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Seems to me like the wheel is much more aggressive when it's dry.

Thanks for asking that again, because I have the same question just from a different perspective.

Can you treat the Tormek just like a regular bench grinder?  Just grind away, wet or dry, like grind a broken screwdriver tip back to square without fear of damaging the wheel surface?

It is after all, a (expensive) grinder!  Or maybe this sort of a care and feeding of a water wheel question.

Wow!  About 3,000 views each on two different topics.

We may be very interested in this stuff, but I would think that our little world here about a particular grinder is pretty obscure and esoteric to the rest of 'Net land.

By thin, do you mean the thickness of the steel or the distance from spine to edge?

Knives are one thing that I seem to be able to get very (scary) sharp.  They can cut a hanging hair, cut smooth curves in that thin, shiny, hard to cut catalog paper, and hang on my thumbnail at very small angles.

I do have one set of stainless knives that are difficult to sharpen.  I'm guessing that the steel is very hard.  1000 grit hardly works, even with a lot of pressure.  Even at 220 grit I have to use a lot of pressure.  But I soldiered onward and finally got them sharp.  I just took me awhile to understand just how long and how much pressure I had to use.

Some knives just seem to take a lot longer, and require more pressure than I would expect.  I'm sure my lack of experience helps too! 

I've also found that if I miss the creation of the burr and the edge has folded over, that I can grind away forever and it will never get sharp.  Turning the knife frequently seems to help in those situations.

Or... maybe my knives have realized resistance is futile, and have just surrendered to sharpness in the fearful understanding that I will grind them to mere stumps of their former selves before I give up!

Herman,

When I was having wheel surface problems, Jeff said I probably was not doing enough grading.  Now he as replied to your post with simply, "Time and pressure, Herman. Keep on it with both." 

Hmmm...   I wonder if Jeff might actually know what he's talking about??? 

Could these wheels, in some circumstances, get into a, well, funky state, where they require possibly a resurfacing, and/or a good 15 - 30 minutes of hard pressure with the coarse side of the grader to beat them back into shape, (submission)?

99% of my grinder experience has been with bench grinders, like where you need to grind some stuck bolt head off or some other equally crude procedure.  You know..., walk up, grind away, turn the thing off and walk away.  Since the Tormek, I  realize that I had never really even thought much about the surface of the wheel, unless it was obviously damaged, or ground down to a stub.

I guess that my point is that when it comes to maintaining a fine surface on these water wheels, it's all new an wonderful to me, and I'm just taking pot shots with the 15-30 minutes of restorative grading.

Mark

Rob, "...oddly enough I recently asked Jeff to address before I bought mine."  Obviously you are a man of great intelligence! 

Warning:  The following is probably a stupid question!

The Blackstone sounds interesting, and I guess it can work on harder materials where the SB-250 is less effective. 

It's product description is a little confusing insofar as it says, "It does not offer faster steel removal on ordinary carbon steel than the Tormek Original Grindstone."  Then later says, "Its faster material removal is an advantage...".

Then is says it can be graded to a 1000 grit, and "also offers exceptional wear resistance".

Well, that sounds like the perfect wheel for knives etc. because of "exceptional wear resistance" and material removal = the standard SB-250. 

Does that mean it needs truing less often and lasts longer?  Why not just use that all of the time?

Uh, oh! Apologies.  Did not intend to go off topic here.  It was just my next thought.

Mark

I had issues with my stone surface.  The replacement wheel I received has zero problems.  Smoothly grades from 220 -> 1000...  grit.  No sticky spots, no warts or surface aberrations.  Well, there is one perfectly black, 3mm round spot, but it does not seem to effect performance at all.

Of course the wheel is new, with almost no use on it.  But I don't see why the wheel surface, other than needing truing, should change due to time/usage.

My experience with the Tormek is very short compared to many of you obviously way more experienced folks so I may be clueless.  But, that is what I have experienced so far.  One wheel gave me problems, this new one has not.

Mark

Received the new grinding wheel last night, complete with a pickup ticket for the old wheel.  Only a couple of days from first contact to new wheel.  Impressive after the sale warranty suppport, huh!

I had forgotten what a joy it is to use.  No problems using the grader to go between 220 & 1000 grit.  No grabbing at the grader stone.

The first thing I did was to repair a broken tip:
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1516.0
Perfectly smooth, no jerking the knife with each wheel rotation.

Pretty exciting stuff - (especially if you have a low excitement threshold like I do!  ).

I'd say that about wraps this one up.

Tormek and it's dealer support have been exemplary.  Thank you!

Mark

Jeff,

It worked!  Following your instructions, starting @ 220 grit and moving the knife just as though I was sharpening, in very little time the break just went away and it formed a new tip!

The cool thing about it was that it happened rather automagically.  It was like..., well...,  Zen. I just sort of wiggled my hands and arms around, and watched the Tormek and the knife give birth to a new tip.  I even like the shape better than the javelin that it was before!  Not a drop point, but not a spear either. Just a nice, even curve.

Obviously if I had been particular about the tip shape I would have had to do it differently, but I'm extremely pleased, especially for the first attempt.

The knife still needs some work as the center area of the edge is not flat, but that should not be too difficult to fix.

http://www.screencast.com/t/xO5ncMNLs

Thanks for the assistance!

Mark

Happily, life is a grind!

Thank you Jeff!  Should be a fun project.

Mark

Interesting.  If you do it from the cutting edge, in order to get a smooth, non-dramatic curve, you would have to start quite a ways back from the tip.  This would change the curve of the blade around the tip appreciatively. Not good or bad, just different.

If you do it from the spine, it's a lot more metal, and the overall thickness around the tip is thinner because the width of the knife is tapered towards the cutting edge.

BTW.  Anyone know the term for the distance from the cutting edge to the spine?  In helicopter blades that would be called the "chord".

Anyway, if you wanted to grind from the spine towards the cutting edge, would you do it holding the knife perpendicular 90 degrees to the wheel, or parallel with the wheel, or just mess around with it and see what works?

Thanks for the advice KSMike.  Makes sense to me.

Guess it's a 6" not an 8".  Oh well.

Should be an interesting project.  Hopefully it won't turn out looking like a first grader did it.

Here's a picture of the blade:
http://www.screencast.com/t/uzQZrGzHSC3

I found this advice on the 'net.  About 1/2 way down the page it shows making a curve from the top of the blade:
http://www.cheftalk.com/t/64048/tip-of-knife-chipped-off

Of course, others say grind the cutting edge.  What's a noob to do?

Is it better to do this preliminary work with a hand file or maybe a regular bench grinder rather than with the T-7?  I suppose with a bench grinder you would have to be careful not to over heat the blade.  Is the hand file idea so that you don't use the Tormek for removing such a large amount of steel?

I have an 8" chef knife with about 1/2" broken off the tip.  I've read that this should be reshaped from the back side of the knife, forming a nice curve to the tip.

My question is how to approach the wheel?  90 degrees across the width of the wheel using the jig?  Parallel to the wheel?  Into or away from the stone?  I wouldn't want to dig gouges into the wheel if that is even possible.

I'm clueless!  Appreciate any advice.

Thanks,

Mark

Yea.  Weird huh. 

I would never knowingly abuse my beloved wheel!  In total it's seen maybe 30 knives, 20 hand pruners, a few pairs of scissors and a machete!  The machete was difficult to keep a consistent bevel as I had to move the jig.  Hey Tormek... how 'bout a machete jig!