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OK - I'll bite.  What the heck is it used for and why the notches on one side

Rick

Rick,

I have not found Tormek to be very clear on these issues. The following are my observations:

1) I think the stone grader concept is a great idea. I think the original idea was to modify the new SG-250 wheel to be able to cut like the finer grit natural stones mined locally. I suspect that you are correct in thinking that a worn stone grader will cause the grinding wheel to need more frequent truing. I look at stone graders the same way I look at grinding wheels, as long term consumables which will eventually need to be replaced. this is not something any company's marketing department wants to emphasize.

2)The hump or valley may depend on which tools you are sharpening. A gouge may place a valley in the center. Keep going with light controlled passes to keep your wheel true.

3) Several of us have been trying diamond stones for grading. I think that is the direction we will be heading, especially with the SB.

I don't think you are doing anything wrong; the right path keeps evolving.

Ken

Ken - my concern with #1 above is that the grading stone seems to show wear (dishing) almost immediately - is that typical or is somethng wrong.  When watching videos - it appears to be such an easy task butt Ilm starting to wonder if it is all marketing hype?

The secnd concern I have is the suspected stone out of roundness.  This seems evident as the truing is being done - based on sound - it appears initialy that there is contact/no contact as the wheel rotates.  I'm wondering if this may be related to some other problem - drive shaft or bearings.  I can't feel any up/down movement of the wheel.

Rick

So after about 8 turning tools and a dozen or so chisels I feel like I accomplished my original goal refamiliarizing myself with Tormek sharpening.  A couple of areas that still need refinement
1.  It seems that using the regrading stone MAY be causing the stone to get to the point of needing truing much faster.  Is this my imagination or perhaps a technique issue.
2.  When truing - I have noticed that the wheel seems to be humped in the middle - that is the high spot is in the middle.  It generally takes 3 or 4 passes, advancing the micro adjust 1/3 of a number at a time to get contact across the entire width.  I have also noticed that the wheel seems out of round whenever I true it - that is you can hear intermittent contact when initally truing until a few passes are completed.  I have used the zip tie modification to avoid any up/down movement of the diamond carrier.
3.  I have noticed the grading stone gets dished - when is it no longer useable?  Dishing is occurring pretty rapidly - a new stone has evidence of dishing after about 10 uses

So what, if anything, am I doing wrong?

Thanks
Rick

Thanks guys - I'm not anticipating any use in the immediate future so I think I will let it go as is for now.

Rick

I gotten through gouges, skews and parting tools.  Are they perfect - no far from it but they are better than they were.  I still need to do a couple of round nose scrapes and decide what I am going to do t=wit the Thompson tools I have.

Here's a tool that I don't know the name of - anybody seen something like this?  Its probably something pretty common to most


Thanks
Rick

Sounds like we are in the same boat

So when your detail gouge needs sharpening what would your approach be if using a Tormek.  Maybe its too soon for you to answer that bdepending on whether you like the existing grind pr would want to change it.

Rick

I agree Ken - Doug is very knowledgeable and helpful.  Based on his website he is a proponent of the wolverine vari jig so I'm not sure he could offer any advice on how toreplicate his grind with a Tormek.  I am however, going to ask him that question.

What settings do you use on your thompson detail gouge - something completely different than the as received grind?

Rick

I was able to get the gouge reshaped to the tormek recommended settings of JS 2, Protrusion 55 and hole b for the USB.  It was slow so I used my slow speed dry bench grinder with AO wheels.  That worked but it requried lots of starting and stopping to colld the chisel - maybe there is a way to cool it with water without having to take the jig off the USB.  It was definitely faster than the tormek wheel.  I finished up the shaping on the tormek and then sharpened and honed.  There is no indication on the buck brothers chisel if it is high carbon or HSS and I bought them used many years ago so I donLt know the age of it.

