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I was wondering if anybody has tried replicating the Stuart Batty 40/40 grind using the Tormek.  If anybody has successfully accomplished this what are the jig settings used?

I've seen posts about Honerite, but when did rusting become a problem with water sharpening?  Or is the problem the steel CBN wheels?

I have been using a Tormek since 1999 sharpening chisels, plane irons, scissors, woodturning tools, and even a small hatchet.  Before that I used diamond "stones" in water to sharpen woodworking hand tools.  I've never seen anything rust from using plain water, but then again I don't let the tools sit in water for days.  I imagine that if rusting from using water while sharpening was actually a problem then perhaps the Tormek never would have gotten out of the starting gate.

BTW, I use a 1000 grit aluminum CBN wheel from Woodturners Wonders in plain water for most of my sharpening in addition to using the standard gray stone and the Blackstone wheel for faster sharpening on HSS turning tools.  The CBN wheel is specifically designed for use on the Tormek ... it is 10" diameter X 2" wide and has a 1" sidewall with CBN abrasive.  The bore is 12 mm.  I bought it while at the SWAT symposium where they had a special show discount price.

I'll answer my own question from the original post, now that I have some experience with the grinder jig. It turns out that a Norton 46-grit aluminum oxide wheel is working just fine for me for woodturning tool shaping. On my setup (see my post 6/16 for pictures), it's easy to switch from one side of the grinder to the other without losing adjustment, so when I'm done shaping I switch to the Norton 80-grit wheel on the other side to smooth the big scratches out a bit before I take it over to the Tormek wet grinder to finish things up and do the honing.

Tom

Tom, I am glad that you have everything well in hand.  I attended a Bonnie Klein demo many years ago and she is a wonderful person and an outstanding turner and teacher.  While the white wheels do shed a lot of grit, they work far better than the gray wheels and generate far less heat although tool steel can still be burned by the white wheels.  While burning isn't an issue with the Tormek, edge retention is still very poor compared to HSS.  However, don't toss them out because when you need a very sharp edge that doesn't need to last long, they are just the right tool for a very keen edge.

Sergio, the CBN wheel might be stainless.  A magnet is not a reliable test because many SS alloys are magnetic.  You would need to check with the manufacturer to determine whether it is stainless.

Like any other jig for turning tools, the jig only controls the angle of the edge and not the shape.  It is something that new turners encounter whether using the Tormek or a dry grinder.  It help to have someone show you the fundamentals of controlling the shape of a turning tool.

Use the long knife jig for fillet knives and the regular knife jig for small knives like pocket knives.  Actually, I usually free hand sharpen my pocket knife.  You will find that going from a belt sander to a Tormek is like going from a Yugo to a Lamborghini.

The new truing tool has the advantage of requiring less fiddling and futzing to get it set up to true the stone.  I started out with the old tool which works just fine and then bought the new tool a few months ago.  The thing that I like about it is that the set up is so quick and easy.  The screw with the copper plug that holds the diamonds is the same, so I have salvaged that part from the old one in case I ever need to replace the one on my new tool.  I will probably go through a few grinding wheels before I reach that point.

I don't understand this voting system -- looks like some sort of hanging chad to me.

I can't make up my mind whether to vote for #1 or #1  -- they are so much alike that it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Just put me down to be in favor of #1.

I am in agreement with Jeff.  It is obvious that the stone needs to be trued up as the first step before doing anything else.  I am not familiar with the T3 so I can't say how sturdy it might be in comparison to the T7 /2000 models, but not much pressure should be necessary, but if the guide bar is flexing under a few ounces of pressure, it could be a problem.  My guess about the amount of force that I am using for plane irons is about half a pound.  A properly graded stone should be doing most of the work and not you.  If you are applying really heavy pressure then that could be a part of the problem.

I believe that you mentioned in a previous post that you have not used the truing tool yet to get the grinding stone trued up.  I cannot overemphasize the importance of that step.  If you are skipping that part of the set up, then you will never get satisfactory results.  If you decide that you need the 2000 or T7, you will still need the truing tool, so it would not hurt to at least verify whether the T3 is going to work for you.  I have never even seen a T3 so I can't say anything specific about it -- all of my experience is with the 2000 which is the predecessor to the T7.  I upgraded my 2000 last week to be essentially the same as the T7 by getting the new redesigned horizontal base.  Now, I just need to find some blue paint and new decals    just kidding -- I like my green machine.

BTW, the bar and the vertical support are both steel and not aluminum on the 2000/T7.  The horizontal bracket is aluminum, but is heavy duty and is not going to flex unless the proverbial 800 pound gorilla gets ahold of it.

One other thought is to use a black marking pen on the bevel before honing so that you can check that you are honing at the correct angle.  Setting the angle on the honing wheel works the same way as it does with the grinding stone.  You should be getting full bevel contact.

My first guess was going to be that you might be rounding over the edge on the leather honing wheel.  Now, I lean more towards thinking that you may not have used the smooth side of the stone grader or perhaps the grinding wheel is dished out so that when you grade it, only part of it is being graded to the fine grit -- when the stone grader gets old and nearly worn out, it will be badly rounded over and not easily make contact with the entire wheel when you are trying to grade it smooth -- and, if the grinding wheel is dished out in the center from sharpening all of your bowl gouges, the problem of grading it becomes even worse.  The bevel of the tool should be essentially polished when it comes off the grinding wheel after using the stone grader to give it a fine grit finish.  Another possibility is that you may be using too much pressure when doing the final bit of sharpening and causing deep scratch marks in the bevel.  When I first started using my Tormek about seven  years ago (it sounds like we bought ours around the same time), I thought that it was smart to polish the bevel until it would shine like a mirror.  I learned from Jeff Ferris at a later WW show that I was honing way too much.  While a mirror finish looks cool, it is not a good idea.  The object of honing is NOT to shine up the bevel, but to refine the cutting edge of the bevel.  That essentially means removing the wire edge and not much more than that.  Although I miss being able to see my reflection in the bevel, I now realize that I was being rather anal about the whole thing and that the honing process should only take a few seconds -- maybe 15 seconds -- 20 seconds max.  Anything beyond that is just going to cause your tool's nice sharp edge to go downhill.

