Hi all,
I have two Tormek diamond wheels, course and fine. I also have SG-250 wheel which has never been graded course, so it still has the 250 mm dimension since I only use it as the final step after the diamond wheels, used as Tormek Japanese water stone, if you will, but with courser grit.
Many times DE-250 (grit 600) is the final step, this give me good enough result.
Wanted to ask you all if you see any reason to have the 1200 grit diamond wheel, as long as my SG-wheel keep it's dimension but also remains true?
To my eyes the result from SG-250 (graded very fine, with a finer grit than the fine git side of the Tormek grading stone) gives a beautiful edge to finalize on my leather wheels.
Is there any practical or theoretical pros with using diamond (or CBN) as the last step of sharpening super steel's like m390, rather than traditional aluminium oxide stone?
I I'm aware that deburring on diamond can give high vanadium steels better edge retention.
Thanks!
One overlooked solution is to make the final pass or two with your DF-250 with VERY light pressure. This is demonstrated in the online class covering the T2, but can be applied to any Tormek. This is very fast, not involving any wheel changing. It is also very cost efficient, as no extra expense is involved. It gently transfers the initial honing from the leather wheel to the grinding wheel.
Ken
I think many users worry unnecessarily about consuming the SG-250. When I have knives that need more material removed I do not hesitate in using the coarse side of the grading stone. I also in the camp that trues the stone fairly often rather than letting it go and removing a lot of material less often. Unless you are using a dial indicator to measure runout it is often hard to detect an out of round condition.
When chasing the sharpest edge I personally look at whose knife it is that I am sharpening. It is not too difficult to obtain an edge that is better than almost every out of the box knife. This can be achieved with the SG-250 and leather wheel. For my knives and a couple of customers I will use a second leather wheel with 1ยต diamonds. I also look at the time required to change wheels to a progressively finer grit when doing multiple knives when few appreciate the knifes sharpness beyond out of the box.