Messages

A couple of other thoughts, i appreciate it might be difficult to move the tormek but hopefully you have some help.

You already have a sharpening station, have you tried a tormek on it and seen roughly how much lower it needs to be to make it comfortable?

Also i have a nest of coffee tables which are all different heights but big enough to use a tormek on and wondered if you have anything like that you could experiment with?

Or if they are too low, try putting it on another chair seat, and adjust the working height by building it up with magazines.

I find it best to experiment with a mock up and the tormek doesnt need to be running so doesnt need water in the trough but that way you should be able to find your ideal working height based on your chair and your back height.

It wasnt my intention to make this thread sombre, but just to share why i eventually decided on a t4 and i have zero regrets about the descision i made.

30 minute cycle time. Hopefully tormek wont read this. When i first got my t4 i spent a couple of sessions of over a good three hours learning on some chisels. I then spent a similar amount of time next day working on plane blades. A few months later I then got the hand tool kits and spent a couple of days, again about four 3 hour sessions on knives, kitchen knives and lots of folding pocket knives and my bowie knife. I also use the scissor platform for freehand grinding of my marking knife and bradawl. A few months later i spent over four hours totally reshaping and sharpening my 2.5lb axe with 20" shaft. In between i have had the machine running for the occasional hour while honing.
I dont use this anywhere near monthly but when i do, it gets some serious running time as i like to spend time focussing on a single task. The only thing i think im noticing is the rubber on the rubber wheel is looking a bit sad and im not sure if this is due to running longer than 30 minutes or because its been stored in a unheated garage. However page 163 of the maual addresses this so im guessing its normal.

I hear what ken said about not letting cost be a factor but for me there was another consideration. As ken also says, Tormek is a long term investment and for me it was how much would i get out of it. Being retired i am not sure how many years i will still be using it particularly how frequently i would need to reshape my tools for once they have a good shape, excluding accidents they will only need frequent honing.  From a purely maths basis i could get a t4, se77, tt50 and htk hand tool kit for about the cost of a t8 and i would have everything i needed and more and that should comfortably see me out so couldnt justify getting a t8. Most of my current projects are for garden equipment so they are all rough sawn and never see a plane and only rarely need a chisel (mainly jigsaw, drill/screwdriver and sander)!
My only concern was the t4 meaty enough for my axe and yes it most certainly is.

If i were younger and building all our kitchen cupboards, making beds and a lot of other indoor furniture again, then i would certainly have gone for the t8 but as i only have a few carpentry projects lined up that require my hand tools, the compact t4 is ideal, despite now having a workshop!

I bought mine primarily for wood working tools but with an eye for knives and axe and possibly scissors and garden shears.
I didnt want to learn on my chisels and plane blades, my chisels are marples with boxwood handles and about 40 years old so i practised on the chisels i inherited from my father in law which are historic steel from firms that are no longer around, so they are good steel but the thing that i quickly learnt was that they were not square and i had to experiment with the jig to get a square edge. Stigs tip for alignment is good and i will revisit that as i ended up putting them in the centre with the centre line.

My kitchen knives are mainly sabatier type but from independent manufacturers but all with reasonable steel.

I am very interested in what responses you get from the assembled wisdom on this as i have a vague recollection that i had read somewhere when i was originally researching whether a t4 would be adequate, that you can only set the jig up to strop on a t8 and you cant on a t4 so ive only ever stropped free hand on my t4 and never attempted to set it up with a jig.  (But i cant find anything in the manual that indicates that i cannot use jigs for honing on a t4.)
Also the tormek guys in their videos always do it free hand so ive tried to get to grips with it that way.

I think you should get a truing tool so you know the stone is true. You need to take it over very slowly which minimises the fine lines but from my understanding it makes it a bit more coarse. And then get the surface nice and fine with the grader and you wont notice the lines.

Ikea do a range of colourful trays which are 33cm by 33cm which are just about right for a t4 (and a slightly larger boring one 32 by 53 cm). All very reasonably priced and quite good at catching water and honing paste drips. 🤫

I spent ages getting all my  knives into a good condition but as they weren't damaged or miss treated, they only needed the fine grit. Even an old bowie knife which id never sharpened in 50 years. 
i find i only need to use the honing wheel many times before they have to go back onto the sg200 wheel set at fine. As others have said, i only use the coarse for serious reshaping and removing chips (mainly on my axe and chisels) though i do use the soft side of the grader to give the stone a quick dress every now and then. But i do use the marker method so i know im only working on the existing angle of the kitchen and outdoor knives.

For the record:

I do not own an ax.

You are seriously missing out!

One of lifes little joys is wielding or carving with a really sharp axe.

