Messages

...snip...
Not to hijack the thread but the rust erasers work great to clean the bottom of pots and pans where grease has cooked on.

Very true, and they even remove rust from tools left out all winter, and such...

Yup, and where I come from, we use these to remove rust from ski edges, as well as dull the tip and heel of the edges to ease turn entry and exit.

I saw a YT video wherein a guy puts a scotchbright pad lodged in the back of his water trough

The scotchbrite pad is used a lot as well for cleaning high end japanese wetstones or glass stones when mounted on blanks for edgpro-like tools.

Thank for your answers! I will modify the DBS-22 jig veeeeeeeeeery carefully and try on the SB. I will keep you posted!

Thank you for the input, I will try to do that. Do you still feel like you have a lot of control when you sharpen that way ? Or is it tormek-tatoo-prone ?

I will probably do it on a few inexpensive knives and on the SG only (not SJ) before I get back to this one !

Hello all,

I'm still getting to grips with my new T8. Today's target is a corsican knife made in the hills around Ajaccio by a renowned knifemaker (Biancucci). I have no idea what the steel is, I just know it is NOT stainless and the forging process involves tempering in ice. I'm not sure what happened to this knife, but close to the heel the bevel was shorter and the blade ground in an akward fashion.

As you can see (C1.jpg), it is a thick and bulky blade, with a high curvature in the tip area. It also has a very thick heel. I used the setup template from Jan to have a reproducible setup, and it curves upward much more quickly than the template. I also used a reference line on the stone with a laser pointer.

To make sure I didn't miss anything, I tried to first lift (airplane roll) the handle only. As expected, the edge would quickly run higher up the stone, with a very high angle (C2.jpg). I then tried to pivot (airplane yaw) the handle rather than just lift it. However, the blade being very short, and because of the flat handle on the SVM-45 jig, the distance between the blade would also increase quickly (albeit not as quickly as when only lifting). (C3.jpg)

Back to the paper template, but this time with the triangular-shaped pivot jig (C4.jpg). With a lot of pivoting and a bit of lifting, this improved dramatically. It would still get further up the wheel, but much less than before (C5.jpg). I had to reverse course at some point over the US, because the pivoting action would bring the tip closer to the edge of the wheel. And boy it ended up sharp after honing on felt/1µ diamond spray.

As you can see (C6.jpg), I did not completely correct the area where the bevel is much thinner (I'd have to remove a lot of steel, and probably reshape the heel). You will probably also notice that in the first part of the curvature, the bevel is wider. At the beginning of the pivoting action, the edge would drop for a short while below the laser line, so no surprise here.

And that had me thinking that maybe a pivot jig with a variable flat area  (if this is not clear i'll sketch something) might help. Or maybe the SVM-45 with just the handle upside-down, who knows. Or the one sold by wootz. Or maybe somehow bringing the svm-45 backwards to keep the edge on the line, no longer resting over the US, but that would be detrimental to consistency.

Well, your feedback is welcome. The tormek is not even a month old and I got kids, so we're talking a few hours of experience on it. Still, I think the compromise between speed and quality is very promising.

I know I'm unearthing an old subject, but I have a few Festool brad point bits that have gotten quite dull.

So I think this modification might help a lot, as the Tormek is the only grinder I can use for this. I was wondering what you would suggest as far as the wheel for doing this is concerned:
- Use the SB-250, and maybe mess up the shoulder of the wheel, that I can always true back in shape later ?
- Use the DF-250, and use as always very light pressure, at the risk of of creating a small zone with higher wear than on the rest of the wheel ?

To be clear, the intent is not sharpening hundreds of brad point bits, just getting my dear ones back in shape.

A lot of water will drain, but in my experience it remains wet for a looooooooong time.

Two questions:
How long does a wheel at rest take to dry, verses one spinning on the Tormek, with no water (air circulation)?
Do the stone wheels dry slower then the diamond wheels, same time, faster? 

