Topics

Hello Everyone,

- Make sure the stone is true and soaked, let the machine run until the water in the tray remains at the same level if the wheel was completely dry.
- Lower the tray so the stone will not be touched by water.
- Dress/grade your stone, the dressing is much faster as the stone particles will help the process.
- Put your tool on the stone and grind/sharpen. There is enough water on the stone without being in permanent contact with it. The best stone product, the slurry, remains on the stone and helps the process.
- Use your common sense and don't let the water disappear completely from the stone, after a minute or so of grinding lift the tray enough to have the stone flushed and then lower it back.
- Repeat the process if needed until your grinding/sharpening is done. For touch-ups the process is very fast, you don't need to wait a minute.

Good luck and al the best,
Ionut

Hi All,

Based on the latest posts regarding this subject, I was thinking this improvised setting may help people who want to sharpen free hand small blade knives.
The link below should take you to the site that contains three pictures. If you are not able to see the pictures please let me know. As you see the idea is very simple and eassy to put in practice. You will need though either a Tormek tool rest (SVD 110 I believe) or the base of the scissors jig, I believe that could be used in the same way. The small wooden extension is something that I had handy and I could play with but you can use anything that would be stiff enough to do the same. I guess a piece of aluminum 5052 3/16 thick would be just perfect, but any hard wood would do it. The first 2 pictures show the extension mounted on the tool res and the third one is not that important but people may be interested in, the bevel I've cut. The only measuring device needed is the eye, the bevel on the back of the extension should be just enough to allow you to get as close as possible to the stone.
The way to use it is first you mount the tool rest and set the angle (15- 20 or whatever you want) in regards to the tool rest. Then you extend out the universal support just enough to give you clearance and base for the new extension and for your hands while sharpening. You then use any small clamp to attach the extension. Needless to say that the piece of wood need to be milled with parallel faces if you expect some precise angle setting.
I believe any similar ideas would work just fine. An important thing is that the thickness of the wood will influence the bevel angle as the initial measurement is made in report to the tool rest so you would have to account for that or if you want you can just set the angle against the extension itself. I believe you could use the same principle to grind against the edge if you prefer, when is about free hand I prefer grinding away from the stone, it is safer and I have more control as the sharpening process is less aggressive. To have enough clearance I wouldn't make the extension wider than the stone.

http://cid-bc168f3568163031.photos.live.com/play.aspx/Tormek%20-%20small%20blade%20rest?Bsrc=EMSHOO&Bpub=SN.Notifications

Note: The measurement of the angle should be done only with the extension mounted. Any movement of the universal support after that would lead to a different angle.

Thanks,
Ionut

A friend of mine asked me to sharpen a couple of sets of 12" planer knives. The first set was done on the original Tormek stone and the condition of the blades was very bad, after a couple of sharpening session done by a professional company not only the amount of steel removed was huge, but the angles were not consistent anymore and the blades were looking like coming from different machines. So the first set was done on the original stone and given the condition of the blades and the thickness it took me longer than I expected and it ate a fair amount of the stone so I decided to get the black stone which was on my list for a pretty long time.
The second set of blades was even worse than first one, one of the blades was all wavy on the top of all other defects. I trued the stone immediately after installation, the stone was parallel with the universal support as it came but it was a bit out of round. After 1/12th of the depth cut the stone was perfect for starting grinding. After setting up the planner jig I have finished both blades in a third of the time compared with the first set on the original stone and the through didn't have much of the stone in it but the magnet had a bubble of steel on it the size of half of a gold ball.
After that I've tried it on some carbon steel chisel from the same source and in very bad shape as well. The story is completely different, as expected the grinding action on high carbon steel is less efficient than the original stone, in fact is less efficient than my Japanese 800 stone, but the black stone was meant for HSS and special steel alloys so I didn't expect to be fast. In my case the grinding action on high carbon steel of the black stone was comparable with the original stone when graded to 1000. it acted more like a glazed stone. It looks like the scratch pattern as it comes after truing is finer than the scratch pattern of the original stone in the same condition.
It can be efficiently graded but this stone will wear the coarse side of the stone grader as well.
I have removed lots of steel on those two planner blades to bring them in perfect condition and the wear characteristics of the stone are excellent, as well as the speed so if you have to sharpen HSS planer or jointer knives  or other HSS blades I think it is a smart investment, it will work much better and you will keep the original stone for much longer.

