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I received for Christmas a single bevel chef's knife, seven inches, Japanese style. Brand is Kamikoto, made in China but from Japanese steel. It has a long bevel about half way up the blade which you should see in the attached photo, then a secondary bevel that appears to be maybe 1/64" wide. Recommended sharpening by the manufacturer is on water stones which I could do. I'm just wondering how my Tormek would do on this.

I'm also wondering if the long bevel mentioned above should be routinely worked on or should I just focus on the secondary bevel? Your thoughts are appreciated. Frankly I do most of my knife sharpening on stones but thought it might be time to try the Tormek.

I was regrinding an old Stanley blade for a vintage no. 5 plane and noticed that it seemed to be grinding a bit off the 90 degree angle. Did not want camber on this blade. I made the correction by tapping the blade so the high side would be ground down. It worked out fine but I wonder if the two camber knob settings might have been skewed one way to cause the uneven grind. I tried to zero those settings by eyeballing but I wonder if there might be a more precise way of doing this. I see no marks on the jig to help with zeroing.

Am I missing something?

One of the factors in rehabbing vintage Stanley or other hand planes is the need for dressing the leading edge of the chip breaker/cap iron to mate tightly with the flattened back of the cutting iron. I would say that 90 percent of the old Stanleys I have worked on needed serious fettling in this regard. I tried something yesterday with my Tormek that seemed to work well. I found this tip on another forum, specifically Woodnet, in a post by a user whose screen name is Admiral. Here's a link to that thread:

https://www.forums.woodnet.net/showthread.php?tid=7322464&highlight=Tormek

The real problem is if there are gaps between the cap iron and plane blade, shavings will invariably get caught, forcing a user to stop to clean out the jam. A note of caution on the cap iron I worked on is that I could not rely on the right hand side of the SE-77 because the part tapered along its lower length. Clamping the part as shown in the photo seems about right. I had to set it up with a small machinists' square.

My new jig arrived today and I was anxious to try it out. First thing I noticed was the left screw now slides to the right to allow tightening over the left edge of a plane iron or chisel. I believe this is a very good improvement, particularly for narrower edge tools such as chisels. I first tried a 2 3/8 inch original Stanley plane iron which had evolved into a non-square edge. I keep a couple machinists' squares nearby to frequently check this. The cutter came out true and fine although I will finish sharpening on one of several stone systems which I use to finalize the edge with a micro bevel.

I next installed a 2 inch jack plane blade from a plane I recently acquired from the big auction site. My goal here was to wind up with a slightly cambered edge and here was a case where I failed to follow the instructions properly. The instruction sheet called for centering the blade over a centering mark on the jig, thereby removing the benefit of the right side stop. I quit right there and decided I had to get my head on straight and give it another try tomorrow.

My feeling about the cambering feature is that this will take some trial and error to achieve the cambers I'm looking for. That's okay, I have plenty of irons to experiment with.

Initial conclusions are that the sliding left knob really is a major improvement. But if you've learned to live with the SE-76 jig, you may not need to spend the money. If you're still working with the original plane/chisel jig that came with my 2000, the SE-77 may be a good investment. With shipping, the total price was close to $77, same as the model number.

A few months back in this forum Ken S mentioned having seen the instructional video about the SV-76 Square Edge Jig on Tormek's home page. The video shows the user setting the jig for the tool's thickness at the left side, then sliding it over to the right hand side to tighten the tool. I've been trying to use that technique but somehow I can't resist tightening the left knob a bit more. So...my question is...for those of you who use this technique, do you tighten only the right hand knob as shown in this video? If you haven't yet seen this video, you can access it in the SV- 76 instructions.

I've noticed during a couple recent sessions that I'm able to bog down the wheel if I exert fairly heavy pressure while trying to establish a new bevel on a plane iron. Usually I just lighten the pressure and it runs fine. I'm wondering though if I should have replaced the bearings when I installed the new Ezy-Lok shaft. The bearings appear to be some kind of plastic. Any thoughts?

I watched Jeff Farris demonstrate the original SuperGrind 2000 Tormek at a woodworking show in St. Paul in about the year 2000 and had to come home with one. Used it for several years on plane irons, chisels and knives but became frustrated with losing the 90 degree angles on plane irons. I developed an interest in Woodturning but turned to other sharpening methods for those tools. The Tormek was set on a shelf and there it remained unused.

Fast forward to about fives days ago and I took the cover off the green beast, filled the container with water and tried it again. Still losing the angle on plane irons so I tried resurfacing with the original diamond truing tool I'd bought. A bit better results but still not satisfactory.

It was then I found this web site and saw that there had been several jig upgrades that might solve my problem. I picked up the SE-76 Square Edge jig, the US-105 truing jig and the newer micro adjust tool rest. What a difference!

So I signed on here to get myself together with other Tormek fans. I was also told in a phone call that Jeff no longer is the owner of Sharp Tools USA although he's the moderator here.