Messages

First of all, as you probably have figured out, you need to put a lot of pressure on the stone grader.  Whatever way you can pull that off is just fine.  If you do it perpendicular to the wheel in the center of the stone grader eventually the wheel will wear a groove in the stone grader and conform to the radius of the wheel.   That's OK.  After a while you can then move to either end.

If you do it parallel to the wheel, that works too, but is hard to hold.  Really it's whatever works best for you.

Personally, I went to using the edges of the stone grader and pressing very hard just to get the job done a quickly a possible.  I'm guessing you will just end up using the grader in a variety of positions, just to get the most out of it before it needs replacing.  It's another consumable.

I wouldn't over think it.  Just experiment with it and do whatever works for you and you will be fine.  No matter what I say, that's what you will end up doing anyway. 

From my humble experience a 160 gf blade should shave hair.  If it's not I would suspect there is still burr.

Mr. cbwx34 uttered, "The more you hone, the more refined the edge becomes... not always a good thing."

Yup.  I agree.

The 45 gf reading is very impressive, Mr. wootz!  Excellent job of sharpening there. 

Are you using test clips or the media holder on the PT50?

I'm surprised by that 25-35 gf reading on the Gellette's.  If memory serves, that's sharper than your average Feather DE blade.

I learn from you too Mr. wootz.  One big happy family. 

Which sharpness tester are you using Mr. Wootz?

No doubt you will get the hang of it much faster than you suspect.

Maybe a good place to start is to understand how the stone grader affects the wheel.  There is a big difference between an aggressive wheel made coarse with the rough side of the stone grader, and a glass like smooth wheel created by using the smooth side of the stone grader. 

Possibly dress the wheel with the rough side of the stone grader and grind away on some junker knife.  Experiment with different pressure when sharpening.  Then dress the wheel perfectly smooth with the smooth side of the stone grader and do the same thing.  No doubt you will notice a big difference!

Everybody here went through the same thing at some point, and everybody here enjoys helping and answering questions.   Before you know it using your Tormek will seem easy.   

I would humbly suggest that if you want to learn to sharpen knives, get a bunch of cheap sacrificial knives from your local thrift store to practice with and have at it.  At least that's what I did.  If you are sharpening for other people, no doubt sooner or later you will need to:

Learn to sharpen so that you don't concave the blade at the center.
Learn to sharpen the tip and maintain an even bevel.
Learn to fix a broken off tip.
Learn to deal with chips on the edge that you will see all of the time with hard steel knives like Shun.
Learn to flatten the edge if it's not flat.
Learn all about using the stone grader and how various levels of abrasiveness grind an edge.
Learn how you need to constantly use the stone grader to maintain a particular level of abrasivness.
Learn all about the truing tool and keeping the wheel flat.
Learn how to sharpen curved knives like a bird's beak knife.
Learn how to sharpen very hard steel (RHC 60+) knives.
Learn how to sharpen cheap, crappy steel knives without the edges chipping away.
Learn about toothy vs smooth ground edges.
Learn how smooth edge roll and get dull quickly.
Learn how to sharpen very small blades like pen knives.
Learn how with small blades the knife jig hits the wheel.  Learn to deal with it.
Learn about sharpening blades with unequal or single side bevels.
What about serrated blades?
Learn how to sharpen very long knives.
Learn how to sharpen cleavers.
Learn when to bail and recognize knives you can't sharpen.
Sooner or later someone will ask you to sharpen a pizza cutter.

Take a knife, grind the edge completely flat and then sharpen it.

Last, but maybe it should be first on the list, learn about deburring and how important it is.
Learn how much compound you want to use on the leather wheel.
Learn how much the compound smoothes a toothy edge if a toothy edge is what you want.

With one exception, I completely agree with Mr. cbwx34; learn to sharpen knives on the Tormek by sharpening knives on the Tormek. 