Ionut

Hi Everyone,

This is a continuation of the " longer threaded pins for SE-76" thread.
If anyone wants to sharpen their heavy mortise chisels with not many headaches and you still own the SVH-60 don't throw it away and if you don't have one get one, there must be dealers or distributors still having them hidden in some corners or someone who upgraded and does not use the old one anymore.
I got one yesterday and successfully used on a chisel that has 1/2" at the place of clamping and I didn't even had to change the set screws. If the chisel is even heavier than that in the area where is getting clamped like the Ray Iles ones changing the set screws with longer ones would allow anyone to sharpen the chisels properly. You may still not have to change the set screws for Ray Iles mortise chisels but I am not sure as I don't own any.
I've promise a picture but I didn't get one yet and it is pretty straight forward. If anyone is still interested to see it working first I could take a picture one of these days.

Ionut

Hi Jeff,

Does Tormek have any replacement for the SE-76 threaded pins with longer ones, or maybe optional ones? That would allow clamping of thicker mortise chisels. Right now I am using a non-Tormek clamp and grinding away from the edge and I would prefer to use the SE-76 for these chisels. I think 1/4" longer would just be perfect.

Thanks,
Ionut

Very late last night I just wanted to put a nice edge on two chisels, to have them ready for today, a 1/2 Hirsch on 20 degrees and a 3/4" Japanese chisel on 30. I don't count anymore how much it takes, it's fast, so in few minutes I had both chisels helping me count the threads of my fur face in their perfect shine. As usual I test the edges after I finish sharpening even though I don't know anymore why, and because I lost all my arms hair due to this sharpening disease, I took a small piece of alder I use for clamping, about 1/2" thick 2 wide and probably 4 long, clamp it and start slicing the end grain. Up to this point everything seemed to be ok, but after feeling the steel edge getting in the wood and leaving a fine shiny finish I couldn't stop, I sliced that end grain in every imaginable way and after about two inches of slicing I was like possessed luckily I didn't start screaming, I would have ended arrested. I stopped after another half inch because I've reached to the bench top. I had to kick my own arse out of the shop...
Is the Tormek insured for liability?

Ionut,

PS - today both chisels performed flawlessly...

Hi Jeff,

I am looking for a better and faster dressing option for the 220 wheel. For the 1000 and 4000 grit wheels I use a DMT 325 mesh plate that I clamp in a second straight jig and in between sharpening sessions I quickly clean/dress the wheels also keeping the grinding surface of the wheels in perfect parallelism with the universal support.\I am doing the same with the 220 but I was only able to get a 220 (6"X2") that would fit in the straight jig and that is too soft, for the wheel, it does the job but it wears out pretty fast. I talked with DMT and they only have the 120 mesh on the 8X3 inches format which is too thick and wide to get in the straight jig. And to get the same grit in a 6X2 I would have to order an entire 16 pieces at least batch as they don't have the production set for it.
Do you know any other source for a diamond dressing plates that could fit what I need?
I know I can use the tt-50 but using my way I can quickly clean and dress the surface in the same grinding session with minimal stone removal and fast/excellent results and I don;t have to change any setting to the universal support to use the TT-50.
I don't like to use the grading stone, it is for grading and not dressing, mine already has no more flat surfaces left that I can use and I don't use to grade my stone anymore, it brings my stone out of square and I already have a 1000 stone.

Thanks,
Ionut

Hi Everybody,

The manual suggests for the truing not going slower than 90 seconds, but even though I never measured the time I was always on the limit where the diamond head starts vibrating and even though the wheel was true round the surface was never how I would like to have it. And this happens because of the diamond housing which in my opinion has a huge amount of play that helps with those ugly vibrations that in turn will make those ugly grooves appear and at the end of the truing we need to use the grading stone to smooth the surface of the stone. More than that when the diamond exits on the opposite side very often chips the side of the stone, sometime pretty ugly if the stone has a low spot there.
There is a simple way to eliminate those vibrations. follow the normal truing procedure but after you lock the TT50 on the universal support, take a long enough electrical tie put it through the diamond housing and wrap it all over the to part of the TT50 as it is mount it. You only need to tie it moderately, enough to back up the diamond housing to it's riding platform and to allow you to easily rotate the knobs. This will drastically reduce the vibrations or eliminate them so you can take the time to true the stone even for 10 min if you need a nice surface.
For 1000 or 4000(Tormek) stones the TT50 had destructive results because the stones are much softer and the first time I used it on the 4000 to do the first truing the opposite edge ended like a 5tpi handsaw. The surface of these stones get badly grooved even though I never user more than a 1/12 of a turn when adjusting the depth and I always started the first cut at 0. And by the time when I was cleaning the grooves with the grader the stones were out of square again.
For these finer stones you can use to cleanup a 6" by 2" DMT diamond (220 or 325 mesh) stone clamped in the square jig and apply very light pressure. In fact between sharpening when using finer stones I use this method to cleanup and flatten the grinding surface of the stone about 50 times until I will use the TT50 again to make sure the wheel is not out of round. More than that this cleaning procedure will keep the surface of the stone always parallel with the universal support.
It could be great if Tormek will make an optional silicon grading stone for dressing and cleaning that could be clamped in the square jig so the stone would not get out of square like when in use freehand.