The T2000/7/8 are designed that they can run pretty much all the time, I would be tempted to leave my stone wheels running on them.

Well, aside from the dubious interest from an energy standpoint, you may have to factor in the fact that rotating the wheels will also prevent some water from dripping off the wheel (the swiss cheese fondue effect ?). But that's an unexpected question.

As for the comparison between stone and diamond, the answer is clear: the diamond wheels sry MUCH faster as they don't soak up at all. The SG stone probably stores around 1 liter of water.

I am too new to sharpening on Tormek to have definitive ideas on felt vs leather, so learning from your feedbacks is really helpful.

I am currently practicing on shun knives, and I feel the Nakiri - having a straight blade - makes things reproducible enough. I tried honing on both the leather wheel with the Tormek compound and a felt wheel with 1µ diamond spray. 5 passes with little to no pressure on each, with the KG FVB set according to wootz's app, each time after having set a 16° angle on the SG coarse then fine. Twice each.

I could feel a real difference when trying to shave paper, the diamond/felt combination making paper shaving feel way easier.

Purchasing and reading the book by wootz was enlightening, as well as binge watching youtube videos on deburring, but left me with the following question : is there a way to tell you've removed the wire burr without having to perform bess tests ? I think I saw on several occasions something along the line of "oops, I might have left a wire edge that mushroomed then collapsed during the bess test, so I'd better hone some more". Or do you have to overhone when you don't have a bess test setup to make sure you've removed everything ?

I just received the rack that jvh mentioned. It is perfect for its purpose : the stones are stable in it, they're well separated so there's no way they can hit one another in standard conditions. Probably the best value for money I could find. I would most likely pad it  with a bit of foam in between the top of the stones if I had to move them around in a milk carton, in which it fits perfectly.

Thank you guys!

... schleifjunkies ...

Noooooooooooooo ! What have you done ? Yet another substantial amount of my money that unexpectly got spent on a leisure some would at the very least dub "suspicious". Because they also have strops, and laser holders, and wheels, and sprays, and...

Sigh. I can't wait to receive all of this.

Thank you for your welcome ! And as you might have noticed, I have no issue with long posts And yes, moisture definitely seems to be an issue. I'll fiddle around with the rack jvh pointed to and see...

I was wondering, as there seems to be an agreement that the area close to the edge will always somehow be convex (due to the play in the jigs, the misalignments, the out-of-squareness and out-of-roundness of the wheels,  the imperfections in handling, the softness of the honing wheel, etc.), if anyone had ever been able to actually observe or measure said convexity ?

It would probably show on one of wootz's awesome SEM scans, but maybe a "simpler" interferometer would allow to quantify the convexity (or concavity for larger bevels) that we *actually* get from using a wheel as opposed to the one we would get if the surface of the bevel was geometrically identical to that of a wheel model. It would also be fun to be compare an edge sharpened by a tormek guru who would obviously be much more consistent than a newbie such as I, not only in terms of sharpness, but also in terms of overall geometry.

Yeah, I felt kinda dumb yesterday night when sharpening a 300mm suji...

Sorry if this has been covered extensively, but a question comes to my mind every time I remove the grinding wheel, put the white piece of tubing back on the axle etc. before I switch to the honing wheel :

Why on earth is the honing wheel not 250mm ? Would save the hassle of resetting the US, just flip it and you're done. OK, it might not be EXACTLY 250mm but still, make it 248 mm and you hone at a slightly higher angle.


Gone too would be the issue with the 250mm stone getting in the way when you hone. And if the stone diameter decreases significantly ? Well you're back to today's process except I am sure there are more people with stones in the 235-250mm range than below this. With diamond wheels more than ever.

I made the assumption that the few additional cents on leather length and plastic would not put too heavy a burden on the buyer. Am I missing something ?

And the not-that-inexpensive LION-SABATIER which was supposedly the pinnacle of french knife-making is down the toilet...