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Always nice to see knife craftsmen who appreciate the Tormek system.  Hathaway is a custom knife maker who sharpen all of their blades on Tormek:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CyxB7QYsER-

I suspect there aren't many people who are running grinding wheels on both sides of the T-8, but for those who do, water falling on the rubber of the drive wheel can be a problem.  Not a huge problem, of course -- but it does cause some slippage and thus loss of power.

Some folks have dealt with it by using a section from a 1.5 liter bottle as a shield.  I recently got a 3D printer and came up with this alternative:



At the moment it's held in place with some double-faced tape on top of the Tormek.  To be honest, it's a bit rickety in its present form, but it works fine.  I'll probably end up doing a new version that eliminates the blue braces altogether.  Maybe extend the circumference of the shield, build in some tabs on either side, and then have two pieces, one on either side, to stick onto the side of the machine and accept the tabs to act as support.

FYI, I got an email notification that Sharpeningsupplies.com is having a sale: 10% of on all Tormek jigs. 

If you're familiar with the Twice as Sharp scissor machine, you know that it employs a clamping mechanism that attaches to an articulating arm.  A similar system is used for flat hones. 

The benefit of that system is twofold, as far as I can tell.  One, it fixes the height of the clamp in relation to the wheel to prevent angle changes, and two, it allows you to rotate the knife on the vertical axis so you can maintain the same sharpening angle on the belly portion of the blade as you have on the straight portion of a blade, which is sometimes impossible with existing Tormek jigs.

For Tormek, I can think of two ways to approach this with respect to setting the sharpening angle:

1.  The clamp pivots up and down and there is a scale on the jig to indicate the chosen angle. 

2.  There could be an indexed height adjustment on the articulating arm itself.

In either case you would have to account somehow for varying stone diameter, unless it was only compatible with the diamond wheels (or other fixed-diameter wheels).

Who knows if it will ever happen, but I think it would be a worthwhile addition to the system.  I think it would be quicker to set up than existing methods, and it would eliminate the problem of variable sharpening angles on curved blades.  The clamp could also have variable stops to allow for proper convexing of shears or knives.

If you're not familiar with these systems, this is what it looks like:

I've had the KJ-45 for a while, but only used the convexing feature once, on a cleaver.  Just for the heck of it, I decided to try it out on a pocket knife.  I think it came out pretty well, and could have been better still if I had spent a little more time at it. 

This should be interesting to watch.  Big Brown Bear--who's real name escapes me at the moment--obtained a couple Tormek machines with diamond wheels and he's planning on doing comparison testing of edge retention with Tormek'd knives versus knives sharpened freehand and possibly on fixed angle systems. 

If you're not familiar, BBB is well known in the knife community as a sharpening, heat treating, and custom knife making maven. 

Here's his Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CmIFaX1rbIg/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

And his home page: https://www.triplebhandmade.com/home

I was struggling a bit with burr formation, in the sense that I was ending up with a fairly sizable burr on the SG stone (graded fine) no matter how lightly and quickly I did my final passes.  That can be fixed on the leather wheel, of course, but I've always preferred to start honing with an absolutely minimal burr.

Yesterday I had one of those head slap moments when it occurred to me to shut off the motor and just lightly draw the blade across the stone to knock off the burr, which is a common enough strategy in free-hand sharpening.  Works great!

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to be that it would be so much more useful to have a 250mm leather wheel, as opposed to the Tormek 215mm wheel, at least for knife sharpening.  In order to use the 215mm wheel with any knife over c. 3.5", you have to remove the water trough and grinding wheel and replace the wheel with the spacer and nut.

But with a 250mm wheel, you could avoid that with most knives -- up to the typical 8" chef's knife -- without removing the grinding stone.  That's because, when you're honing towards the grinding wheel, you have to start lifting the handle before it would hit the wheel.

As an added benefit, you could grind and hone with very little adjustment.  You could use a FVB, grinding away from the edge, and then just flip the USB to hone.  At most you'd need a couple turns of the micro adjust to account for stone wear.

Specifically for commercial sharpening, do you guys have an opinion?  What would you consider to be a satisfactory edge from a sharpening service?  Or a superior result?