;o)

Simply cannot have vertigo kick in with knife / axe / harpoon / spear / machete / sword in hand, while in both sudden and pure darkness.

Simple answer is to put ups on your lights then. Though you will still be plunged into darkness until the ups kicks in.

I dont leave tools plugged in when not in use (or my amps or desktop computers). I have circuit breaker but not used surge protection but i may have a project where i use the saws table for a few days and then not use it again for months. Same with tormek where i will have a number of sessions and concentrate on planes and knives or chisels but now most have a good shape, its mainly honing and i probably have about four sessions a year and im not doing proper carpentry at the moment. One day...

But if you have a number of units, use a surge protector extension flex you only have to pull out one plug.

Uninteruptable power, how important is it to have you machines working? Its certainly not an issue for me. But how long do you want the power for should there be an outage and for how many of your machines do you want to continue running? What other things need to be kept running as well? What is the historic frequency of outages and for how long where you are? Only you can decide what your prevention strategy needs to be, and you can always build in ups later when you have a better understanding of your risks and can do the calculations accurately.

I have read every post about the T4 since its introduction in 2014 and have never read a post about motor burnout.

Ken

I just wanted to share. My main concern over getting a t4 or t8 was whether the t4 would be big enough for some of my garden tools. My main interest was for a 20" 2.5lb axe which came with the title razorsharp but when received was anything but. I was persuaded that the t4 would be up to the job by reassurance from ken and the bushcraft video.

However, Having tried various methods to sharpen it and delayed till i got better skills with the tormek (as it has a fairly simple jig) i finally got round to reshaping the blade. It took about an hour. The motor was happy but im not so sure about the rubber on the drive ring.

More importantly i have just got back from doing several hours bush clearing in a church yard and im very pleased to say that the reshaping has transformed the axe. It was cheap so im fairly happy to abuse the head and it has suffered a few more nicks today from stones and the wall and got buried in soil a few times but it made short work of some thick holly and hazel that i couldnt use my saw on.

So im mega pleased with my decision on the t4 as it only gets used infrequently and is nice and small so takes up little space but is meaty enough for everything ive thrown at it. I have tt50, se 77 and the 806 hand tools kit so am well set up but have invested in a strop for final final honing of my carving knives. (Still havent tried my garden shears as that involves dismantling them but my bowie knife was never this sharp when i bought it 50 odd years ago for fishing.)

Sharpening a standard woodworking chisel, even one needing a lot of work, should require minutes, not hours.

This has been my experience, even with the tools i inherited after my father in law died.  His needed a bit of reshaping and i used the experience as practice to gain experience with the t4 before i tackled my box handled marple chisels and planes i had acquired over the years.

But this thread reminded me of a comment made in an early tormek video about a customer in switzerland and a broom handle.

I was browsing through some books and mora kept coming up so i purchased one. I found i the handle suited me so purchased a second. At a recent spoon carving course i found that they were using those for their students so have bought a third. Didnt like the axe they were using but talking to a number of people i eventually settled on a Gränsfors Bruk Kubben which suits my needs. Having done more on line research there seem to be loads of specialist makers and while pfiel do well for carving gouges, their knives dont get very good reviews. While top tens are useful to see whats out their, i tend to use that as my basis for research, especially when i cant handle them first.
While it is more expensive, im buying carving tools as i find i need them rather than getting a set but am very happy with mora laminated blades but while i have one stainless one, im now looking at hook knives with more specialised shapes and focusing more on carbon steel.

As with all answers it so depends on your level of need.

For years ive happily used a chefschoice for sharpening my kitchen knives for everyday normal family use.  I used an earlier 130 with three grades and it is very fast, it takes up virtually no space, no time to set up and about 5 minutes to get a really nice edge on the knife so it does a very good job on my reasonable quality domestic cooking knives and i can certainly tell when ive sharpened them. (Sabatier and kitchen devil type)

https://chefschoice.com/collections/electric-knife-sharpeners

However, since getting the t4 (with the hand tool kit, tt50 and se70) i have now started sharpening everything on this and while i was very satisfied with the chefs choice, the tormek takes sharpening to a new level and has enabled me to sharpen my other knives from folding pocket ones to bush craft and carving ones in addition to my kitchen knives. The main difference between the tormek and the chefs choice is that i am finding im using more plasters from accidental nicks to my fingers since using tormek! I dont notice any difference when Preparing meat and veg.

Not to mention my woodworking and garden tools (i have a 2.5lb spear and jackson razorsharp axe that i can actually get as sharp as its title! That was the one tool i was worried would be too big for the t4 and i would regret not going for the t8. The t4 is quite up to the task and certainly no toy.)