Ionut

Japanese wheels

I've got converted from the manual sharpening to the motorized version because of the time required to put a sharp edge on my tools. I was very happy with the manual method but it required me to move my bottom from the dovetails or whatever I was doing to the sharpening stone collection and I was never been happy to interrupt my work knowing that it takes a while until the things get how I like them. To make the story short I ended with my Tormeks. I am happy with them and they do a good job,  the best thing about them is the speed of sharpening, now it is not hard for me to interrupt my work to put a nice edge on the tool I use because it takes me just a couple of minutes in average and I always have in short time a perfect edge when I need it.
There is still a problem, I found that my edges even though very sharp they don't last as long as when I was sharpening the manual way and I have the explanation too, the so called 1000 grit in my opinion is far from it. If you compare the scratch patterns between the Tormek wheel graded at 1000 and an actual 1000 stone there is a huge difference, and if you add a magnifier glass everything gets amplified. I've tried hardly to grade the stone to get closer results to the real 1000 I pressed the grader so hard I stalled the motor and the best thing I've done when pressing so hard and for long time was to untrue my wheel.
Using a 4000 Japanese stone the Tormek version SG250 for a secondary micro bevel improved a lot the amount of time the edge remained sharp, but I still was not where I wanted.
I got an aftermarket 800 Japanese stone and now I am tempted to change my occupation from "wooder" to "sharpener". All my bevels now are looking as they were before and the big difference is the edge stays as when I was using the manual version to sharpen my tools. As an example I had to make 16 scarf joints 3/4X4'  fir and I've used tenoned dovetails for that. The tools I used were a rabbet plane, a router plane and a1/4" and 1" Japanese chisels. The rabbets were 1.5" wide and 3/8" deep, anyways I've made 15 with no re-sharpening of any tool, I still have one to finish. Maybe the rabbet plane blade needs a bit of touch up but I know for sure I can finish the 16th one without that.
Most of my sharpening goes on a main bevel established initially that can be done easily with the SG-250 on the lowest grit, but after that I only need a quick 800 or 1000 touch-up and the microbevel. It is rare when I need to change the main bevel for a tool. So from now on the SG-250 will be used only to establish the main bevel when I need that
I know the Japanese stones may be softer and they may get consumed faster, I am not there yet but the new wheel it cuts very fast anything up to A2 steel – I didn't try yet any HSS but it will happen soon- and I also know that nothing replaces a great edge that lasts long. And more than that it would have been great if Tormek would have offered this option and I wouldn't have had to try it with an aftermarket stone even if is made for the Tormek machines.
I admit my solution is an expensive and may not be a choice for others, woodworking is still a hobby for me... well you got me, it is a bit more, it is a kind of disease but I made the effort to save the money and spent them for great things that made my hobby full of satisfactions and not frustrations.

Ionut

WARNING! This is a very long email describing my SVH-320 experience and the way I use it. If you are not interested, don't have patience or you do not use the jig, you can safely skip it, there is nothing you'll miss..

