10 inch honing wheel for T8

[Rossy66]

I did a search on the forum but didn't find any answers so I decided to ask here, I have honestly tried to hone free hand and not with any success, it gets frustrating to sharpen a knife with a great edge and then mess it up on the honing side. I have watched lots of videos bit I still seem to take the sharpness out of the knife but when I hone with the USB and KS-123, my results are perfect and I couldn't be happier. Obviously, I have to keep taking my wheel off to hone most of the knives so I was wondering if anyone has bought and tried a 10 inch honing wheel and the results. I have watched some videos from different YouTubers and I am impressed watching them move from sharpening to honing without removing any wheels.

Thanks

[Ken S]

I have two suggestions:

The first is to use the standard leather honing wheel. use the KS-123 set up jig to set the grinding wheel and the leather honing wheel. Use one support bar in the vertical position for grinding. Use a second support bar in the horizontal position for honing. The KS-123 makes this set up very fast. There is no need to remove a wheel.

The second suggestion is to devote some time to learning how to hone free hand. This is the  way the Tormek instructors work. While this skill may require some time to learn, once learned it will serve you for a lifetime.


Ken

[Rossy66]

Thanks Ken, that is pretty much my set up but on most knives 8" or longer, I hit the DF 250 as I move to the tip. I will include some photos when I get off work.

Thanks

[Dan]

I did a search on the forum but didn't find any answers so I decided to ask here, I have honestly tried to hone free hand and not with any success, it gets frustrating to sharpen a knife with a great edge and then mess it up on the honing side. I have watched lots of videos bit I still seem to take the sharpness out of the knife but when I hone with the USB and KS-123, my results are perfect and I couldn't be happier. Obviously, I have to keep taking my wheel off to hone most of the knives so I was wondering if anyone has bought and tried a 10 inch honing wheel and the results. I have watched some videos from different YouTubers and I am impressed watching them move from sharpening to honing without removing any wheels.

Thanks

You have asked this quite a few times already. The main problem is that a larger honing wheel gets in the way of the grinding wheel for longer knives. It is not a problem for shorter knives but as soon as you want to grind a 6 inch or longer blade the honing wheel gets in the way. This is exactly why the honing wheel is a smaller diameter. There isn't really any way around this.
As Ken says, you can change the set up a little for honing. This is one possibility but I think you will still have a problem as this time the grinding wheel will get in the way of honing for longer knives!

This old discontinued model gets round this problem by having the wheels further apart. It was a special model designed specifically for knives
https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/tormek-pr-250-mit-stein-sg-250-220-1220356278/

If you still want to use the USB support bar for honing then a better solution is to hone on another machine...

... Like I said to you previously. Here is the link again

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?msg=40820

Danny

[Drilon]

Have a look at https://schleifjunkies.de/produkt/lederrad-250x35mm-raue-oberflaeche/

Hope this helps!

[Rossy66]

I did a search on the forum but didn't find any answers so I decided to ask here, I have honestly tried to hone free hand and not with any success, it gets frustrating to sharpen a knife with a great edge and then mess it up on the honing side. I have watched lots of videos bit I still seem to take the sharpness out of the knife but when I hone with the USB and KS-123, my results are perfect and I couldn't be happier. Obviously, I have to keep taking my wheel off to hone most of the knives so I was wondering if anyone has bought and tried a 10 inch honing wheel and the results. I have watched some videos from different YouTubers and I am impressed watching them move from sharpening to honing without removing any wheels.

Thanks

You have asked this quite a few times already. The main problem is that a larger honing wheel gets in the way of the grinding wheel for longer knives. It is not a problem for shorter knives but as soon as you want to grind a 6 inch or longer blade the honing wheel gets in the way. This is exactly why the honing wheel is a smaller diameter. There isn't really any way around this.
As Ken says, you can change the set up a little for honing. This is one possibility but I think you will still have a problem as this time the grinding wheel will get in the way of honing for longer knives!

This old discontinued model gets round this problem by having the wheels further apart. It was a special model designed specifically for knives
https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/tormek-pr-250-mit-stein-sg-250-220-1220356278/

If you still want to use the USB support bar for honing then a better solution is to hone on another machine...

... Like I said to you previously. Here is the link again

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?msg=40820

Danny

Sorry, I was hoping for a suggestion for a workaround. I will pay more attention to my posts going forward.

[Rossy66]

Have a look at https://schleifjunkies.de/produkt/lederrad-250x35mm-raue-oberflaeche/

Hope this helps!

Thanks, I appreciate the link

[Dan]

I did a search on the forum but didn't find any answers so I decided to ask here, I have honestly tried to hone free hand and not with any success, it gets frustrating to sharpen a knife with a great edge and then mess it up on the honing side. I have watched lots of videos bit I still seem to take the sharpness out of the knife but when I hone with the USB and KS-123, my results are perfect and I couldn't be happier. Obviously, I have to keep taking my wheel off to hone most of the knives so I was wondering if anyone has bought and tried a 10 inch honing wheel and the results. I have watched some videos from different YouTubers and I am impressed watching them move from sharpening to honing without removing any wheels.

