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Thanks, Big Poppa. I'll take some more pictures of the sharpening bench in a few days and put them up on Photobucket with a link here.

Quite a while ago - in 2014, actually - I posted a description of the custom base I designed to mount a BGM-100 bench grinder unit for my dry grinder setup. Designing the base posed some special problems because of the base I'd already created for the grinder itself and the pair of Veritas tool rests that mount on it. I posted a link to a Photobucket album that showed what I'd done and described the problems I had to solve and how I solved them. Unfortunately I neglected to include "BGM-100" in the title or even  in the body of the post, so I've since discovered that the thread tends to not show up in searches and is thus sort of hidden on the forum unless you happen to stumble upon it. I went back and edited it a bit to see if I could make it more visible and I think it helped.

Anyway, since then, while I was doing some serious reshaping on an oval-cross-section woodturning skew chisel, I discovered that I was going to have to modify the base somewhat because of interference between the base and the handle of the tool. So this post will show the changes I made. The original post gives a pretty good description of the whole project so I'm not going to repeat what I put into that but there's a link to it below if you're interested, as well as a link to the Photobucket library, to which I've added a few more pictures at the end to show what changes I've made to the base.

Basically I cut off the front of the base at a 45 degree angle to give clearance for tool handles. Then instead of fastening the base to the bench with a clamp, which interfered as well, I now use a carriage bolt threaded through a hole in the bench, tightened down by a plastic knob underneath.

One of the things you'll see in the last picture, which shows the grinder with the modified base mounted alongside it, is a pair of brass protective plates mounted in front of the wheels. The stream of sparks from that heavy reshaping of the skew chisel actually heated up the laminate until it melted a hole right through it. The brass plates will spread the heat and prevent further damage.

Here's a link to my original post:

    http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=2034.msg9938#msg9938

and here's a link to the Photobucket library that now includes at the end several pictures of the modified base:

    http://s736.photobucket.com/user/tdacon/slideshow/Tormek%20dry%20grinder%20adaptation

Thanks for taking a look,
Tom

I had no sooner ordered from Woodcraft, and received, an SVD-185 gouge jig to replace the ten-year-old previous version I got with my used Supergrind 2000 than I read Ken's review and discovered that the 186 now replaces it! Today I got an RMA from Woodcraft so that I can send the 185 back, and will soon be replacing it with a 186. Not because I've got any tools that need that wide of a jig - my widest is a roughing gouge at 3/4" - but just on account of what sounds like a superior redesign.

Tom

Seems like I've never actually succeeded in purchasing anything from the SharpToolsUSA web site without getting a message after I hit submit to the effect that there's been a problem placing the order - call the phone number.

Anyone else experiencing this? I'm currently on Windows 10, Internet Explorer 11.

Tom

This was the one I was looking for!  http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1886.msg9734#msg9734

As Ken suggested, I had patiently paged through the whole history of posts, skimming the subject lines, but somehow missed that one and further missed the search terms that would have caught it. So thanks everyone for finding it, and the others, for me.

I love doing projects like these. Last year, or was it the year before, I tore down and resurrected one of those ancient Craftsman tube-style wood lathes, and turned it into a pretty good little old spindle lathe. Built a bench for it, too.

It's in my bones, I guess. I spent almost forty years owning and restoring an old classic wooden sailboat of 41 feet, from a shabby fixer-upper to practically museum quality. Then, with my body pretty well worn out from a lifetime of wooden boat work, I sold it to someone younger a few months ago. So I've been looking around for another project for this winter, much smaller and simpler and easier on my old body, now that I have some unaccustomed free time. This Supergrind 2000 that I bought used in 2005 has been a real work horse around here for my woodworking hand tools and more recently for turning tools, but has been patiently waiting for some love. I'll post my own work-in-progress pictures and some of the finished product as time goes on.

Tom

Somewhere back in the earlier posts, I remember a post or series of posts from someone who tore down and completely refurbished a Supergrind 2000 and posted pictures of the whole process. I can't find it now, and my searches on terms like refurbish and restore and repaint didn't turn it up again. Can anyone point me to it? I'm going to be doing the same to mine this winter and I'd like to see what sort of issues he mentioned.

Thanks,
Tom

I test the sharpness of my chisels the same way I test my katanas: I hold the tool in one hand with the edge facing upwards, and then toss a piece of extremely fine silk cloth into the air, letting it land upon the sharpened edge. The tool is sufficiently sharpened if the silk falls away from the edge, cleanly split into two pieces.

Tom

Ken, I didn't post that as a complaint against Tormek. Just a useful tip.

If Tormek fully machined all these things, even fewer of us would be able to afford them.

Tom

While using the SVS-50 for the first time to sharpen a roughing gouge, it seemed that as I rolled the gouge from side to side it didn't move smoothly - the jig seemed to catch on the bar, then release, maybe a half dozen times as I rolled it through the full rotation. Afterwards, I lapped the face of the jig on the side of the grinding wheel and then smoothed it further on my lapping plate with several grades of sandpaper until it looked and felt quite smooth. Finally I sprayed it and the bar with a bit of TopCote and buffed them up with a rag. Another try with the gouge and it rolled as smooth as silk.

