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While I don't have a skew as large as you gents are speaking of, I can't imagine it would be hard to make a wooden jig to handle such a skew. Just take two pieces of wood, cut a groove in one of them that fits the skew and holds the skew at the right angle vs the front edge of piece you are using, glue the other same size piece of wood on top and add a screw to lock the blade in place and away you go.

In the meantime, I'm not sure about 1 3/8" but you might just be able to fit your skew in the Tormek jig if you remove the little brass plunger on the end of the clamping screw. It's just held in place with an o-ring and see if you can squeeze the skew in that way. The end of the clamping screw is square so if the blade goes in with the screw fully retracted, it should clamp fine without the brass foot if you are careful. All the jig does is set the protrusion of the tool and hold it at the correct skew angle so it shouldn't be hard to rig something up.

Regards

Christian

Ed, the dealer issue is not as bad as it sounds... they did give me a great deal on the Tormek, it's more an issue of importer support as it's hard to get hold of someone that can handle the tech questions. As for the dealer, they only sell a few Tormeks a year, most are shipped out to other provinces.. I think there's only 3 or 4 that were sold to people in our city, thus the lack of familiarity with the tool by my dealer who does not stock the item.

As for the Knife jig, it looks like the casting itself is warped, no apparent damage to the box it was packed in and the jig itself is quite hefty so it would have taken a big hit to bend it.... I've seen these kinds of warps before in cast alloys.... they aren't machined after casting so there's always a chance of one being slightly warped as this one is. I will send it to the Tormek distributor for replacment.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards

Christian

Well, turns out that when I take the honing wheel off, the drive wheel runs within 0.015" which is of course quite good. When I assembled the unit the first time around, I had quite a bit of wobble in the leather honing wheel, so I used a few pieces of masking tape on the side of the drive wheel to shim it out enough to run fairly true. It was this masking tape shimming that caused the drivewheel to warp when the leather hone was installed. I have since removed the shim and after cleaning up the inside of the honing wheel (there were some remnants of plastic from the casting process and trying it in all the possible positions I got it running true enough to not be an issue anymore.

Thanks for the quick reply Jeff.

Christian

Ok, I have a couple of questions/issues with the two knife jigs.

1. The regular jig (narrow one) has a problem with heavy knives, ones that have a 3/16th thick spine. No problem opening the clamp far enough but the clamping knob is not long enough to properly clamp the knife. Thin knives are not a problem, I can keep the two clamp halfs parallel and use the knob to tighten. If the back of the knife gets thicker I have to use the clamp in a splayed out manner which makes it hard to keep the knife straight and also it does not clamp that securely. The short term fix in this case was to use the wide knife jig which seemed to be able to handle thicker blades.
I'm thinking I need to put a small disk inside the hole in the clamp where the screw pushes against as there is quite a deep hole there. It appears cast and not drilled so I don't think it was a manufacturing defect unless the mold wasn't filled properly. Anyone have any ideas?

2. My wide knife clamp has a curve in the main body part where the blade is clamped. This causes the blades of filleting knives and the like to bend slightly when clamped. I don't think this is right?!?! I've placed a shim made from 4 layers of masking tape and that stops the blade bending which makes it easier to get a nice even bevel on both sides...

Unfortunatly I couldn't buy my Tormek from Jeff as I live in Canada and I assume there is a territory issue so I had to go through a Canadian dealer/distributor but it's hard to get tech questions answered and I have no idea how long it might take to get warranty parts. The local dealer I got the Tormek from does not do any repair/warranty work. I've got a call in to them but so far no answers.....

Regards

Christian

How much side to side wobble is considered normal for the drive wheel on the Tormek? Mine is about 1/8th of an inch side to side which causes the honing wheel to wobble about the same amount. I've placed a few layers of masking tape on the low spot where one of the 3 "nubs" of the honing wheel contact the side of the drive wheel and that has reduced the wobble a fair amount but I'm thinking that this should not have been necessary.

Otherwise there is no problem with the drive train, lots of power if I keep the wheel and motor shaft clean.

Regards

Christian

Hi Bill, I'm no expert on the subject but I'm going to guess the solution is the same as with the other bowl gouge jigs that I have used.

You need to color the nose and the wing bevels with your sharpie, then set the side bevel or wing on the stone and adjust the tool rest in or out until the side of the gouge is grinding correctly.

Now put the nose on the stone and then adjust the jig angle to get  the nose portion to grind correctly.  At this point you'll need to go back and check the first setting again as the jig angle setting and tool rest setting interact with each other. Fine tune the tool rest distance for the wing and go back and double check the jig angle.

Of course there is one more variable and that is the protrusion of the gouge in the jig and there I would stick with the 65mm or about 2.5" as recomended by Tormek.

Hope this helps....

Chris