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www.durofelt.com

Vadim ("Wootz") says he has purchased from them.

I have a Durofelt 8" x 1" rock hard felt wheel loaded with Autosol metal polish.

Very nice people to deal with.

If you're in the US, free shipping.

This is how much metal came off this ONE knife, er, sword.

Tips:

1) don't raise the handle too much when doing the tip. Remember the sword is over a meter long!
2) don't have to press down too much - the sword is heavy enough (3 lbs 10 ozs / 1.8 kg), let gravity help you
3) when switching directions, it's easier to first put it straight down with the tip on a mat.
4) if someone asks you to sharpen one, don't : )

I did this merely out of curiosity. Don't think I want to do it again. Didn't both honing it or removing the wire edge. Still, managed to cut (sorry) the BESS number in half.

And, no, this isn't an April's Fool joke : )

Had to increase support bar to knife edge distance to 150mm to clear the blade guard.

Blade thickness behind edge is about 2mm. I'm used to .5mm in kitchen knives. So, the blade is 4 times as thick, 4 times as long, and there's 2 times as many blades = 32 times more steel to grind than an average 8' / 200mm kitchen knife. Yup, I'm starting with the 80 grit CBN stone!

Goniometer shows 30 degree angle.

After grinding, changed to the 400 grit stone.

Had a request to sharpen a sword with a 38.5" (1 meter) blade:

https://www.darksword-armory.com/medieval-weapon/herald-series-medieval-weapons/the-marquis-medieval-sword/

Blade is EN-45 high carbon spring steel.

Fortunately my "rig" has two T-7's side by side, each with a 25" / 65cm long double-sided aftermarket universal support bars.

To take advantage of that, I used two Tormek SVM-140 long knife jigs.

It was announced yesterday. April 1st.... 

Local Artisanal Farm-To-Table Barrel-Aged Spring Fed Alkaline Honing Water

https://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Local-Artisanal-Farm-To-Table-Barrel-Aged-Spring-Fed-Alkaline-Honing-Water-W282C309.aspx

KnifeGrinder's latest video on grading stones, including the Tormek Japanese stone:

"A better way to true and grade your stone wheels - Part 2: Grading" :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=141hD1d1zj0

Rick, thanks for sharing! Being a machinist, you are a great benefit to this Tormek community!

BTW, I recently got a DBS-22 drill bit jig and the first thing I did was to implement your modification.

Following up on my opening post, I received the video a couple of days ago. Steve also enclosed, at no extra charge, his book, "Sharpening Made Easy". This makes the current $50 sale price an even better deal!

The video is an hour and 23 minutes. I learned some new things from it. In particular, the section about sharpening garden tools was very enlightening.

One thing that was particularly interesting is Steve's preference to grinding edge trailing on the Tormek. He prefers it because the resultant bigger burr is easier to detect. One could argue a bigger burr would take longer  to remove on the Tormek leather wheel. However, he skips that and deburrs instead on paper wheels (keep in mind this was his setup for farmers' markets for sharpening a knife in a minute).

Once again, highly recommended.

Steve Bottorff's Sharpening School Video is now only $50 USD. If memory serves me, it was $150. Steve kindly emailed me to tell me. I, of course, immediately ordered a copy.

I imagine Steve is moving closer to full retirement as he no longer sells Tormek or other powered sharpening machines either. He deserves it.

This is a classic. I urge others to get a copy while they still can.

I'm in Vancouver, B.C., Canada 🇨🇦

You're correct, there will obviously be variances between individual Tormeks. Only Tormek knows what tolerances their machines are built to (I vaguely recall a Tormek factory video showing it using Mitutoyo measuring equipment). Tormek also claims their T8's zinc body casting is "more accurate" than their T7, although I have a feeling that is more about the old XB-100 possibly being mounted skewed.

So we are forced to assume all machine measurements are the same, and that the machine top is perfectly parallel with the drive shaft. But errors are often cumulative (if you're really lucky, they could cancel each other out). So it's best to be as accurate as possible.

Some of KnifeGrinder's protocols involves decreasing the honing angle by .1 degree. That's why I analyzed whether a 1/64" step variation in drill bit sizes is sufficiently "fine" enough for that. I showed that it isn't. (For the record, I don't bother with the minus .1 degree step either).

It's a compromise between time, sharpness/edge retention, and equipment cost. I'm just trying to show a compromise between the three that fitted MY needs (under 5 minutes per knife / long edge retention (not ultimate sharpness)/ $50 investment).

Hockey pucks are 25mm thick, so stacking a third one would make the right trough too high.

I suppose you can divide a puck into two but I didn't bother to do so. As I said, it works fine for me.

It's a T7 so both are T7 troughs.

Jvh, your TormekCalc is awesome. It's great that Tormek allows innovators like you and others to share their stuff which improves their Tormek experience.

Everyone's needs are different. I picked a path that I felt best suits my business needs. What I chose may well be totally wrong for others. There is no best path for everyone.

We are Tormek dealer in South Korea. I heard that same news.

Sharpco, congratulations on becoming a Tormek dealer. When I decided to do sharpening I watched many videos, including many of yours. I was always impressed with how clean your shop is. Now, whenever I look around my shop and it's a bit messy, I think back to your videos, then grab the broom and dustpan!

Best of luck in your businesses!

These methods of adjusting the support bar height seem clever to me. However, I may not be seeing something. I do not see the need for much height adjustment. The adjustment screw of the Tormek knife jigs allows for enough adjustment range to set a common Projection for most knives at 139mm (or 140mm). A consistent grinding angle (eg. 15°) would also make a consistent Distance. With constant diameter diamond or CBN wheels, these settings will not change.

If you prefer another angle setting to 15°, only the initial set up Distance will be modified. Unless you are using the marker method, how many angle settings do you need?

Again, this is much more applicable for those who sharpen for a living. For example, here's what I had to deal with ithis week:

1) "normal" sharpening: 15 degrees, 140 mm.
2) A bunch of Shuns: 16 degrees, 140mm
3) machete: 20 degrees, 150mm
4) cleaver #1 (for vegetables): 15 degrees, 180mm
5) cleaver #2 (for bones): 20 degrees, 180mm
6) cleaver #3 - repair; very high blade (20 degrees, 190mm)
7) ESEE folding knife: 25 degrees, 140mm (blade is very thick - if I ground it at a lower angle, the bevels would "ride up" on the knife edges - so I had to sharpen at factory angles)
Globals at 12 degrees, 140mm (Japanese sushi restaurant)
9) Global bird's beak knife (curved blade; have to use pivot collar): 130mm
10) Serrated bread knives: 28 degrees, 140mm

As you can see, that's 6 different angles and 5 different projection distances. Add to that different de-burring angles for a felt wheel (+2 degrees for most, but +.6 for Globals), and calculating for 4 different machines (T7, T8, PowerFist buffer, Rikon buffer), and you can see why I developed this way to quickly change USB settings.