Messages

Hi David,

You can try to apply some teflon tape on the thread, that will reduce the vibrations (the play in the dimond housing). In my case even if I have to do more passes I also cut less than a nut gradation in one pass. I know the book say you can cut more, but when I cut less teh truing process seems smoother and the look of the stone as well.

Ionut

Hi Jeff,

Let me know what you think, for me it cleans and dresses the stone in no time compared with the normal way with less effort and after that I can feel a difference in how it cuts.
When I had to apply lots of pressure I always ended with a stone out of square.

Thanks,
Ionut

Hi P.

It is weird, I did mine pretty fast and with no crazy effort required, my machines are mounted on a bench the normal height so I usually get on a box, but I never experienced this with my blades. Probably the quality of the steel in my blades is not so good compared with yours.
Try this, while  grading your stone lower the water trough until no water reaches the stone, make sure the stone is well wetted though before that. Start grading with moderate pressure, you will see a muddy slurry building up, In probably a quarter of the time or even less for normal grading you will be done. Put the trough back and let the wheel get clean and check the surface of it. It works great for me, it cleans the stone of glazing and any metal particles fast, and I never needed to jump on the grader, Don't do it as much and as hard  as you would normally do it when you grade while the stone is in the water. Better do it in smaller increments until you are happy whit how the stone cuts.

Thanks,
Ionut

Hi Tony,

I got my 800 from Woodcraft, Shipping was free in US for that priceat that time and compared with the original Tormek stones it came cheaper including the shipping in Canada side which I still had to pay.
I agree for knives you don't have to go crazy as I did, 1000 grit and the honing wheel is just enough I think, I am not a knife specialist.
Also as Jeffs55 said the 4000 one is for honing only, don't try to sharpen with that. I mostly sharpen woodworking handtools and occasionally knives and some axes.
For handtools and few planner and jointer blades I would not go back to the one machine one stone setting. I use the 1000 grit on one machine for 95% of the resharpening (with exceptions when I want to change the bevels) and I move on the honing machine (with the 4000) , I move together with the universal support so I can rely on a very precise secondary bevel by rotating the nut a specific number of times depending on the wear difference between the stones. And in very short time I end with a perfect microbevel exactly like I would have done it by hand.
In that way my edges stay longer sharp and there is no risk for rounding the edge. I agree this setting is expensive but with this settings all my search for getting always a perfect sharp edge VERY FAST, is over.

Ionut

I hear the same sound but I consider it normal as lesser blade surface contacts the stone and the stone grinds more as the pressure on dimensional unit of the blade increases with decreasing blade surface on the stone. This sound should get more uniform as the grinding brings the blade holder to properly sit on the support. If you still hear the sound difference the depth of the cut was set to much considering the fact that you have a burr already. I usually seat my blades on the stone and do not use the dials to increase the depth of cut. I grind at this setting until I feel no grinding action happens anymore and check for the burr. If is there that's the setting I will use for the rest of the blades, if not I will increase it in smaller increments that the smallest gradation on the locking nuts.

You were saying that you move the blade pass the stone, I would personally not do that, if the depth setting is the smallest possible you can achieve the blade would dig in the stone every single time when would get in contact with it, which I think would lead to faster wear of the stone close to its edges and I am pretty sure the blade will not get straight at the end. I usually stop the blade at ½" of its end.

About the angle of the stone I wouldn't worry much when using the planer jig, the posts of the planer jigs are thinner and allows you more angle adjustment so you should be able to compensate for any difference compared with the universal support.

Ionut

I've done my Dewalt ones without removing anything. I just sharpen half of the blade at one point and the other half after. It seems to be easier and I don't have to make ample moves and keep the hand pressure constant for large lengths.

Ionut

You can try mounting the small chisels in the middle of the jig (I do that with anything as the shoulder of mine is not square and on the side it is hard to set the clamping screws to exert the same amount of pressure) and tighten the clamps the same amount in small increments. You should use a small square to check for square along the side of the chisel. As you grind check for square again, this time the cutting edge and adjust as necessary using the method described at this link:

http://www.sharptoolsusa.com/squareedgeweb.pdf

I was able to successfully sharpen 1/8th Japanese chisels and rarely had to adjust something during sharpening after I first time set the tool in the jig.

Hi,

Not sure if the information below will help but you can try it.
First I would use a try square to check the jig and if is out of square I guess you should change it even before trying to put it on the machine.
I have 2 machines a T7 and a green one which was a 2006 or 2000 not very sure but beside the color difference I didn't notice any change between them, maybe the quality of the steel and both behave identically from the point of view of the squareness. The universal support posts have just a slight play when mounted and when the thumb screws are not tighten, If it would be no play it would be pretty hard to mount it so this play translates on the horizontal bar of the support into up to probably 2-3 degrees in the effective sharpening area. This means that if I am not consistent in setting the jig between truing and sharpening I will end always with a not square edge. Try truing the stone again taking as small as possible but before tightening the universal support make sure you apply pressure on the side that would compensate with your planner jig. SHV320 has thinner posts to allow for more angle compensation.

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

Thank you Jeff, I don't think it is related to a particular thread, it happened with others for me.
If you think you can remove this message from the thread, it doesn't have much connection with sharpening...

Thanks again,
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

Hi Larry,

I've posted an answer about this on the "General Tormek questions" thread.

Ionut

Hi Larry,

I ran in the same problem with a nice Japanese mortising chisel and sometimes I sharpen it free hand with the wheel rotating away from me, but I got from Lee Valley a blade holder they use for their motorized sharpening system that is able to hold the chisel properly. Their support is about 20$ or so and I use it also with the wheel rotating away from me. My chisel is thicker than the square edge jig.

Ionut

PS I found the link, it is this one I use: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=32974&cat=1,43072,45938