, you just moved the cutter across a little faster the last time you trued it. 

You shouldn't have needed to true the wheel "a few times" in just a few hours of use, unless you're just doing it for practice.

[G R Miller]

The grooves aren't from my speed across the stone.  I watched a clock each time, and was able to do a nice even pass in  90 seconds ±5 sec.  I think I'm probably being over-critical.  I got around to watching the DVD today, and noticed grooves in the demonstration wheel.  The grooves in my stone were no worse.  I get the impression, from reading some of your posts, that I'm too fussy.

As far as truing too often,  it's a little bit 'try it out' (the first pass) and some fixing of my foul-ups.  While trying to sharpen a chefs knife,  I lifted the handle while grinding the tip, and the knife dug in and left 4-5 gouges in the stone.  I had read the instructions for the knife jig to mean "lift the handle UP" - after digging in the blade it's obvious that they mean to MOVE the handle toward the universal rest.   That took some truing to clean uip.   Then, I ground and sharpened 8 bevel edge chisels, and I did that wrong, by not moving all the way across and off the stone.  This left a depression in the middle of the stone.  Part of the learning process.   These things were much clearer after watching the DVD.

I've been sharpening tools for many years using many different methods, and I think that I expected the Tormek jigs to be precision tools - a milling machine sort of, taking all of the skill and art out of the process.  I've re-evaluated that.  The system is accurate enough for the job at hand, and already, I have chisels and plane irons that are noticibly sharper than anything I turned out in a lifetime of using bench stones.  I can't wait to see what I can do next year!