Last Saturday, forum member, Rich Colvin, hosted a shop tour for the Central Ohio Woodturners Club. Rich's interest in turning goes far beyond the traditional spindle and bowl turning. His interest and skill get into what I would call Holzapfel artistic turning.Rich is very innovative in this.
Rich and I gave an informal talk on the Tormek to the group. I was especially interested in Rich's Tormek. Rich's SuperGrind in the only one I have actually seen and had a chance to handle. It gets a lot of use; Rich has worn out at least two grinding wheels. For all of this use, Rich has maintained it well. He has also done some intelligent upgrading. He still has the original one piece leather shaped honing attachment. However, he now uses the new TT-50 Truing Tool. He uses the EZYlock stainless steel shaft. As I recall, he is still using the original water trough. (He mostly sharpens turning tools.) He uses the microadjust universal support bar. He has also upgraded to the new 186 gouge jig. In short, he has upgraded where he gets the maximum value, not just to have the latest and greatest.
It was a very pleasant day.
Ken
Over the summer, our club's members host open shops where we all get to see how other woodturners do their work, and to "steal" some great ideas for replication to our own shops. They are great. This past Saturday was my turn.
The Tormek system is something I wanted to demo (along with my rose engine lathe, & the use of cameras for deep hollowing). Ken & I both feel it is a great idea to let people get hands on a tool that interests them, but is certainly a big investment. We tried to show how it is a great investment due to:
- the long life one can get from the Tormek (mine is 15+ years old, and going strong!), and
- how it's a great platform for sharpening more than just gouges & skews (great interest was expressed with the need to have sharp drill bits for highly figured burl wood).
Having Ken there to help was great. I was asked to consider a sharpening presentation at a future meeting. (Aside to Ken : it's on the East side of Columbus, so I will be calling ...)
Ken, thanks for your help!
Kind regards,
Rich