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Please excuse me if I deviate from the main topic, but have you ever used chromium oxide (green compound in crayon-like bars) on the Tormek leather wheel? Just curious about the results because I have lots at my workshop. How does it compare to the PA-70?

Ken,

Lucky you, I wish there were such shows around here. I'm sure you enjoyed it a lot, I know I would!

Absolutely, Veritas makes some of the best planes money can buy, and I'm a huge fan of their take on the subject: they never seem afraid of breaking with tradition and innovating where it's needed. I can understand why some people dislike their aesthetics but I consider that a tool is a tool after all, and its function is always much more important than its looks (to me).

Update: Oh, wow, I just read your Kenjig article. So simple, so wise, so inexpensive and above of all SO FAST. Thanks!

Not too long at all

I love 5 1/2 planes, got 3 of them. My Stanley, a very early Record with 2 1/4 blade (57mm) and a third one currently loaned to a friend to encourage him to delve deeper into traditional woodworking.

Funny thing is, with 3 similarly sized planes I set up each one for different tasks, including smoothing, but some woods were dragging the plane so much that even with freshly sharpened blades and oiled/waxed sole I was having a hard time pushing it. Maybe my 2 lower back disc hernias have something to do with it, they certainly begged me for months until I purchased a Tormek

These days I mostly use my No.4 for smoothing. It's quite chunky and heavy for a No.4 (Quangsheng) but the blade offers very little resistance when dealing with those "woods from hell", I suppose because of being narrower(?). I usually load it with a PM-V11 blade that seems to take punishment a tad better than others but don't take my word for it 'cos I might have bitten the hook. Still, forgot to mention that owning a Tormek invalidates my previous point about modern premium blades taking forever to sharpen: I meant sharpening by hand, of course. Once you have a Tormek at your disposal those modern alloys will sharpen just as fast as anything else, so you might as well try them sometime and let us know if your experience differs from mine. I'm very curious about this matter because I might be doing something wrong and not noticing.

My 5 1/2 planes these days are mostly used as jacks or... jointers! Yes! I know it sounds crazy but once again, maybe because of my back, I find that a well set up 5 1/2 gives me usually better results than my No.8. Having a trusted straight edge at hand is a must. I may have some issues either with my No.8 or my technique because I always snipe the ends of boards when using it, and its sole used to be concave, not sure anymore because I have tried to flatten it now and then. In any case, and as crazy as that might sound, I find the smaller planes much more wieldy and controllable.

Thank you very much for your suggestion on Rich Colvin's book, I'm reading it as I write this reply. I also knew about Chris Schwartz and his book, it is highly regarded everyhwere, and I suspect I would love it, but money is too damn tight to satisfy all my whims One day, one day...

Thanks a lot everyone for the warm welcome and all the info!

Ken: Absolutely, the SE-77 was one of the main reasons I bought the T-8. My improvised scrub plane (ala Paul Sellers style) loves the precision that the new jig gives to the edge of its blade. It has proven so useful that purchasing a belt sander, thicknesser or any of those types of machines has sank to the bottom of my priority list. This thing devours wood likes there is no tomorrow, and I hate machines with passion... save for my Tormek. Uh, heresy! 

I'll try to dig the forums a bit regarding your suggestion on gage blocks. Now that you have taught me the word, surely a search will show up some useful info and save you from posting the same thing over again.

Extended USB idea has been discarded as per your suggestion.

I don't have a dry grinder, never used one and I'd rather stay away from fast-spinning noisy machines if possible, so its not even on my wish list. The japanese bench stones are unbeatable in my limited experience for the finest, flattest edge, followed by some stropping with your polishing compound/s of choice, but they are slow for rectifying tasks and dish quickly. I may keep these for giving the perfect final touch to my smoothing planes, scrapers and the likes (I loathe sandpaper), but the rest of the work, like 95%, can be done exclusively on the tormek. Who knows, maybe as I refine my technique, learn new things and practice with it I may achieve exactly the same results just with the T-8 alone.

Yeah, you are right again, on a second thought a microbevel doesn't look like it would be of much use having the machine do the work.

Now, regarding your questions:

I have a sizeable collection of planes and my blades may be from as thick as 6mm down to 1.8mm. Steels A2, T10, PM-V11, a late 40's to early 50's UK Stanley 5 1/2 with its original UK blade and a plethora of Record planes with their original tungsten-vanadium blades (1931-1952). Those are quite thin, usually below 2mm, and a breeze to sharpen by hand. So easy I could do it while watching Youtube and be done in less than 2 mins, but the 3mm T10 blades that come with those chinese Woodriver-Quangsheng-Juuma planes are a completely different story.
Those 6mm bevel up A2 blades are not fun, either, and the Veritas PM-V11 blades are a nightmare to rectify by hand, even worse with a honing guide. Not particularly easy to sharpen in my experience, despite what the manufacturer says and the edge of the blade doesn't produce a burr, so I always end up oversharpening them just to make sure I wore away the blunt edge.
I want to remark this is my experience only and may not be replicable somewhere else, so don't take my opinions too seriously.

