Messages

ps We must credit Dutchman and Jan as part of the design team.

Great minds creating great ideas. Thanks.

In order to find the "right"/ former angle I always use a marker. But there is no always a distinct angle to find so I use my experience. After so many knifes I know the approximate installation of the knives considering thickness, width, length, and angle needed/ asked.

Another tip is: I try to fasten the knife at the jig with same length from jig base to curved part of blade tip as the blade end from the jig base. Then I follow the knife curve when sharpening which gives me as close angle as possible trough the hole sharpening process, following an imaginary line on the stone. Little lifting of the tip is always required of course.

Steve Bottorff shows a simple yet effective way to test for hollow in his Sharpening School DVD. I think a hollow test, which only requires a vew seconds, should become a routine part of knife sharpening.

Have not seen that VDO. Is it on Youtube or can you refer to, or explain this method?

I put the knife on plane surface with light towards me/ Then I can see the light/ arch under the blade. if there is any

The "Han-jig" or adjustment tool is nice. Although it would be interesting to see it in practice job.
The "only" problem, as I see, is the different protrusion of the knifes in the SVS-45 jig that will make the tip leaning on different parts of the stone creating different angles on the blade.
Or maybe I didn't understand the full way of using it 

I started to work on similar idea but with 2 parts connected in the centre and with knife length scale.
Anyone that can take this idea further is welcome. I just don't have time to complete this.

Dear friends,

This was a very important thread and the topic concern every knife sharpener on all systems. wheel, stones etc...

That's why good sharpener is a little of an artist. It's not "only" technical or mechanical to sharpen a knife.

My practice in order to spread the pressure on the knife is to hold fingers spread on the blade. With the other hand I hold the handle only on the horizontal plane and not around the handle for 2 reasons. 1. not to hit the honing wheel. 2. to be able to adjust the horizontal plane with more sense.
I normally start to sharpen checking the blade plan.

I seldom use pressure higher the the weight of my hands and then by hanging or forcing pressure. Only holding it so there will be low and firm pressure. But when I have a knife with uneven blade convex or concave I  add pressure and/ or time at this section. Mostly near the handle.
The reason it happens mostly near the handle is this;
1. When users need to hone the knife they use the steel and then starting to create the concave shape in the middle. That due to uneven force pressure when "steelin" the knife.
2. Blade steel lots of times thicker near the handle.
3. Blade edge on tip has, nearly always, narrower sharped edge. Meaning it will get dull faster and is used more during the work, compared to the part near the handle. Meaning it will "loose" more steel every time we sharpen compared to the rest of the blade. Therefore I start there with more cautiousness of the pressure I use.
Getting to the part near the handle I use little more pressure and/or time (as stated above).

Small tip: On kitchen knifes I take down the last (near the handle) 5mm | 1/4" and make it rounded/ dull for the safety of the user.

This are my 2 cents.

Your newspaper tests sound very useful, although, if I wasn't a very good sharpener, I would prefer heavy paper. It can mask a lot of dullness while still impressing the crowds!

As we are on Tormek forum, "if you were not a very good sharpener" you are not using Tormek, or have to practice little to become a good sharpener as you have the right tools. (not you in person )

I have the WE Gen3 Pro sharpener here as some clients asked for it. On 1000 grit you can't even get close to sharpness and sharpening time/result with it, compared to the Tormek. After they saw that, they got the Tormek. Also price wise it's unbeatable in favor to Tormek.
IMHO, WE have lots of errors that ppl don't know and not worth the money at all. Works OK on small pocket knifes and nice when compared to freehand sharpening on japanese stones. Other wise time and energy consuming with very bad price/result/time ratio.
This VDO shows a knife that was in condition that you couldn't cut yourself and the tip was bent after faling on the floor.
https://www.facebook.com/ultrasharpisrael/videos

I want to try using the SG-200 standard wheel of my T4 followed by the T7 with the SJ-250 Japanese wheel. I believe the radius difference in the wheels would give a similar primary and secondary bevel effect, the finer wheel being set to only polish the every edge, not the entire bevel. Thoughts?

Ken

I've used the SJ250 (250mm) after using the very little worn SG250 (245mm) and you can already see that the SJ250 would leave the middle of the cutting edge untouched. With higher pressure it will "clean" all the edge.
So on first thought using the SG200 first IMO would be to big different. On second thought it could be a nice effect and worth trying.

As for the KN-100 I think it's getting too academic for chefs knifes (my working volume), and I, by practice always test with thin newspaper page. It gives me 2 indications.
1. If there is still some burr (even microscopic) somewhere along the edge.
2. I can feel how sharp the edge is by feeling how easy and smooth it cuts the paper.

Many times you can see ppl cutting printers paper with fast and forceful movement. It is by far more edge sharpness proof to do it slowly and controlled. Anyway customers are getting very impressed by the fast cutting movements to show how sharp the knives are after the sharpening session. But they get more impressed doing it slowly and with waves cut on the paper.

Ken and Zeev,

   Check out the accuracy or lack thereof of this sharpening process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5yENFigHEA

The movement of the knife in the line of the wheel travel when the grinding was started, really jumped out at me. I imagine he gets some Sharp knives, however. Sounds like he does quite a number of knives.

   By the way, I am glad I have a Tormek! Notice the sound of that unit slowing down when under a load.

Looks terrible...

Seeing this makes me regret not having purchased a Tormek OWC-1 adaptor when I was at Hartville Hardware a week ago. Two holes drilled, some 14mm threaded rod and four bolts, combined with my BGM-100 kit would have made a fine cleaver holder.

Ken

Exactly what I had in mind Ken. 

Jimmy asked me for more pictures of my implementation of Wootz's "Homemade honing jig & cleaver support". http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=2583.0

I decided to start a new thread for the new pictures and also for those previously posted.

Here are the images of my implementation of Wootz's jig. As you can see, I follow in his footsteps. I only replaced his wooden block carrying the auxiliary vertical sleeves by a steel profile. The dimensions of the steel profile are 1 3/8 " x 2 1/8 " x 6 3/8 ".

Into the front side of the profile I drilled four holes with a diameter of 4.2 mm (11/64 ") and provided them with M5 thread for screws which hold the auxiliary vertical sleeves (additional Tormek Horizontal Base) of this jig.



Into the back side of the profile I drilled two holes with a diameter of 12 mm (1/2 "). Two M12 threated rods of the length 6 1/2 " anchor the steel profile into the sleeves of the T7 Horizontal Base.



The jig works fine with long knives and also with wide cleavers, the one shown is 3" wide.





Jan

Love this idea. VERY CLEAVER.

This is how it came from new, the original box was undamaged so there was no problem during transport, but to be honest I think it is bent, I'd be very interested to compare it against another one - I can't decide whether to try to straighten it, risking breaking it, or just leave it as it is and adjust the angle for each side.
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=2577.msg13542#msg13542

Carvingcat,
To me it looks like it getting the bent after tightening the screw to hard. There is a lot of torque power there. Maybe it was bent originally too, which add to the bent.
With such a bent no wonder you get large angle difference on the knife sides.

As this also bothered me even before seeing your pic's, so I have worked on some ideas on a self centering auto protrusion jig to keep at least the jig end to knife edge as constant as possible.

Thanks Elden.

Hi guys, I'm new here and this is my first reply

The problem you describe about the angle change as the jig is turned 180 dgrs is of little concern to me too.
But let say for the regular user with the standard jig that use it for years and never got into this measurements, is it a real problem? Let say the sharpening angle difference is 2~3 dgrs.
How much tolerance will you accept?

Carvingcat, Is your jig bent or was it so originally?