Hi Everyone,

Well, I got the jig... I went through lots of thinking about spending the money for this jig, and reading this thread didn't help much either as I've seen lots of frustration accompanying the use of this jig, together with just few successes. I just didn't want to have an expensive jig collecting dust and still going to sharpen my blades somewhere else so I've talked with the dealer and he agreed to return the money if I am not happy with it.
I got the jig almost 2 weeks ago and even though it was late that day, I wasn't able to do anything before testing it on my freshly dulled 6" jointer knives.
I've read the instruction manual a number of times before so I had all the official procedure in my head and even before starting I had few modifications to the process that proved to be very helpful for me.
The setting with patience which is not my forte, took me about 15 minutes following the manual procedure, the only difference at this point was to not use paper or feeler gauges and instead to place the light behind the blade resting on the stone which allowed me to correctly align the jig. I have to admit that this step is a bit tricky. I've set the depth of cut to +0.1 as my knives were in good condition, no nicks and before I started to grind I removed the honing wheel.. The stone was set for 1000.  At one point I've lost the control by applying pressure to close to the blade and towards the end of the blade I almost dug the stone because the blade holder jumped from the support. After that I moved my hands behind the tightening screws and everything got back to normal. I've spent maybe about 10 min grinding and checking frequently to consume the 0.1 depth. At the end the blade looked perfect, a nice burr on its full length and it looked straight. I've started the work on the next blades and after other 15-20 min I was done.
My blades originally had a secondary bevel and not a different steel (laminated) and anyways I do not in principle try anything in "wooding" without a secondary bevel on 4000 -8000, it seems a waste of energy, material and time for me so I jumped on the second machine equipped with a 4000 wheel, applied the usual offset and after 4-5 swipes the secondary bevel was done. Next step was removing the remains of the invisible burr from the back of the blades on the honing wheel. The 4000 and honing wheel took me less than 2 min including changing the blades.
Now I measured the width of the blade and the straightness of the blade on my jointer table, and everything looked ok. At this point I didn't know what was prepared for me next so I've set my knives back in the cutter head and I was hit by the first surprise. It was the first time when I was able to correctly set the knives in a range of +- 0.0003. Before, the ends of the knives were always higher than the center but I never tried to actually measure the width of the blades. During the procedure of setting the blades I started to doubt my height gauge (oneway), but the gauge was working perfect, the blades were really set well.
I've got close by a number of boards that needed work and I started to join them. It is a while since I was so nicely surprised about how well a tool can work. The sound of the knives slapping the wood changed in a slicing sound and at the end the surface of the wood was so silky and shiny like I would have been using a smoothing plane. I could not believe a jointer can get the stock with such a nice prepared surface. My excitement got changed very soon into mad craziness, I was hunting every single piece of wood in my shop and out of my shop to plane it whether it needed or not, and after an hour of mad craziness I could not believe, my machine was improper called wood jointer, it should have been called butter jointer.
In this madness that hit me I forgot to check one fir board before starting to plane it and of course I missed a pretty big staple in it that ruined my whole night in just a fraction of second. I was demoralized, all my blades got a perfect nick almost in the center but after few seconds I recalled I had my new jig, I almost forgot about it so this time I planned to use my method that I was playing in my head with before getting my hands on the jig.
Well,  20 minutes after the blades were removed and I do not exaggerate at all, I was back in the business, my neighbors will probably complain about a crazy caveman using his jointer at 2am but so far nobody knocked on my door to tell me to take it easier. After the second sharpening the blades seemed to be even better than the first session, this time I also tried to dry shave the hair on my left hand and the 40 degrees bevel took the hair off almost like a Japanese chisel.
So far this is the most precise Tormek jig I have, I also sharpened a couple of low angle plane blades with it and all the counting of the passes to keep the corners in the same line with the rest of the blade is gone, the blade ends always straight. My jointer blades have never been so sharp before, new or freshly sharpened by the professional sharpening services, they were NEVER SO SHARP, end of the story.
Now for who is interesting in my SVH-320 method I will outline it below, it worked for me fast and easy, if you are happy with yours you can safely skip it:


1.   Prepare the stone for the desired grit and make sure it is true.
2.   Mount the worse blade in the blade holder. You can measure the narrower blade if you don't have nicks. I mount it in the middle of the blade holder and mark the bevel with a sharpie. I like to apply a drop of mineral oil on the notch that will contact the support, it makes everything move much easier.
3.   Remove the honing wheel.
4.   Replace the universal support with the svh-320 one and set the stoppers to keep the blade on the wheel at all times.
5.   Backup the screw that sets the angle as much as it will give you the liberty to swing the support as much as you want.
6.   Set the blade holder on the support and use two spring clamps on their ends to keep the blade holder fully contacting the support.
7.   First set the grinding angle like for any other hand tool ignoring the parallelism of the jig with the surface of the wheel. Use only one nut as with the universal jig, the left one and make sure the right one is backed up high enough to allow you to set the angle.
8.   Try the angle on the blade by moving the wheel with your hand while the blade contacts the stone and adjust the left nut until you are happy with the angle.
9.   Now press the support down and bring the angle screw until it contacts the back of the support. The angle setting is done, you can forget about it.
10.   For the parallelism move the light on the opposite side on the wheel and adjust ONLY the right nut until all the blade contacts the wheel surface. When you are happy you are ready to sharpen. Don't forget to remove the clamps if you used them.
11.   I start grinding at this "0" setting, I find that most of the time is enough. If it is not then you can adjust in small increments BOTH nuts. I never go over 0.1. In my first try I actually sharpened more than I needed. You have to do this incremental thing ONLY FOR THE FIRST BLADE. For the next ones you keep the final setting you found is making you happy with the first blade.
12.   While grinding I keep my hands behind the tightening screws and I apply moderate pressure. You will feel and hear when for that particular setting there is nothing to remove anymore.
13.   I never felt it during my blades sharpening but if you feel the stone is not cutting grade and clean the wheel any time is needed.
14.   When you are happy with the edge of the blade mount the second one and KEEP the setting unchanged until you are done with all of them.
15.   Honing.
16.   Enjoy the sound of butter jointer/ planer.

Ionut

Hi Jeff,

I am receiving the following error most of the time when I am trying to post a message regardless what computer I use:

"Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator."

Last night and this morning for example and in the past as well. Is there anything that I have to do or is really a database problem?

Thanks,
Ionut