Machinists use a calibrated granite block to check for straightness and flatness, but if you have granite counter tops or other counter tops that you trust to be very flat then you can remove the shaft and roll it gently on the flat surface to see if it is straight.  If you have a high quality straight edge such as a Starrett ground straight edge you could also use that, but it would be more difficult to keep things lined up correctly.  As Mr. Farris said, a crooked shaft is highly unlikely.  But, even with a perfectly straight shaft, the bushed hole through the stone is not absolutely perpendicular to the side.  Since none of the jigs are designed to sharpen anything against the side of the stone, there is no reason anyway for the sides to run perfectly true.  Regardless of how close to perfectly perpendicular the alignment of the side of the stone, once you true the grinding surface (i.e., the outside diameter of the stone) using the diamond truing tool, the grinding surface will then run perfectly smoothly without any bumps or weaving.  I think that you may possibly have gotten fixated on what is going on with the side of the wheel, but it has no relationship to the perimeter surface that is used for tool sharpening (for that matter, it could be scalloped or fluted or just rough and uneven since it is not even a part of the big picture).  Sometimes this point is hard to envision for those who are not familiar with machining or who are not woodturners.  But, first true up the stone if it needs it and then give it a try and I think you will see this a bit more clearly as reading text in a forum posting are often inadequate to explain complex things sufficiently.

If you have a dial indicator, you could attach it to one of the fixtures that mount on the guide bar and then take readings at various wheel rotation angles and at different points across the grinding surface of the stone (Just make sure that you lift the indicator from the stone when rotating it  ).  For sharpening plane irons and other wide cutting edges like that, the most important parameter is the side-to-side variation so that the tool doesn't develop a skew angle.  But, as I mentioned previously, slight eccentricity in the wheel diameter is much less of a problem.  Both of those issues are resolved by using the diamond truing tool on the stone.

I have sharpened everything from planer and jointer blades to scissors, knives, plane irons, chisels, and woodturning tools.  About the only thing that I have not sharpened is carving tools -- yet -- but, I have started carving so it won't be long until I do that too.  I am very meticulous about getting tools sharpened exactly right and the Tormek has worked extremely well for me.  Did I mention that I can see a very slight amount of weaving on the side of the stone on my machine?  It doesn't make any difference in its performance.  The only things that I do on the outside flat surface of the stone is lap the faces of tools like chisels, plane irons, and woodturning scrapers before I sharpen them.  The outside face is as flat as you could expect to find on any grinding stone -- and since I am hand holding the face of the tool against the stone as it turns, the fact that it is moving about a millimeter side-to-side doesn't make any difference.

I have used a Tormek for more than seven years and from your descriptions of the problems that you are having, I would definitely say that the wheel is out of round.  Have you used the diamond truing tool to get the stone perfectly round, yet?  That is an important step in getting your machine set up to run true.  Just as most cutting tools are not sharp when you buy them, the grinding stone is not perfectly round when you buy it -- but, even if it were, it has to be trued up to match your particular machine because the guide bar will have a slightly different alignment on every machine -- even though it is just a very small fraction of a degree of alignment difference, you still must tune the stone to your machine.  The fact that you are getting skewed bevels on plane irons is pretty clear evidence of that unless you are not squaring the end of the iron first and then mounting it correctly in the fixture before beginning.

Once the outside of the stone has been trued, what difference does it make that the side had a slight side-to-side movement?  The stone is not loose -- it is just the slight angular misalignment of the bushing through the stone that produces the eccentric motion, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the grinding surface where you sharpen the planar blades.

As far as the very slight side to side misalignment of the leather honing wheel is concerned -- that is even less significant than your concern about the grinding wheel because the leather surface is soft and compliant so that it will deform under the pressure of the edge being honed.

By the way, if you do the trigonometry, you will find that even with a slightly out of round stone with an eccentricity of 1 mm, the effect that it has on the tool bevel angle is unmeasurable without laboratory instruments capable of measuring at the milliradian level.

BTW, the poor quality of the videos especially being out of focus and not using a tripod with the camera jerking all around makes it impossible to ascertain anything useful from them.

I tried the tape for a while, but I like to clean the tray outdoors with a high pressure nozzle on the garden hose and the tape just wasn't up to that sort of treatment.  I like this method because it is permanent and I have been using it this way for more than five years without any problem.

I actually like the magnet on the bottom with the arrangement that I have.  The thickness of the Goop "spacer" allows the tray to hold onto the frame, but with nowhere near the amount of grab that direct contact would have.  Just a few ounces of force is all that is needed to make it release.

About half of my bowl and spindle gouges are powdered metal and about three of them also have been cryo treated.  I use the standard stone and see no difference in the time that it takes to resharpen any of them compared to the standard M2 HSS.  Usually, two or three quick passes across the face of the tool  and a couple wipes on the leather honing wheel which takes less than a minute total time is all that it takes to get back to the lathe and continue turning.  If I were sharpening tools that had very large area bevel surfaces in contact with the stone, then I might consider the silicon carbide stone, but the only time that it would be necessary on turning tools would be for shaping.  On the rare occasions that I shape a tool, I go to my dry grinder and let the dust fly.