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While there, I enjoyed "The Mad Scientiist Room" filled with all kinds of used and surplus lab equipment, a tinker's paradise. They also carry an impressive variety of optical gear and science projects.

If I was ever aware of that aspect of their history I've long ago forgotten it. It's no wonder that they grew into today's highly-respected scientific supply house. In recent decades a lot of scientific supply houses have fallen into disrepair. Fallout from the beginnings of the digital age. Most of them just ain't what they used to be.

I'm using a lot of old pieces of wood, and my tools often meets an hidden nail.[...] it's a pain in the ass to spend 20 minutes on one chisel to get a straight edge when it could take 30 sec on a dry grinder.

I'd like to have only one stone.

Sorry about the late response. I suppose by now you've chosen a stone. I would recommend the SG as it will be more versatile. I would also recommend keeping your dry grinder handy. I use mine often to remove lots of steel when necessary, such as when you you have a large gouge in a chisel, dipping the tool in water often to keep it cool. Then finish up on the Tormek.

Just as an example, when sharpening a mower blade I first clean it with a wire brush attachment on my dry grinder. Then I start to grind on the Tormek so I can observe the edge and see where large amounts of steel need to be removed. Then I move to the dry grinder to remove lots of steel. Then it's back to the Tormek to again observe the edge. I repeat this as many times as needed. It speeds up the process and saves wear on the expensive Tormek grindstone. Plus, the water from the Tormek keeps the blade cool.

My Tormek sits next to my dry grinder so it's easy for me to switch back and forth.

Rob,
  Good to hear from you and that you are doing well! Thanks for inquiring. I'm doing well. Have been staying busy with other things such as gardening, etc. Haven't used the Tormek for quite sometime. Have done a fair amount of chainsaw chain sharpening but that has slackened  off since my son got out of the tree service buisness.

Ken,
  Thanks for the message alert! It's a good thing that I had the password recorded as I didn't remember it.

Elden

Hi Elden. Good to know you are still around. Get that old Tormek out and freshen up the edges on your gardening tools. Even the lowly shovels and hoes benefit from a fresh edge. Roots are always getting in the way!

Herman,

Thanks for posting. I have always appreciated your mixture of an experienced college physics teacher and practical home shop workshopper.

Thanks, Ken. I don't know if I ever told you this. I think I recall correctly that as a youngster you were able to haunt the stockrooms of Edmund Scientific. I hope you realize what a special experience that was. Physics instructors have always held Edmund Scientific in the highest regard. Always providing quality equipment at fair prices. Their Astroscan teflecting telescope was an especially good contribution to the collection of equipment that any good teaching laboratory should have. That's a telescope we could lend to students with little fear of damage. I suspect you could drop it out of a moving vehicle on a country road and it wouldn't suffer any significant damage.

My apologies for hijacking this thread.

I prefer to sharpen towards the edge. It's faster and the homemade jig I have is easier to use that way. I never could free hand. Strange thing, my grandson has been watching me use my Tormek since he was a little boy. Now an adult, he can sharpen free hand using nothing but a stone and some lubricant.

I'm still here, Rob. I post occasionally. Haven't heard from Jeff or Elden in a long time. I won't be spending any more money on sharpening tools. The SuperGrind (T7) with my homemade jig makes it a breeze to sharpen knives. My "workshop" is my attached garage, just 5 steps out my kitchen door and I'm in front of my sharpening station. We have a modest collection of mid-priced kitchen knives that serve us well. The only thing I'm thinking of adding is a ceramic honing rod.

I do only a bit of woodworking these days. Mostly repairs. For example, recently built a couple of short sections of cedar fencing and a gate to complete a job that was mostly done by contractors we and the neighbors hired. My next project is to refurbish my tool shed doors with a bit of woodworking and some fresh paint. Since retiring a few years ago my interests have turned to things like pickleball.

I can't speak for chisels, but I experimented with a carbide knife. It was not real sharp out of the box, and it did not get much sharper after quite some work.

The way these seem to work is they have very hard bits of carbide bound together by some kind of cement. When you try to sharpen those with a diamond wheel, you grind the cement and tear the carbide bits off. That being said, it seems to me the overall geometry of the chisel striking end is of more consequence, function-wise, than the actual edge ? Or does a sharp edge have any hope of staying sharp past the few first strikes ?

Tungsten carbide steel is very hard, so it makes for a long-lasting and durable edge on a tool. But it is brittle. You cannot sharpen it to a fine edge because it so thin that it chips. You can notice this on new carbide tipped tools. Like the point on a carbide tipped circular saw blade has about a 70 degree bevel. Try to sharpen this to a more acute angle and chips will fall away from the tips.

For this reason, I've never seen or heard of a carbide steel knife. There are carbide tipped scribing tools that are used to scribe vinyl floor tiles, for example. When they get dull people usually just replace them with a new one.

I don't know if I can hammer the shaft to knock it through my black carbide wheel. I suspect the shaft diameter is reduced around the wheel and it would crack the wheel.

Yes, there's a huge danger of breaking the grindstone. I speak from experience. :-)

Considering it has very lite use I was surprised it needed truing

My grindstone did the same thing at first. I found that when I was sharpening knives I was applying more force to one side of the grindstone than the other.

The Tormek TS-740 Sharpening Station advertises "a work surface between 750 mm to 830 mm (29 3/4" and 32 2/3") in height".

Just continue to use your Tormek as usual. That little bit of zinc or aluminum won't hurt anything and will eventually be removed as you sharpen your tools, grade the grindstone, and true the grindstone.

TT-50 and shaped the stone with it. The stone did not keep the 90° angle of the grinding surface with its side, but the tool support was parallel with the stone in the horizontal position

That alone should be worthy of a replacement of the entire machine under warranty. I recommend you contact Tormek and ask about returning your machine for a warranty replacement.

What you've observed means the tool support is not parallel with the axis of rotation of the grindstone. Moreover, worse than not being parallel, they may askew, meaning they don't lie in the same plane. You will never get your chisels and plane irons square.

It could be that the support bar is bent, but that's easy enough to check if you have a carpenter's square and a flat surface. It could instead be that the sockets that hold the legs of the support bar are not aligned correctly.

After 20 years, I'm still using my upgraded T-2000 SuperGrind.

I made a platform that attaches to the base of the scissors jig. The scissors jig allows the platform to get a lot closer to the grindstone than the platform of the SVD-110. I use it to sharpen all my knives and anything else suited to it. I can sharpen knives ranging in size from pen knives to machetes.

If I'm having a sharpening session where I have several knives t sharpen, all at the same angle, I don't have to adjust the jig in between knives.

Does it help much in the end?
If you were to guess how many BESS points would drop?

Impossible to say, because it depends on too many other factors such as the type and condition of the steel and the edge.

Also, you might get it really sharp for showing off, but then when you go to use it, it can lose that keen edge quickly.