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I don't even live in America yet I'm sorry to hear that.

If it was your decision Jeff then fair enough, if it was Tormek's then I would tentatively suggest it as a contender for " most stupid business decision of the century"

I mean.... Duh.....

Interesting Jeff. I hadn't even thought about stone diameter. I guess the fact my old stone is getting smaller sort of half justifies the blackstone anyway :-). Notice how I'm cunningly selling myself on the idea

I'm glad you put the reality in perspective too because I'd rather have a realistic expectation of its performance.

I finished the third blade this morning after truing the wheel again. One of the up shots of needing to true the wheel whilst in the middle of grinding planar blades is that you can forget the old settings stay the same chestnut. Now you've reground the wheel the knife doesn't even touch it let alone be an accurate mirror of the previous knives depth setting. Because of course so much ceramic has disappeared.  However I've reinstalled the knives already and after jointing and thicknessing a piece of scrap its thickness at the four corners was out by only about 2 thou.  The finish quality was ok but for those nicks that I couldn't go deep enough to grind away. They're a good 1/2mm in and I just can't spare that much time

The good thing I guess about little metal removal is its very difficult to put the blades out of balance!  She's certainly cutting much finer, less noisy, you know that feeling of fresh blades, its a joy

I guess also another plus is with bowl gouges because despite considerable efforts to push the grind across the wheel you do tend to wear a groove down the sweet spot.  The silicon stone should resist that better

Ok. Done.  Sold :-)

I'll probably have another punt at the planar knives when it arrives.  Will let you know. Thanks again or the support

R

Hi Jeff

I appreciate the thought, really I do. In fact when it got to about 10pm last night I nearly telephoned sharptools as I knew with the time difference you'd be there still. I was getting a bit rung out.

I had already taken the honing wheel off because my SG is about half left and the jig was knocking into the strop right from the off so that had to go early on.   The drive shaft was a bit dodgy at first so I took it right off (mine has the 19mm lock nut and not the new ezylock) to inspect and generally maintain the guts. It was all good.  Remounted and went to work so that wrinkle was ironed out. Once really tight, I must say it was difficult to actually stall the wheel but I was really leaning in it believe me

With respect to the corner of the grader, I've always done that since watching your instructional many years ago.  That meant the only method of really activating the stone was with the diamond dresser.  it cut well after that but literally a few passes in and it was smooth again.  I should add here that regrading did activate the stone and it did then cut again, its just it glazed very quickly whereas truing gave the most performance, exactly as you would expect

Either I'm doing something else wrong or my steel is just too dam hard. Before I started I'd used a sharpie and checked the bevel was cutting right across. I used Ionuts light behind the wheel approach to check parallelism and I double checked with feeler gauges. I'm pretty convinced I had the setup good enough as I was determined not to get tripped up by that. To be honest I was completely taken by surprise when it failed to cut because that's never happened before, even grinding the wings off fingernail gouges in HSS

I will say that I'm eternally grateful to this forum for its intelligent support. Without it I'd feel isolated to say the least

So Jeff, what's your honest opinion on the blackstone. If it works ill make the splash, I'm kind of half pregnant now, no going back so if it works, I guess I'll justify it on the basis that I'd buy one anyway when I replace the SG. But I absolutely positively must be certain it will make the difference.  I would really value your input on it please?  How does it perform speed wise for steel removal, do you need to regrade as often as the SG and does it wear more slowly?

Input gratefully received

Rob

I'm thinking of getting one specifically for HSS planar blade sharpening.  Can anyone testify that it really works well ie shifts steel fast?

Records still around Ken. They're called Record Power now and still design heavily using cast iron and the old principles of Sheffield steel.

They also own Startrite (my planar/thicknesser) and the very tool whose blade sharpening is on the brink of bankrupting me :-)

That's exactly right Ken. You can even go a grade more rough by whizzing the diamond dresser faster than normal over the wheel. Doing it like that leaves a really rough surface. My problem is I'm just not prepared to stop grinding every few minutes and redress the stone. Frankly, that just says not fit for purpose in my view

That's why I'm thinking blackstone. Then you have to layer on another £130 for the wheel. Well I've just spent £109 on the planar jig. I could have bought a controlling interest in my planar manufacturer by now!  The blacstone could be considered a replacement for my regular wheel just a little early so I can probably sell it to myself but to be honest I'm whincing a bit at the cost of "saving money by sharpening my own planar knives".  I won't have broken even till I'm a hundred and sixty three!

I've just re-read Ionuts classic experience with the same jig. The way he describes the speed of steel removal but no grading leads me to believe his knives were considerably softer than mine

I took delivery of the beast today and started on my startrite sd300 planar/thicknesser knives at 6:30 pm. Im now sat typing this at nearly 1am and im pretty gutted at the results

I've had no problems lining it all up and getting both angle and parallelism right. They were just fiddly but do-able with patience.  It's the sheer lack of metal coming off the wheel that's driving me insane

I've regraded three times now, I'm doing about 6 passes before I need to reactivate the wheel with the 220 grader.  Im talking aggresive grading such that the wheel stops turning!  The blades can't possibly be carbide, they're HSS I'm certain of it.  Basically the wheel just isn't man enough for the job. All three blades have a nick that's about 1/2mm deep. I'm now 6 hours in and still the 3rd knife to do AND the flippin nick hasn't gone!  What's being ground is my wheel, not the planar knives!

Does this mean I have to shell out even more cash for the black wheel?  Will the black wheel take steel off significantly faster?

I'm not upset with the principle behind the jig, it works, just the time taken so far.  Is there anything else to be done?  Does the black wheel really shift HSS fast?

Could use come good news after tonight's marathon

Its a real shame about porter cable. Even though I'm in the uk, I've watched dozens of Norm projects where he's used porter cable particularly routers and they look like great tools

Or maybe get a centre punch and carefully dimple the point on the tool at which the jig tightening screw meets it. Then it should more easily seat at top dead centre and avoid skewing over on its side

Pah!  I can do that freehand with a hunting knife.......blindfolded 

I entirely agree as stated in my previous post. There is another point on this. This forum is quite a special interest group and as such it's not bombarded with posts. I for example have owned a Tormek a few years now but only discovered the forum about a month ago.  I can easily read, digest, contribute if I feel able to all the posts in any given 24hour period because the volume is sufficiently low.

So embellishing with a spot of "seasoning" as Ken puts it isn't putting any burden on the site. There is one final point to make. The way our minds/memory's work is by association. So when a technical topic is raised its perfectly natural for the discussion to prompt unique experiences that contributors recall from their Tormek endeavours. Whilst it may be "off topic" it can be quite useful.

Totally agree

As an aside to that post for anyone living in the UK, D&M tools are doing the planar knife jig for only £109 with free shipping at the moment.  If you're in the market that's pretty good value

Exactly, nothing ventured, nothing gained etc