Messages

Heli-Guy.  It looks from the photo that you have an asymmetric knife.  As you may have figured out, these knives are ground for use with one hand and not the other.  As you hold the knife and look down on it, if the bevel is on the right side, it is a right handed knife.  It will push the sliced material to the right. 

As others have mentioned, many of these knives were meant to be sharpened on true, flat water stones.  The angle when using water stones varies but most are 11 to 15 degrees per side.  Shun knives are 16 degrees. 

Recommend that you do yourself a favor and find out how the knife was sharpened.  If it was a very low angle, like 11 degrees, learn how to sharpen with it with water stones. It's fun and you will get a wonderful edge.  Please don't screw up your knife by trying to grind a bevel on it.  I see this all the time.

Great idea on the extra extra coarse diamond plate for 'stone maintenance'. I'm going to give it a try.  Thanks!

Would appreciate your feedback. 

Over the last 18 months of using my T8 professionally, I find that the SG wheel glazes fairly fast when using the stone grader to knock the wheel down to a finer grit.  Of course it depends on the type of knife steel. Softer steels glaze more quickly and using the coarse side of the stone grader to clean it up doesn't help much. 

  I get the best results when I use the wheel after after trueing and leaving it coarse.  I simply spend a little more time honing but I get a nice edge and the wheel doesn't glaze.  What are all of you finding?  Am I doing something wrong? Or are you having the same results?  I guess I'm just not thrilled with the stone grader.  And I'm certainly not going to switch back and forth in coarseness when I've got 20 knives in front of me and customers waiting. 

Thanks, Ken, for the tip.  I'm pretty quick with setting up the jigs. I have my own system but will look at Rich's jig.

I'm still toying with getting a diamond wheel for my T8.  Of course for a few more $$ I can get a whole T2, with diamond wheel, and use that for my busy days. 

Thanks again. 

I'm wonder if Tormek plans to offer a T2-type knife guide for the T8??   Think about it for high volume knife sharpeners.... put a diamond or CBN wheel on the T8, add the T2 guide and you're ready for sharpening at the farmers market.  No fooling with jigs or verifying angles.  Just saying. 

Hello All.  I have a Tormek T8 which started me in the sharpening business 18 months ago. I'm becoming reasonably successful.   My SG stone is wearing to the point where I need to think about replacing it soon.  Here's the question: should I buy Tormek's diamond wheel?  If so, what is the best all around grit?  I'm assuming DF (fine). 

For background, I am a mobile sharpener.  As I occasionally work farmers markets and other events, speed is important.  More than half of my work is higher end kitchen knives with decent quality steels. Quality of the final edge is important to me.  I like the fact that the diamond stone doesn't need to be trued or graded, and the diameter remains constant.   The question I have is will the diamond wheel outlast the SG wheel?  In other words, is it good value for a professional sharpener?   Thank you in advance.