Tom

Nice, Tony.

I built a sharpening bench with a pull-out drawer for the Tormek, and what I was trying for was for the slide-out drawer to position the Tormek just at the right height so that I could sit at it in a chair and sharpen kitchen knives. Unfortunately, as usual, things didn't work out the way I hoped and the machine's too low when it's pulled out, so I go ahead and put the Tormek on top of the bench and do them standing up and leaning back against a stool. Not quite as sweet as what you came up with, but it works.

Tom

KennyK, I sped up my Tormek-jig-style bevel honing by buying a second WM-200 AngleMaster which I set to the diameter of the honing wheel, with the other set to the diameter of the stone. As long as you remember to set the same angle on both of them when you change angles (!), it's quick and easy to shift the bar and set up for honing the bevel. And if you're grinding the same angle on successive tools, you only need to set the honing bar once until you change angles if you use this next tip. With two bars, you can do your grinding at the top of the wheel, grinding into the rotation (it's faster than grinding from the front, too!), while a second bar is set up at the left for the honing wheel. While I happen to have two of the bars (I got a second one with the dry grinder kit), I don't bother with that refinement since I generally sharpen only a few tools at a time. But if I took a notion to do a sharpening day on everything I've got, I'll bet I'd do it that way.

With that said, I sometimes bypass all that and hone free-hand, at least on my woodworking chisels. For my woodturning tools I'm still going through the process of setting up the jig for bevel honing because there's a lot more opportunity to ruin the edge by rolling it.

At first, I had a hard time getting away from slightly rolling the edge while doing free-hand honing. I got past that by moving the bar to the left side, laying the chisel on the bar with my index finger knuckle registering its position, and (for the backs) eyeballing a right angle from the tip of the chisel down to the center of the wheel shaft. The eye's surprisingly good at making that estimate. I start out with the chisel too far out by a short distance, and let it polish the back as I slowly back it up until there's just a tiny change in the sound and the corners of the chisel just begin to make an impression on the surface of the wheel. Hard to describe any better, but after a while you'll see what I mean.

Since you only get one chance to hone the bevel before you take the jig off to do the back, you might be left with a little bit of the burr on the edge after one honing on each side, but a quick stropping on the leg of your jeans will clean it right up :-)

Tom

I use the SE-76 for chisel sharpening and have experienced similar problems with my narrow chisels (1/4" or smaller). In my view, the problem seems to be caused by the narrow gutter that's cast into the lower part of the jig, right over against the squaring boss. The chisel "tips over" slightly into that gutter, causing the chisel to be sharpened on an angle. My current solution is to either use the SVH-60 for narrow chisels, or just move the chisel over a short distance away from the SE-76's gutter and square it up with a small machinist's square. In either case, problem solved.

Of course, problem solved actually means also truing up the stone to get the face of it parallel to the bar. If you don't do that, no amount of screwing around with the jig will get you the square edge on the chisel that you're after. With that done, the SE-76 works a treat for me for everything except the narrowest chisels, as I mentioned above.

For wider chisels I have had no problems whatsoever with the SE-76, except for what must be the common problem of sharpening butt chisels or those that have been sharpened down to where there's not enough chisel left to get the angle you want. Since my butt chisels tend to be beater chisels anyway - I keep a handful of them in my boat-work tool bag just for risky business, but I start out the season with them razor sharp anyway - I just go ahead and sharpen them to whatever angle I can get out of the jig: 30 degrees if I'm lucky, 35 if I'm not. Often I can position the jig so that the knuckle at the bottom lies outside the stone and I can move the bar in pretty close.

What I plan to do with the SE-76 is fill that gutter with JB-Weld and then flatten the filler and true it up with a plane float or a fine-toothed file, while trying to not screw up the otherwise flat part of the lower section of the jig. The reason I'm here today, in fact, is to see if anyone's said anything about that gutter to explain why it's there. If I don't hear any objections to this strategy I'm going to go ahead with it, and then report back on how well it worked.

Tom

This sounds like good advice. Just as a learning exercise for sharpening I shaped and sharpened the whole set of original carbon steel tools. Two of them were scrapers, and I've actually been using them experimentally (the new HSS tools I've bought so far are all better suited to spindle-turning). I think I'll keep them around just to do what you guys suggest - quickly reshape them for special purposes.

This old '70's-era Craftsman lathe of mine will be a decent spindle-turner, now that I've restored it, but as I was warned it's not rigid enough to be a good bowl-turner. Nevertheless I can get some end-grain and faceplate experience with it, on small stuff.

Thanks, gents - much to think on.

But first stop is Lee Valley...

Tom

What grit stone or abrasive would you use to flatten the sole and polish up the sides of a hand plane body?

I've got a small collection of Stanleys, circa 1930's and 1950's, that are in excellent condition, some of them even apparently unused or used only a time or two. They look pretty good, but most of them are blotched lightly with a few dark spots that might be left over from surface rust in the past. I'd like to do any sole flattening they need and pretty them up some. If I'm going to end up with something like a diamond plate to do this with, I'd like some good suggestions about what grit would be appropriate. I'm thinking something like 220 grit or coarser - I'm not looking for a high polish.

What would you guys do?

Thanks,
Tom