I wanted to show off my impressive woodworking skills, so lacking a table saw or jigsaw, I hacked this prototype out of an old piece of wood using a full size ax as a chisel, a small sledge hammer to bash on the ax to split the wood, and hand saw.
I know!... You are in awe of the fine craftsmanship! You can tell I have a bright future in handmade fine furniture.
It's pretty obvious how you use it. Just rest the knife against the guide and sharpen.
It works for any size knife, pen knife, machete etc
I didn't bother to even fasten it to the front of the machine, and just had my wife hold it in position whilst I sharpened a knife. It worked. Nice, even, 20 degree bevel. No slipping down the wheel because it is sharpening into the wheel rotation.
For longer knives you would have to pop off the honing wheel, but that's quick and easy.
It does not interfere with use of the water tray.
Could it use a little refinement? ??? :)
You need to be able to adjust the closeness to the wheel.
Adjustable rest angle would be cool.
Needs to be higher on the wheel so the wheel goes slightly behind the bottom of the rest. This would also probably eliminate the need for popping off the honing wheel.
Anyway, it's a different approach, and for a "slightly" rough prototype, it worked!
(http://tinyurl.com/kv8rvrw)
(http://tinyurl.com/n8mtysy)
Just needs a nice manufacturers plate that's all....job done :-)
A wedge underneath would adjust the rest angle and could alter the height.
I suggest this could be sold as an additional jig, perhaps the W180, as its a wedge and can alter the angle 180 degrees.
Are you sure you didn't train a beaver to make that thing? ;D
It has a lot of potential. Nice work. Maybe there's some way to clamp the base of the jig to the base of the Tormek, that way you wouldn't your wife every time you feel the need to sharpen up!
You could make different jigs for different angles.
She's a beauty, ain't she? :) Actually Herman, it was "constructed" using stone knives and bear skins.
I just wondered if that approach would work, and even with my hack job it did. I'm sure it can be made adjustable in all directions, or even a simple tilt would work as Colin interestingly suggested.
Your tool rest design is so simple and quick to make I don't know if I'll bother playing with this thing, but I was curious to see how that blade orientation would work as far as holding the knife stable during sharpening and providing a perfectly even bevel.
Oh, the wife says thanks for your idea of actually clamping it to the machine. :)
Your jig has the advantage of being "stand-alone".
Awesome workmanship on this grepper. I love learning from the masters. Where do you source your bear skins? I already bought the knife jig, so I guess I don't need this and besides I don't think I could get my
wife to come into the shop to hold it for me anyway. In fact, right now I can't even get into the shop myself with all the gardening work. Your jig does look like an interesting prototype and if it works well, nothing
better. I love shop made solutions. I suggest you put an extension or a step on the back so you can clamp it to your work surface.
Here is version 3 of the knife rest thing I've been working on. You can see that it's stuck atop version 2.
The rest itself is attached with a post on a ball and socket, so loosening the top knob frees the ball to adjust to any angle, 180 degrees front to back. It also allows the ball to rotate in the socket so alignment with the wheel is easy.
The rail that the head assembly is on is double C channel top and bottom. Loosening the large nut at the bottom of the head allows the head to glide along the rail so that it's easy to adjust its closeness to the wheel.
Loosening the nut under the rail allows the rail to swing from side to side so that horizontal alignment with the wheel is quick and simple. Additionally, even with the head locked in position on top, this allows the entire rail/head assembly to slide in and out as a unit. So not only does that make another quick and easy way to adjust the head proximity to the wheel, it also means that whatever post is holding the rail can be up to 6" away from the machine. Especially nice for clearing the T7 dredge bucket.
I've just got a piece of cardboard stuck on it as a rest for demo purposes, but I will replace it with a ¼" chunk of plastic, probably from a cutting board.
Obviously this is not at the correct height, so I need to chop off the piece of wood that it is sitting on. I haven't figured out what I want to do for its final stand, but I want to make it height adjustable. I may use threaded rod or something like that.
Anyway, a slight improvement over the most beautiful version 1 knife rest. :)
(http://content.screencast.com/users/bllllllorg/folders/Default/media/0b7f6685-9e46-4e0b-bb1c-f1c65de26e63/V33Small.png)
Blimey that's brilliant Mark :)
And if you get bored sharpening things you can plonk your camera on it and start snapping long exposure shots :o
Yea, with enough room left over on the rail for a flash head, diffuser and an umbrella. Funny how they would just slide right on. You'd almost think it was made for that. :)
Well its obvious isn't it!!
The camera companies have been secretly watching you and have perpetrated industrial espionage...I mean it's obvious :-)
Is all this because you do not have a knife holder or the edge setter or do you simply want to play? What are the advantages of your design over the factory option?
I have the knife holder and the long knife holder. None of these works for a machete, pen knife, or lawn mower blade, or very thin blades like you run into with some fillet knives, etc.
The jig Herman made also works for these. Tormek also has the Small Knife jig for small knives. This is just a different approach.
It also shows how versatile the T7 can be. There is always a way to make it do what you want.
And yes, and maybe more importantly.... I got to play too.
Looks very high tech Mark. Should work fine.
I thought the long knife holder was for filleting knives so I'm wondering why you need something else.
Yes. The long knife holder works well for long blades, but on very thin (distance from spine to edge) knives I still ran into problems with the jig hitting the wheel when attempting to sharpen at a very small angle, say 15 degrees.
