Messages

Spot on, Ken, as always.

One of the main reasons I hesitated for such a long time before purchasing a Tormek was because I was not sure a machine could sharpen a blade up to my standards, nor that it would keep doing so reliably and consistently. Im pretty sure some of my doubts could have been dismissed with the help of some more good, deep, detailed videos. So I can easily see how these videos would not only be benefitial for the community as a whole, but could also draw new Tormek owners to the community.

On a side note: Middle coarseness grades? Please elaborate, I think I'm over-smoothing my stone when grading it and it ends up removing almost no metal at all. You see? Better videos would have made me aware of this possibility before seen it in a forum: you are right again!

Welcome, Marc

The more, the merrier!

Daniel,

You remind me of the old Vermonters who used to have a cord or two of firewood on the porch at the end of winter.   

Ken
[/quote]

Hahaha, yes, somehow with a few things I'm a bit of a hoarder. I bought the CrOx a year ago because it was too cheap to resist and it gives me hair-shaving results when hand sharpening. I wasn't planning on purchasing a Tormek, I'd had bad experiences in the past with a not so cheap wet grinder. It's part of my personal grudge on cheap tools, or should I say, part of an internal struggle: I know cheap tools end up costing me more money, time and resources than proper tools, but I'm too stubborn and skinny to change!

I was just trying to warn others against going that way, sorry if it didn't come up like that. English is not my first language and long posts make me feel guilty of deviating the main topic and boring others

Ken,

Absolutely, Wootz's logic is very sound. After all, polishing compounds are just very fine abrasives, so his recommendations make perfect sense. I was just surprised that the CrOx worked at all, I thought it would struggle, and certainly didn't expect it to work so fast. Since I have about 1kg of that compound laying around it is good to know it will do in an emergency, if I run out of PA-70 and notice it too late.

Hello SADW!

Honestly, I'm confident Tormek staff and this forum admins wouldn't mind if I mentioned the brand and model: after all, calling those things "clones", "copies" or "competition" is stretching the meaning of all those 3 words too far. But I didn't because they deserve no publicity at all.

My T-8 is a beautifully engineered piece of quality equipment, very rugged but very refined, that performs flawlessly giving me professional results all the time, made in Sweden by a company that apparently loathes programmed obsolescence (c'mon, they deserve a hug for this alone ). Those guys seem to be doing their job responsibly, efficiently, professionally and even ethically.

I can't say any of those things about the "competition". 'nuff said?

Very interesting topic!

Vitaliki, since the Tormek machine is doing all the hard work for you, and doing it really fast, I see no reason for an intermediate grit between 800 and 4000. It shouldn't pose the slightest challenge to eliminate 800 grit scratch marks using a 4000 stone. Working with a Tormek is a very different process from hand sharpening. I see where you are coming from, as it would be highly benefitial to have an intermediate grit if we were doing it by hand with bench stones and maybe a honing guide, speeding up the process and sharing wear amongst many different stones, but it doesn't work the same way with a Tormek. If anything, I would say you would lose more time switching yet another wheel than spending an extra 5-10 seconds on a 4000 wheel.

cbwx34, I think he is talking about some japanese waterstone wheels made by the same company that makes the King bench stones, can't remember its name right now. I have seen them on some webs sold as compatible for Tormek and many other clones. They are sold in those 2 grits, 800 and 4000. I have a King 4000 bench stone and I love it above any 6000+ stone, but the logic behind an 800 grit wheel goes beyond me - King stones have a reputation for being soft, and rightly so. I can imagine a Tormek wheel made of that material would be a nightmare to maintain true and would not last for long either.

Ken, I think I may have found a method to grade the stone even faster, but I am not sure it is giving me the intended results. I found out partly thanks to a Jeff Farris video: I saw him holding the stone grader by one extreme and applying the other against the wheel, instead of holding it with both hands and applying pressure with the middle area of the grader between the hands. When I first saw him I thought it made perfect sense, since the stone grader will dish with use, it seems logical to use the new high points to ensure contacting the wheel everywhere. Hopefully you follow me so far and even do the same already.

Now the interesting part of holding the grader with one hand and applying pressure with the other is that the hand holding the grader has a very accurate control of the angle at which the grader "rests" on the stone. By applying small amounts of force upwards or downwards with that hand I can actually SEE where the high points of the grader are abrading the stone, leaving a sort of a cloudy trail behind. Once I have seen that white-ish trail on an area of the stone for a full revolution or two, I slightly vary pressure upwards or downwards to hit other areas. Once I have hit the whole stone I am done, it might take me 20-30 seconds, possibly even less.

The results are quite impressive in some ways: The texture of the stone becomes so smooth it hardly removes any metal anymore. There is almost no noise when the blade hits the stone. It feels like a completely different wheel, but I think the scratch marks are still too wide to be considered anything close to 1000 grit. In fact, I would say they look the same as when the stone is rough graded for 220. If anything, I can see the bevel becoming shinier as a whole, but those wide scratches still concern me.

