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A small machinists' square is valuable for checking your grinding wheel's squareness to the sides. Also valuable for checking whether your plane or chisels blades are being ground square. I keep a couple of these squares as part of my Tormek kit. I'm willing to bet that our moderator Ken S will also suggest that more frequent, but lighter trueing of the wheel, is preferred.

Tormek makes a device that can be adapted to a dry grinder that allows you to use their various jigs on that grinder. It is the BMG-100. Here's a link to an Australian woodworker who is well known on the various forums. His name is Derek Cohen.

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/WoodworkTechniques/UltimateGrindingSharpeningSetUp.html

He essentially uses the BMG-100 with the SE-77 (or SE-76) square edge jig to prepare the hollow grind he likes. His photos pretty well show his setup. He does not use a Tormek any longer but, instead, does all his finish honing on stones.

Lesson learned the hard way, Ken. Some years ago I found a Bedrock 608 plane at an antique store for $75, a very attractive price for that model. The blade didn't have much length left but I put it on my Tormek and promptly started the grinding only to find that I had badly skewed it at an angle. Not enough useable steel to fix it so I had to purchase a replacement cutter.

Just a shot in the dark but I recall watching a Tormek video on the SE-77 jig (similar to the SE-76) and was surprised how little the demonstrator tightened the left hand knob on the jig. I've since tried to follow that practice and it has improved things for me. I do believe that over tightening that knob can cause the tool to sit a bit skewed in the jig, especially on narrow tools. I found the video by clicking on the Tormek site in the upper right corner of the main page here.

I've also learned the hard way to studiously pay attention to the sharpening process by adjusting the position of the tool in the jig, sometimes tapping it with a small hammer. Use a black marker on the edge to check your progress.

I watched this yesterday, Ken, and fully agree with your comment. In future presentations I hope they'll save answering these questions until the end. I found it disruptive to interrupt the demonstrator while he was trying to show a process.

I found the q and a part of the class chaotic. My suggestion for future classes would be to provide an email address for submitting and a deadline. In the short time available, I would prefer a more focused agenda uninterrupted with other subjects. Let the presenters read over the submitted questions while preparing and only include those they felt followed the subject.

Ken

Ordered that from Amazon as soon as I saw your post, Bill. Thanks for the link.

After reading your post I thought about it for a bit and came back to the forum to reply. Maybe you know this but diamond paste is readily available from several suppliers including Lee Valley, lapidary companies and several sellers on eBay. I have purchased from both LV and eBay using the diamond paste for sharpening on cast iron or steel plates. It's very inexpensive as supplied ready made. You may have your reasons for making your own brew so go right ahead.

As for using it instead of the Tormek honing compound, I can't comment.

Hello Oliver — There is a fairly current thread on single bevel knives in the first topic called "bevels." I was among those who posted questions about sharpening single bevel knives on the Tormek. In my case I've decided to continue my sharpening on water stones for those knives. I have four Kamikoto knives. I sure welcome further discussion on the subject though.

Rick — Here's a link to the thread regarding using the Tormek to sharpen single bevel knives:

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=3485.msg22032#msg22032

As I reread this thread it was not so cut and dried to not use the Tormek on this knife. I simply chose to go with my water stones because I'm comfortable with them. Since posting this I was gifted three more of the Kamikoto knives and found it simpler to keep a 1000/6000 grift combo water stone in a kitchen drawer rather than go down to my shop to set up the Tormek. Kamikoto has some sharpening videos online but they are brief and don't go into much detail.

I have four Kamikoto single bevel knives in our kitchen and raised a similar question here. In my question it was about using the Tormek to maintain the single bevel. It was recommended in this forum that I not do so. I finally got up the courage to maintain the edge using my Japanese water stones and so far have been reasonably successful. Finding the correct single bevel angle was the hardest part and then removing the resulting burr was a challenge. These knives were gifts, something I never would have bought for myself.

I use the Books app to store digital manuals on my IPad/iPhone for the many household appliances that we own and, yes, the "Water Cooled Sharpening of Edge Tools" is among the several titles available to me. I believe most manufactures make these online manuals available now. Of particular importance to me are the manuals for my Panasonic cordless phone system which seems to have dozens of adjustments that I can never recall easily, and the robotic vacuum we like to use. That last one drives my mini schnauzer nuts. I also have manuals for all my Apple devices available, my Toro snow blower, microwave oven and several others.

I do most of my reading in the Kindle app, however, preferring to keep the manuals and other tech stuff in Books.

Thanks for the video link, Ken. I was surprised that the long-held opinion that end grain boards were preferred was debunked in the video. I made one of those many years ago but retired it because of concerns about some joints opening that could trap food particles. About 15 years ago I made a flat grain board out of 3/4" maple from Home Depot and it is still serving us well. It's light enough to take to the sink for cleaning. I very rarely oil it though.

Hi Ken — There are a few on various hand tool forums who think the original Stanley chipbreaker/capiron is better than the aftermarket units. If you do take the plunge to PM-V11 you might try using the Stanley chipbreaker first. It's possible though that the nut may not have enough thread to attach to the thicker new iron. I have several PM-V11 plane irons and like them a lot although most are installed on bevel up Veritas planes. I also use a PM-V11 on a Lie-Nielsen #4 smoother and in that case use the LN chipbreaker. That same blade was also used on my Stanley Bedrock 604 with the original chip breaker with good results.

I believe I also created a groove in my stone when I once failed to lock down the truing tool. I wonder though if it's really necessary to shave the wheel down completely to remove the groove. It's unsightly, yes, but does it affect the user's ability to create a smooth edge on the tool being sharpened? Just wondering...

Boski — I just went through the process yesterday on a plane iron from a nice Norris A5 infill plane that I treated myself to as a birthday gift. I wanted to establish a new hollow grind bevel on this thick plane iron. The iron's edge was square but a bit lop-sided. In this case I set the bevel for 30 degrees and proceeded. Once the bevel was set, I regraded the standard stone ( now nine inches) to the finer grit and that was it on the Tormek. No stropping wheel. My standard process at this point is to go to stones of which I have several options, including 1200, 6000 and 13,000 grit water stones.

In this case I went with my oil stones. Started with a Washita, then a white Washita and then with a translucent. Finally finished on leather strop with green compound to refine edge and remove burr. To specificaly answer your question, I use the Tormek to reshape edges on plane irons and chisels. While doing that I try to carefully check the squareness of the edge with a small machinists square as I'm working. As I use the tools I only go back to the stones to to renew the micro bevel edge I've created on the stones. If the edges is damaged severely (it can happen) I'll go back to the Tormek.

My method is probably contrary to that of the devoted Tormek user but it's what I've been doing for close to 20 yearsof Tormek ownership. Key to my method is creating the hollow grind on the Tormek and then doing a micro or secondary bevel on the stones. You should be fine with your water stones.