Ken, I am somewhat of a newcomer to woodworking and luthiery, so once more take this with a pinch of salt: In my limited experience there is only one marginal case, max two cases, where you would benefit from modern premium blades.

One would be if you are a masochist like me and enjoy finishing pieces without the use of abrasives. With some very hard old figured woods like 45 years dried waterfall bubinga and such, planing might seem impossible without some tearout, but I have managed to achieve perfectly smooth surfaces by switching to PM-V11 blades with thick chipbreakers set ridiculously close the the edge. Maybe the rigidity of the blade-chipbreaker combo is making some difference after all, I have no clue, but surely you can benefit from the longer lasting edge for more reliable results on big projects.

The second one would also need to qualify as not only a masochist but also as a stubborn dumbass, just like yours truly, and using a hard premium blade for your scrub plane or even a jack if you use it a lot. A lot as in " I love pain so much I will never ever buy a thicknessing machine".

For everything else, I don't see the point with those modern, thick, hard blades. They all take AGES to sharpen, no matter what their marketing illusionists claim. A2 blades will fracture at the edge and leave hairline tracks on your wood, T10 is maybe more like O1, so it will fold in places and fracture in others. PM-V11 will simply wear away and become blunt, though it can also leave hairline tracks if you are dealing with tough knots and is possibly a bit more resilient than the rest... maybe.

When I wore out my DMT stones I was mostly using 3 T10 blades, 3mm thick. I didn't manage to wear them much. When you ask about bevel angle, well, I was sharpening free hand, so in a way we could consider that was constantly changing bevel angle. If you mean if I was rectifying the main/secondary bevel angles to other angles, nope, not particularly. I know that amount of wear sounds insane, I was shocked too.
The 8000 stone went back to retailer during the first month. Despite using it with the utmost care, light pressure, honing guide, and going to nerdy extremes to avoid grain contamination, it quickly developed deep visible scratches. It didn't work particularly good either, and my take on the matter was "wherever you can see a scratch, there are no diamonds left in there" so I sent it back as defective.
The 1200 stone was practically useless after 4 months and by the 6th month it wore totally down mostly by the middle where the steel slab was clearly visible, all along the stone but maybe 1-2cm from its edges/corners. Same story pretty much with the 600, move the months a number up or down, and the last one "standing" is my 220 which lost effectivity/aggresiveness the fastest of them all, and it is practically flat by now, completely useless for sharpening unless you have the patient of a saint, but since there are still diamonds in there I recycled it to serve as a flattener for my japanese stones and seems to be doing a good job at it... Can't say for how long, heh!

Thanks a lot!

That extended USB looks awesome, but my country customs are slow, unreliable and particularly pesky and expensive when it comes to USA shipments. Is there any EU or UK web store where to grab it?

Not sure I will ever need to sharpen a blade that long, but surely is good to have that option available than to miss it later.

Hello everyone, sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find it.

This is my first forum post . I aquired a T-8 before christmas because I couldn't deal anymore with hand sharpening my collection of hand tools. It's already much bigger than I imagined and it keeps growing... Insanity! Oh, that and also because I wore down to the bare steel a full set of 220-600-1200-8000 DMT diamond coated plates in 3 to 6 months depending on grain size. True story, I swear that T10 steel eats diamonds for breakfast (Rust is its kryptonite, though).

So, the Tormek sounded like the most reasonable solution for dealing with those stubborn alloys, and I am oh so happy to say that this machine truly delivers. I don't think I could be any more satisfied with my purchase. It took me quite a while to decide and, living in a very corrupt and underdeveloped country, surely you can understand why I was hesitant on such a relatively-high investment. All my fears were forever dismissed after a couple of hours operating the T-8. Worth every single penny/cent.

I couldn't help but to soon notice a particular need/convenience, maybe. At this moment in time, most of my work is done with hand planes, mainly bevel-down planes. When I sharpen my planes by hand, I usually rectify the main bevel with a very aggresive/coarse abrasive, let's say 220 or under, at 25 degrees. Then I work my way up with very few passes on progressively finer stones, to establish a 30 deg. microbevel.

And here comes my observation: In my neverending quest to optimize workflow/time, wouldn't it make sense for my particular case to buy a secondary universal support and leave both "fixed", one at 25 deg for the stone and the other at 30 deg for the leather wheel? Or even, regardless of the micro-bevel, just leave both at the same recommended anglefinder setting? Since the stone and the wheel have different diameters, setting the precise micro-adjust setting when switching between stone and wheel, taking out the bar and inserting it in the other postion, etc. is what I spend most of my time while working with my T-8. Wouldn't the results be instantly repeatable if I set always the same projection of the blades out of the SE-77 jig? In my mind it sounds like a considerable time saving every time I need to resharpen a blade... which is all the time

Thought I should ask before purchasing anything else, because I am often quite obtuse in my thinking and surely more experienced users will identify the flaws in my logic. Thanks!