So now I need to replicate a Doug Thompson grind on the Tormek.  Based on his website he uses a wolverine jig and the nose angle is 40 degrees.  I couldn't find any "standard" tormek recommended grinds that produced these results.  I did find that a JS of 4, Protrusion of 55 and using hole b to set the USB I could visually replicate the bevel.  Then I was able to verify, using the bele coloring method, that the color was removed uniformly from the entire length of the bevel.  So do these setting make sense - I don't want to start grinding and ruon the chisel.  BTW - This is a 3/8" detail spindle gouge.  I also have  a 3/8" thompson spindle gouge - not sure of the difference.  It appears to me that the detail gouge has longer wings which I think is the result of how far the chisel is turned when grinding?

Thanks
Rick

It's possible that the previous sharpener did not have the stop ring all the way up the shaft. Or, the settings on the SVD-185 were continuous, not discrete like the SVD-186, and were subject to eyeball error.

Mike

Mike -previous turner was me so it ios not only possible but likely that errors were made.

I would like to get the gouge back to the standard tormek settings - is the best approach to simply  set the values and start on the tormek wheel or use a bench grinder first?  I'm concerned about overheating on the bech grinder.

Rick

This morning I did a little practice on the standard grind (square grind) gouges using the svs-50.  That went pretty well.

Then I was going to try a finger grind using the svd-186.  Picture of Grind 4 above was the gouge I was going to use.  It had a label from years ago indicating jig setting 2, projection 55 and hole B.  These settings were based on the older vd-185.  I set everything up based on these parameters using the new SVD-186.  When I visually looked at the fit of the existing bevel to the stone - it was way off.  The rear of the bevel was way off the stone - I would have to change the jig setting to zero to get even close.  Is there something I am missing in terms of set up?  I"m assuming something went south when this was initially sharpened.  I would like to get back to a more standard grind but it seems there would be a lot of metal removal required.  I do have a bench grinder Tormek set up - do I need to use that to reshape?

Thanks
Rick

TT - that's a lot of information.  I have 4 gouges that have tangs (I think) - a craftsman and 3 buck brothers.  Based on your info they are all roughing gouges.  I get thta they should not be used on bowl interiors but wouldn't the grind allow them tp be used on spindles for some level of detail work versus just roughing?

Rick

I've attached some pictures of the existing grinds with some annotations of what I think they are.  The first 4 all have tangs and from what I have read they should never be used on bowls.  The last two are round bar and theoretically could be used on spindles or bowls.  As I said above I am not particularly interested in bowls at this point but wanted to be sure I am understanding the concepts and terminology.  I also included what I "think" the grind is and generally what type of work they would be used for.  Please feel free to comment/discuss what I have gotten right/wrong.  For example - what I am calling a roughing gouge could likely be used for some initial level of detail but as the need arises to get into close spaces the fingernail type grind becomes necessary because of the swept back flutes reducing/eliminating interference?

Rick,

I catalogued a lot of information that ma be useful.  It's at http://www.sharpeninghandbook.info/


Kind regards,
Rich

Rich 0=- thanks - what a ton of good information

Rick

TT - I'm curious whixh is the low quality steel - I think I know but not sure.

As far as grinds go - there is lots of terminology for spindle gouges - standard, fingernail, detail, roughing.  I need to get a better understanding of this but I think

Roughing is a simple bevel with no wings - this provides more meat at the bevel for square to round turning (not sure if this is referred to as standard?)

Fingernail - the sides of the flutes are swept back to allow better access to spindle details.  there are varying degrees of the swept back wings

Detail - just a more extreme version of fingernail

Rick

I've spent some time watching the Jeff Farris video and looking on the internet and came away very confused about the type of tools and the various grinds.  I am a novice turner and will initially be focused on spindle turning.  I have a PM 90 lathe and some existing tools.  I separated the tools into major categories of gouges, skews, parting tools, scrapers and who knows .  The biggest area of confusion for me right now is the various types of gouges and grinds.  In my mind I have categorized gouge types as Spindle and bowl.  Within spindle I have roughing, standard and detail - the difference being the grind.

Of the gouges I have (6 total) 2 are identified as spindle gouges - the others are a question mark to me.  I think a bowl gouge has a much deeper flute than a spindle gouge but some of mine are hard to tell.  I'm attaching some pictures.  I think all of them are spindle gouges but I may be mistaken?

Any thoughts?  Once I know what I have we can discuss grinds

Thanks
Rick