Thanks

You have asked this quite a few times already. The main problem is that a larger honing wheel gets in the way of the grinding wheel for longer knives. It is not a problem for shorter knives but as soon as you want to grind a 6 inch or longer blade the honing wheel gets in the way. This is exactly why the honing wheel is a smaller diameter. There isn't really any way around this.
As Ken says, you can change the set up a little for honing. This is one possibility but I think you will still have a problem as this time the grinding wheel will get in the way of honing for longer knives!

This old discontinued model gets round this problem by having the wheels further apart. It was a special model designed specifically for knives
https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/tormek-pr-250-mit-stein-sg-250-220-1220356278/

If you still want to use the USB support bar for honing then a better solution is to hone on another machine...

... Like I said to you previously. Here is the link again

https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?msg=40820

Danny

Sorry, I was hoping for a suggestion for a workaround. I will pay more attention to my posts going forward.

I gave you a workaround at the end of my comment - honing on a separate machine. Is that not of any interest?
There is no way to get around the problem of not enough room for longer knives if you use two 10 inch wheels on the one Tormek machine

[Royale]

I did a search on the forum but didn't find any answers so I decided to ask here, I have honestly tried to hone free hand and not with any success, it gets frustrating to sharpen a knife with a great edge and then mess it up on the honing side. I have watched lots of videos bit I still seem to take the sharpness out of the knife but when I hone with the USB and KS-123, my results are perfect and I couldn't be happier. Obviously, I have to keep taking my wheel off to hone most of the knives so I was wondering if anyone has bought and tried a 10 inch honing wheel and the results. I have watched some videos from different YouTubers and I am impressed watching them move from sharpening to honing without removing any wheels.

Thanks

Pondering more... I think a good place to start is the perception of your Tormek T8.

I see it as a slow moving machine with capabilities for extreme precision and scalability.

Whenever I have to strop, I just remove the grindstone and slot it into the rack just below my T8, and reattach the water trough. (I'm just using an Ikea Bror workbench and Slipakniven rack at my workshop)

It's become part of my routine workflow and I don't really feel any significant time loss when moving the grindstone and leather wheel about.

Maybe a bit of (re)organisation to put your wheels within easy reach, so you're just removing and slotting would make your issue seem less troublesome.

At the end of it all, the final product you create would make a little swapping out here and there seem insignificant, and just "part of the game".

[Herman Trivilino]

it gets frustrating to sharpen a knife with a great edge and then mess it up on the honing side.

What do you mean by "mess it up"? What's happening that makes you think it's messed up?

It really is quite easy, with a bit of practice, to hone free hand. I suggest you try it on something that has a wide beveled edge, such as a wood chisel. Be aware that if you hone at too small of an angle the edge won't make contact with the wheel so you can't mess anything up. As you gradually increase the angle you can feel and hear it when you've got the entire length of the bevel in contact with the surface of the wheel. Go too far and you not only start to round over the edge, you can hear and feel that difference. I suggest you practice with some cheap chisels and knives.

[Rossy66]

I hope this doesn't come off as arrogant or disrespectful but I am very surprised at a lot of the replies to this question. I have spoken to a few of my engineer friends and they have the same opinion, a machine that has jigs and is designed and sold as a "precision" sharpening system relies on "feel" for what I have read and watched as possibly the most important sharpening steps in the process. The KS-123 is sold as "KS-123 Knife Angle Setter, Set the exact sharpening angle for any type of knife" that's from Tomek's web site and the micro adjust on the US for precision and all the machines, this from the T8 page, "Exact repeatability– sharpen your tools with unbeatable precision"

So with all of this "precision" why leave the honing, which is probably the most important part of sharpening, to be done by hand? surely you would want this as controlled as possible, especially since you can negate all the work done in the sharpening stage by a very basic mistake by rolling over the edge and having to start all over again. As a certified Professional Plant Based Chef who now is trying to start a sharpening business, I sharpened my Japanese knives on stones and although I felt like I did a pretty good job at sharpening them, the finish and edge consistency I get from my T8 is nothing short of spectacular and my knives keep a sharp edge way longer than when I free hand.

As I said in the beginning, my goal is not to offend or disrespect anyone and maybe I shouldn't have asked the same question multiple times as I have gotten some great information from this forum but, I feel a controlled honing system would out perform a freehand one, the guy's at Tormek even say so in their videos.

I hope this post is taken in the spirit of education on my part and as mentioned in my previous posts, a 250mm honing wheel would negate the need to remove the grinding wheel when using the KS-123 to set the same angle when honing using the US, this may only work with the diamond wheels as the do not change in diameter, not sure how that would work on the stone wheels as they get smaller. Thanks.