My thinking is that a BESS score in the 135 range would be a satisfactory result, while something close to 100 would be a superior result.  I believe 135 is sharper than 99% of factory edges, and is actually sharper than 100% of the scores of new knives I've tested, including some costing $500 and up.

I'd like to produce a superior result, but with the caveat that I have to be able to do it reasonably quickly.  I've had my Tormek with SG wheel for 2-3 weeks and I'm making progress.  Scored my personal best this morning, taking a $16, 8" Mercer chef's knife from dull (killed edge on coarse side of stone grader) to 110 BESS in just under 7 minutes.  Procedure was to sharpen on SG stone, deburr on denim loaded with Flitz, and finish on plain leather belt (Work Sharp Ken Onion edition with blade grinder attachment).

The biggest time killer is developing a full burr on the course-graded SG stone.  I'm thinking that adding a 400 or 200 grit CBN wheel on the off side would take this under 5 minutes.  I'd save time grading the stone, develop a burr quicker, and then just flip the USB and finish on the SG stone graded to 1000. 

But I'll stick with the current setup for a few more weeks and see where it takes me.   

My new T-8 has a fair amount of wobble in the drive wheel and I'm wondering if that's normal, or if perhaps my shaft isn't quite straight?  I'm pretty sure it's not the grinding wheel, as it was this way when brand new, and after truing the grinding wheel.

Can y'all take a quick look and let me know?  Tx!

https://youtube.com/shorts/ckxcgAoBLxQ

After much research and hemming and hawing, I finally bit the bullet and bought a T-8 with the tool jig kit.  UPS didn't deliver it until around 9pm (!), but I got everything set up and dipped my toe (and heel) in the water ... so to speak.

Very pleased with my first results!  I sharpened a couple cheapo kitchen knives at 15dps.  After deburring freehand on the leather wheel, both knives scored around 145 BESS.  I then power stropped on the Ken Onion Belt Grinder with leather belts (1 micron compound and plain leather) and the scores dropped to 110-115 BESS.  Pretty respectable for a first outing, I think. 

Definitely need to work on the appearance of the bevel, as I managed to put some ugly little gouges in the middle of the blade.

I also managed to screw up my stone grader by stupidly trying to knock down the corners of the stone with the fine side instead of the rough side.  I don't think it's affecting the performance too much, but I guess I'll have to lap it flat when I get a chance.

I also managed to get my T-shirt sucked into the water trough.   

Much practice needed.

So I'm thinking about turning my love of sharpening into a part-time business and considering what equipment I'd use in that capacity. I've ruled out belt grinders (but see below) because I don't want to have to worry about burned edges. I think I'm going to start out with a Tormek T-8 converted to run two CBN wheels. I reckon I need to be able to get a knife from dull to sharp in 1-2 minutes to make it worth my while. I'm wondering if I could get by with 400 as my coarse grit, which I'd follow up with something in 800-1200. Or if I had to go lower, to something like 200 grit, would 800 then be too big a jump? Or would 600 provide a good enough final finish (before stropping)?

To start, I'll probably use my KO belt grinder with leather belts for stropping/final finish. Eventually I may swap that out for a half-speed grinder with felt/paper wheels.

FYI, my experience is with bench stones, fixed angle systems (KME & Hapstone) and the aforementioned Work Sharp Ken Onion Belt Grinder and I'm just not sure how the grit ratings I'm familiar with would translate to CBN wheels on a Tormek.  Typically, for kitchen knives, I would reprofile on F80-150 stones, and for general sharpening I'll start at F240 or (Japan) 500 and finish up at F400-800 or (Japan)1000-2000. 

Thoughts? Comments? I realize that turning a hobby into a profession can suck the fun out of it, but I think I'm going to give it a go anyway. The total investment isn't so big that it would be a problem if I decide it's not my cup of tea.

I'm having a hard time finding info. on the limits of the Tormek Japanese wheel.  Is it capable of being use as a finishing wheel on high-Vanadium super steels like Maxamet?  If not that extreme case, what about more common steels like M390/cmp-20cv?  Thanks!