Ken,

A good friend of mine dropped by my workshop today and brought a ridiculously cheap Tormek clone. He is a furniture making teacher but everything is done with routers and big machines these days so he has little to no use for it. He was curious on how my T-8 compared to his since I spoke so highly of my Tormek and he has had horrible experiences with his clone.

No surprises here: cheap and completely out of true stone stone wobbling all over the place, chassis made of plastic, JOKE of a square edge jig... Looks more like a toy than a tool, but I noticed his leather wheel was green, asked him and yup, that was chromium oxide. Since I dont want to contamine my leather wheel with different abrasives, this was my chance to try it.

The CrOx seems to work perfectly fine, I was very surprised there was no burr left on my chisel though I have to confess his leather wheel is bigger (226mm) and spins faster than the T-8. It might not be so efficient and fast on the T-8...

I tried to help my friend by truing his stone, luckily the support is compatible with the TT-50, but the square edge jig is beyond repair, actually more like "defective by design", so after messing with the whole thing for a couple of hours I gave up. I told him he could buy a Tormek SE-77 but he insists he has too little use for it to care. So now I have 2 machines at my workshop

Now I can't stop thinking of ordering an SJ-200. Does that sound overkill?

Ken,

Glad that you liked them. The second one might seem a bit boring and slow at first, but it was an absolute revelation to me when I saw it first some years ago. It completely transformed my working methods and the ripples of it still affect my workshop distribution and even future plans!

Jeff,

I wouldn't use the TT-50 truing tool to clean the stone, that is mostly meant to make the stone paralell and true to the universal support and solving other issues that may develop as your stone gets used. It is also a relatively slow process that will dwarf your stone by a few milimeters.

The SP-650 stone grader is meant for that precise task, cleaning the wheel so you can keep sharpening, plus it will also allow you to rectify the surface of the stone between 220 and 1000 grades so you can reshape (220) or sharpen (1000) a bevel.

I do not have experience sharpening aluminium on the Tormek, but if it is anything like what happens with files then it will clog very fast. No issue, though: just as you would quickly use a brush on your file to get rid of the aluminium particles clogging it, same story with the stone grader.

Still, it would be wise to wait for an answer from someone more experienced than me

Rich,

Nope, I dressed all my chipbreakers before acquiring my T-8. Even so, I would probably still do it by hand, since the amount of metal you have to remove is so minimal we could be talking here about "resharpening your chipbreaker" or polishing it instead of sharpening. Sure, if you have an old chipbreaker that is all battered and dinged go ahead and tormek it, Just be careful because it is too easy to remove too much metal and ruin your chipbreaker.

Also, note that polishing the leading edge of the chipbreaker with CrOx or similar compounds might sound overkill, but in my short experience it does look as if it reduces the amount of gummy residue stuck to it.

The only handycap I have found so far is that I am becoming lazy and forgetting to read grain direction before planing LOL!

I could say many things regarding cap iron dressing, but others have said it much better before:

https://vimeo.com/126307973

It works for me, and surely for you too. If you are interested on knowing why:

https://vimeo.com/158558759

My chipbreakers are almost as sharp and polished as my blades. I'm a very happy man since I found out

Thanks, Herman. It's true, I could do it by hand, but I prefer to stay away from free hand sharpening for a while. I have had a few issues in the past, like rounding the edge while stropping too enthusiastically in a hurry, or progressively increasing the angle and convexity of the bevel when resharpening or doing quick touch-ups. But yes, in the future I will become more confident with the machine and will likely skip that step.

Funnily enough, I only have issues with my modern alloy blades. Classical Stanley/Record blades are a joke to sharpen by hand (to me, at least) and done so quickly it's not worth the time to put them into the tormek jig (with the exception of heavy cambered blades, those are always a joy to sharpen on the T-8)

Thanks, cbwx...

Please correct me if I'm wrong, This info is copypasted from official tormek web on T-8 specs:

Leather Honing Wheel: ∅ 220×31 mm (8 5/8"×1¼")

But I have measured mine and its actually closer to a diameter of 21cm than 22cm as stated. Since the anglemaster has a notch for the LA-220 at 220mm, wouldn't this mean I am already microbeveling the edge of my blades when using tormek recommended settings? I suppose it would make sense because, if anything, you wanna make sure that you hit the edge of the bevel rather than the heel when polishing, but too much if it could create issues. Add to this the suppleness of the leather and I can see how I could be actually sharpening at a higher degree than intended.

For my peace of mind, please tell me I got it all completely wrong. No mercy, I love to be shown how ignorant I am... means there is something new to learn

Thank you, Elden

I think wootz post answers my question pretty much and lines up with what I expected. It may be too big of a jump of grits to be time-efficient.