[WimSpi]

There are two options. The first involves using the Tormek leather wheel, which has a slightly smaller diameter. In this case, you need to adjust the angle slightly with the KS-123, as the wheel diameter is smaller.

If you don't want to do this, you can use the 250 mm leather wheel, as mentioned here. That's the one I use too. When sharpening a long knife, you'll need to take it off for a moment. No problem, it's back on in a jiffy. With my 250 mm leather wheel, there's also a margin when you buy it, meaning the diameter can be a millimetre larger or smaller. So the KS-123 comes in handy again.

But there are also situations with my 250 mm leather wheel where I need to adjust the angle slightly, because the type of steel needs to be honed at a slightly larger angle (example: sharpening at 15 degrees and honing at 16 degrees).  So the KS-123 comes into play again.

I think it's a utopian-dream to assume that there's ever a situation where both the grinding wheel and the leather wheel always use the same grinding angle and where the leather wheel can always remain on the Tormek.

[tgbto]

Just my $.04 :

With regards to removing the leather wheel being a breeze, I agree ... with a caveat : if you need to remove the leather wheel when sharpening, you probably also need to remove the grindstone when honing with a jig, right ? This was the whole reason behind the "hone your knives freehand at an angle" method before the KS-123 was advertised for honing. And when the KS-123 was demonstrated, Sebastian had to remove the grinding wheel.

I have spoken to a few of my engineer friends and they have the same opinion, a machine that has jigs and is designed and sold as a "precision" sharpening system relies on "feel" for what I have read and watched as possibly the most important sharpening steps in the process.

Well, it doesn't rely (much) on feel for planer blades or drill bits. But knives are an entirely different matter anyway : aside from the occasional Nakiri (and even then... but I digress), I don't know of many knives that are perfect rectangles from blade heel to blade tip. So the protrusion distance varies, and so does the angle when you hold your knife in a jig resting on the USB.
Moreover, due to blade geometry choices discussed at length on this forum and countless others, some knives require just lifting the blade when coming closer to the tip, some require combining this with a clockwise rotation of the blade, some with a counterclokwise rotation. And that even further depends on your choices as a sharpener : constant edge angle, constant bevel width, or something in between.

So even with a 250mm honing wheel you will have removed only one step requiring "feel". One step which, as @WimSpi pointed out, can also be streamlined with the Tormek honing wheel at the expense of using more accessories or even calculators.
There will still be many factors requiring decision-making, feel, skill and experience that no jig will help you with.
Those are much more critical than a couple degrees difference when honing : you won't "negate all the work done in the sharpening stage by a very basic mistake by rolling over the edge" with small, short variations : at worst, you will degrade your initiel BESS score but your overall edge retention should be fine if you're not careless. You *will* mess up a knife by not caring what you do beside the flat part of the blade. Same thing if you don't hone (^^) your skills when it comes to laying down the blade on the grindstone properly, or adjust sharpening pressure, or lateral speed, or ...

And although I hone as much as possible at a controlled angle, I am glad I have spent time honing freehand as it allows me to estimate how efficient my controlled honing step is, using the visual and tactiles cues mentioned by @Herman_Trivilino.

[Dan]

...As I said in the beginning, my goal is not to offend or disrespect anyone and maybe I shouldn't have asked the same question multiple times as I have gotten some great information from this forum but, I feel a controlled honing system would out perform a freehand one, the guy's at Tormek even say so in their videos.

I hope this post is taken in the spirit of education on my part and as mentioned in my previous posts, a 250mm honing wheel would negate the need to remove the grinding wheel when using the KS-123 to set the same angle when honing using the US, this may only work with the diamond wheels as the do not change in diameter, not sure how that would work on the stone wheels as they get smaller. Thanks.

Pretty sure no one is offended or disrespected. You asked a similar question multiple times and got lots of answers.
It seems to me that you have or had unrealistic expectations. Machine 'X' should be like this and do this... and still you want a simplistic answer to an unrealistic suggestion "a 250mm honing wheel would negate the need to remove the grinding wheel when using the KS-123 to set the same angle when honing using the US'
It has already been explained why the honing wheel on the T8 is not 250mm. As has been suggested, if you want to, you can buy a 250mm honing wheel and mount it on the machine.
It is not going to change the fundamental problem that you have either. So why keep repeating the same thing?

You just appear to want the T8 to be something it is not.

In reality, sharpening is much more nuanced and complicated than you seem to want it to be. Especially on a machine which caters for a huge range of blades - from tools of all sorts, knives and others. The T8 is how it is and you either accept it how it is or do something about it instead if you don't like it.
There are heaps of other sharpening systems out there just made specifically for knives which are able to give excellent results if you don't want to use the T8.

I, and others, have given you concrete solutions to have a "controlled honing system" while using the T8 at specific exact angles and yet you don't seem to want to entertain these ideas.

Danny