Hello,
I'm a second-day owner of a Tormek T4 Bushmater edition with the angle setter and the SVM45 knife sharpening jig. I'm primarily interested in sharpening popular commercial folding knives with 3-4" blades using AUS-8 to D2 steel. Also some larger fixed bushcraft type knives and a few axes and hatchets. I have some nicer Spyderco, ZT, Kershaw, Benchmade, Esse, OKC and also a couple artisan knives.
It was a good idea to start with some inexpensive beater knives! But so far everything is going very well except I do not feel comfortable using the Angle Setting device to set the distance between blade edge and tool rest because I really can not reliably get the face of the angle piece to rest on the narrow edge bevel of the knife.
What I have done is experiment with marker on the bevel and made an educated guess that most of my knives are between 35 to 40 degrees inclusive. And then use the coarser set of the stone to true up the bevel.
I have an illuminated magnified work light and can place it so I can see where the knife and stone meet, and I've made some guesses and checked myself that way as well.
And while I haven't found perfection yet, or gotten anything super sharp, I have been measuring and noting the distance between tool rest and blade edge in case I want to replicate.
Is this the way it's done? I haven't seen anything in the documentation that is better, nor on YouTube, but it feels a little janky to me, like I'm not really sure. I wish I could just figure out how long a distance I need to put a specific degree inclusive on all of my knives (mostly).
I've looked around the threads and have an inkling that someone develop a phone app for this and there are some other analog methods to figure this out... I'd sure appreciate a link to where the actual techniques are as opposed to the tangential (pun) discussions.
Otherwise the actual grinding is fun. I find honing the knives a little awkward because I have to come at it at an angle to avoid the spinning stone but I'll adapt.
Thank you, Viva Sweden! (I live in the town of Sweden in New York state so I'm Swedish too.)
I'm a second-day owner of a Tormek T4 Bushmater edition with the angle setter and the SVM45 knife sharpening jig. I'm primarily interested in sharpening popular commercial folding knives with 3-4" blades using AUS-8 to D2 steel. Also some larger fixed bushcraft type knives and a few axes and hatchets. I have some nicer Spyderco, ZT, Kershaw, Benchmade, Esse, OKC and also a couple artisan knives.
It was a good idea to start with some inexpensive beater knives! But so far everything is going very well except I do not feel comfortable using the Angle Setting device to set the distance between blade edge and tool rest because I really can not reliably get the face of the angle piece to rest on the narrow edge bevel of the knife.
What I have done is experiment with marker on the bevel and made an educated guess that most of my knives are between 35 to 40 degrees inclusive. And then use the coarser set of the stone to true up the bevel.
I have an illuminated magnified work light and can place it so I can see where the knife and stone meet, and I've made some guesses and checked myself that way as well.
And while I haven't found perfection yet, or gotten anything super sharp, I have been measuring and noting the distance between tool rest and blade edge in case I want to replicate.
Is this the way it's done? I haven't seen anything in the documentation that is better, nor on YouTube, but it feels a little janky to me, like I'm not really sure. I wish I could just figure out how long a distance I need to put a specific degree inclusive on all of my knives (mostly).
I've looked around the threads and have an inkling that someone develop a phone app for this and there are some other analog methods to figure this out... I'd sure appreciate a link to where the actual techniques are as opposed to the tangential (pun) discussions.
Otherwise the actual grinding is fun. I find honing the knives a little awkward because I have to come at it at an angle to avoid the spinning stone but I'll adapt.
Thank you, Viva Sweden! (I live in the town of Sweden in New York state so I'm Swedish too.)