The long knife holder really helps with long knives where the blade thickness, i.e., across the spine, is thin so that there is a lot of lateral flex in the blade.
Mike and Jeff, I guess I should add...
We had in depth discussions here about very long knives such as machetes, and very small pocket knives and how to sharpen them on the Tormek. It led to a lot of innovation such as the elegantly simple HK-50 rest Herman designed based on an earlier design by Ionut for small knives.
You can see some of it at the links below, and if you search around in the General Tormek Questions list starting 3 pages back and earlier, there is quite a bit more discussion:
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1560.0
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1592.0
Machetes:
I sharpened a machete once, and while I got it sharp, the results were anything but professional. Because the thing was so long, I had to move the knife jig down the length of the blade several times to keep it on the control bar. This resulted in different bevel angles no matter how careful I was.
Additionally, the machete blade had a narrow chord (distance from spine to edge) near the handle and grew much wider towards the tip. A typical machete. This caused me all sorts of problems, because not only did I have to move the jig down the blade as is it was much longer than the control bar, but every few inches I had to readjust the sharpening angle to compensate for the wider chord which pushed the knife edge further down the wheel causing the sharpening angle to be reduced.
Herman's HK-50 rest resolved all of those problems. You simply lay the knife down and keep the bevel on the wheel. Duh. So simple! Quick and easy too. Like I said, elegantly simple.
Maybe someone more skillful than me could freehand a machete blade, but it's beyond me so I need the assistance of a jig.
Very small knives with a narrow chord:
Get a pen knife and try to sharpen it using the knife jig. The issues will immediately become apparent as the jaws of the jig hit the wheel before the knife does. Again, the HK-50 solves this issue.
My trouble with mower blades:
The top side trailing edge of a mower blade sweeps up so the fan action generates lift. Because the edge that must be sharpened is on the same side, laying the blade flat on a tool rest is problematic unless you have a very narrow tool rest.
The version of the rest that I am currently working on allows me to rest the back (smooth) side against the rest so that the front side gets sharpened. This is how commercial lawn mower blade sharpeners work, for both belt and grinding wheel types. This was part of the impetus of the design of the current rest I'm working on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWI-108BvMk
But you can't get to the bottom of the T7 wheel, so I figured why not the front? Additionally, other knife sharpeners use the same idea. Check out the F. Dick Sharpener, SM-111. It used the side of the wheel. But it's strictly limited to knives and a little on the "costy" side:
http://sharpeningmadeeasy.com/dick.htm
My current rest, like Herman's design, also works with any length blade and blades which has a chord that changes down the length of the blade because the edge is resting on the stone, not hanging from a control bar. It also should, but I have not yet tried it, work for mower blades.
So those are my reasons for playing around with fun new jig designs for the T7.
I'm sure not against homemade jigs Mark. I will probably wind up experimenting myself when different types of blades need sharpening that won't work with the available jigs or where the frequency of sharpening doesn't warrant a huge outlay for a new jig. I will certainly keep an eye on what you old timers have been designing for that kind of work.
To that end Mike...you'll discover there is a great deal of latent creative and inventive talent on this forum...some most certainly patentable jigs have come out as solutions to sharpening problems here and the DIY engineering skill is a delight to watch grow and evolve. It's one of the aspects of this group that I have the most respect for in point of fact.
Good Rob. I also appreciate out of the box creative thinking. It is quite normal to buy a tool having some idea what it will do, but we usually learn pretty quickly what it can't do, and that is usually quite a lot. Luckily we woodworkers are used to making a lot of different jigs to do our work more accurately, so applying that thinking to sharpening is just second nature. All part of the fun I guess.
I use the regular knife jig (SVM-45) to sharpen my mower blades.
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=930.msg2537#msg2537
(http://content.screencast.com/users/bllllllorg/folders/Default/media/11d7c693-3a9f-400e-8748-f22283eec064/jig.png)
I've about completed the jig. I added height and lateral adjustability and got rid of the wood.
The ball joint is obviously adjustable to any angle.
The head rotates.
The head slides in/out on the top rail.
The top rail is not threaded to the post, so loosen the nut under the top rail and slide it up/down for vertical adjustment.
Loosen the big nut at the bottom of the post to slide laterally and to rotate the entire head assembly.
Because it's so adjustable, you don't need to worry much about exact positioning when you clamp the thing down.
The rest pad at the top is ¾" x 2". Like this for the belt grinder, turn sideways for the T7 2" wheel.
I can cut any size rest out of cheap cutting board thermoplastic. I drilled a hole in the rest and stuck in a ¼" threaded insert for mounting on the head.
I would have shown it mounted on the T7, but I still need a longer piece of threaded rod. I will mount the rod with one of these on the bottom to clamp it to the bench or a piece of steel attached to the bottom of the Tormek, and one on top to clamp the bottom rail to as shown in the picture. I already have two of these:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_301689-33599-AV301689_0__ I just need the longer rod.
A cool feature is that I can quickly move it between the Tormek, the bench grinder and the belt grinder. I'm going to get a pliers type locking clamp so I don't have to unscrew and mess around with a regular C clamp.
I'll post a picture when it's completed.
Anyone remember the original beautiful knife rest? It was still in the concept stage... :)
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1679.0
Nice work, Mark.
Thanks Herman. An interesting project.
I especially liked the original concept model that I hired a beaver to gnaw out for me. :)