The exception is that a microscope and an edge sharpness tester are invaluable in learning about sharpening.  With those instruments you can lean more in a couple of months than years of sharpening without them.  Those instruments allow you to really understand and actually prove what is going on at the edge rather than just speculating about it.  For instance, a microscope allows you to see a burr and understand exactly how your burr removal method is working.  An edge sharpness tester demonstrates how the burr affects sharpness.  An edge sharpness tester allows you to understand and numerically represent the sharpness of your blade and how different sharpening procedures affect sharpness.  You don't need those instruments to get a sharp edge, but if you really want to understand what is happening they are amazing instruments.  For example, here's a post about when I tried to duplicate a commercial kitchen knife edge: http://bessex.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=68

Anyway, that's one way to go about it. 

Instead of using paper to prevent scratching, why not use slick tape?  Or electrical tape.  There are a LOT of different tape products that would probably work.

Slick Strips:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0035Y46GM/ref=asc_df_B0035Y46GM5080557?smid=A19VW1BL9ZXZVA&tag=shopz0d-20&ascsubtag=shopzilla_mp_1213-20;15071389820426014884310080302008005&linkCode=df0&creative=395105&creativeASIN=B0035Y46GM

Protective Film Tape:
https://www.findtape.com/Patco-5560-Polyethylene-Removable-Protective-Film-Tape/p463/

You can buy 1 – 5 mil thick plastic film in rolls from a hardware store.  You could cut enough little plastic squares from a roll to last many lifetimes and glue it on with removable adhesive.  Or possibly little squares of Tyvek:

https://www.amazon.com/DuPont-Tyvek-55gm-A4-Sheets/dp/B00DRB0XIS

https://www.amazon.com/3M-Repositionable-Clear-Adhesive-10-2-Ounce/dp/B000BKQD82

I happen know your delivery person Mr. Ken.  He was previously fired from his landscaping job for not being able to comprehend "green side up" when laying sod.

Companies and authors must defend copyrights, trademarks and patents.  Just guessing, but I suspect you may have bumped some "fair use" threshold button.  Fair use seems a little fuzzy to me (I'm not a lawyer), but is an interesting subject and there is a lot of info on it if you search.  An example of same is:

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

Is that a plastic wheel?  No rust?

How is the CBN attached?  Electroplated to an aluminum ring around the plastic wheel?  Steel ring around plastic wheel (rust?)?

If it is a plastic wheel with a plastic hub, any issues with hub wear?  I know some folks remove the wheel after each use. 

It looks kind of cool on there!  Like nice big tires on a truck.  If it fits and goes round and round, I'd try it and see if it indeed works.  But that's just me.

I could be wrong, (for the first time in my life  ), but I doubt if any forum members can really answer your question about machine robustness, etc. I would surely think the housing would have not problems.  Since you got it to fit, and if it seems to work, you may be good to go.

However, you could always run it by Tormek support and see what they say.  If you do, please let us know.

That question has been discussed a couple of times before.  One such topic:

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=2834.0

I went to download my "bucket" (all images) so I could delete my Photobucket account and be done with them forever.  The download bucket feature does not work.  I contacted Photobucket and they said it's a known problem and the current solution is to individually view and then download each image!

I no longer trust Photobucket.  Who knows if it will even be there 30 days from now.  Are they working on setting it up so that there will be a fee to download your images? Is that why the download bucket feature no longer works?  Who knows.  I would suggest for anyone having valuable images stored there to do what it takes to download them and then bail on Photobucket.  That's what I'm doing.

I too can understand creating a service and charging a fee to use it.  Nothing wrong with that.

Especially for a service that contains user created content, an actual product, what I find inexcusable is starting it for free and then later holding that content for a very expensive, ongoing ransom.  I would have no problem if Photobucket decided to start charging a fee for third party hosting links while allowing existing content, but to retroactively destroy user created content and data is reprehensible.  I see no difference between Photobucket's opprobrious actions and if, for example, Gmail suddenly decided to block access to users email unless they paid a huge, ongoing fee.

Photobucket is not entirely unsuccessful however.  The have succeeded in creating palpable animus toward their service and company across their user base.  I suspect they will find that from a business perspective their foray into monetizing their site by forcibly attempting to extract ransom will prove to be a fatal misadventure.