Stone honing

[Ken S]

Ted,

Interesting and demanding work.  By all means, look up Brian Burns online.  Brian is a guitarmaker.  His methods are well thought through.  His book is also quite cleverly published.  He prints it himself on his own computer.  This has the real advantage that even the smallest revisions are incorporated in the next "edition".  As I said before, I  exchanged emails with him several years ago.  As well as knowledgeable, he seems like a good fellow.  I believe you would benefit from Brian's experience with planing difficult woods.

My daughter is a cellist.  Naturally her fingerboard has no frets or bumps,  (She played the viola da gamba for a while and hated the frets!)  Just like playing in tune, the Tormek requires some subtle variation in finger pressure to achieve a high level of squareness.  Use a light touch and check your edge often with your machinist's square.  Add a bit more pressure to the high side. You will achieve flat and square.

I experienced similar frustrations when I first started working with a wooden view camera.  I had great difficulty seeing with the groundglass.  It took a lot of frustration and will power to get past the learning curve.  Once I had crossed over the learning curve, my wooden 45 camera quickly became my favorite.  No other camera has the degree of expression available with a large format view camera, nor do the smaller hand cameras have the negative quality.

Stick with your Tormek until you have mastered it.  Your work is demanding, more so than most work.  It requires you develop more than usual skill with your tools, including your Tormek.  Allow yourself the luxury of an apprenticeship with the Tormek.  Buy several blades, good blades, and practice.  (Make sure you have a sharpie marker, too.)  Don't discard the violin because the violinist can't play in tune.

When you have mastered your Tormek, you will be in a position to decide if it is the tool for you.  It will not lose any value if you use it for another year.  Make your decision from a position of skill.

I wish you the best of luck and do keep us posted.

Ken

ps Contact Brian Burns.

[RobinW]

There are plenty of comments elsewhere on the forum about getting square edged plane blades (I'll try and link them later). As one who suffered from non-square edges and did quite a lot of investigation into their causes, these links will hopefully give you some clues.

The earlier post by KSMike about minor angular differences where the blade is clamped is a very good point.

For example a 1 degree movement at the hub of a bicycle wheel is a small lateral distance, but the same 1 degree movement creates a larger lateral distance at the wheel rim.  This effect not only applies for butting the tool up against the edge of the SE76, but also applies in the other plane where any twist can have a major influence as compound angles now apply. Likewise applied finger pressure is an easy method of causing off square grinding.

However starting with the basics of what you have posted.

I have just been out and put a straight edge along my universal support bar, and finnicky as it is due to its round nature, it is not straight all the way along. Trying to get the straight edge steady and in line on the very top surface was difficult to judge.

If I put the straight edge over the whole length, and hold it down between the two rods (threaded and plain), I can eyeball what looks like 1mm gap at the far end of the universal support bar. The deviation appears linear along the length. If I use the straight edge over the 'working' part of the universal support (ie where the SE76 operates) it is straight and any gaps are miniscule. Thus there is a very small amount of bend of the universal support bar between the two rods - likely as a result of bending the bar end and welding on the second rod, irrespective of any stress relieving which may have been done.

When the straight edge is put along the side of the universal support bar there are again miniscule gaps but no distinct trend or error of note. Too small to attempt measuring and not worth the effort as bigger errors can be introduced by the operator.

It is difficult to tell from your photograph, but with the straight edge over the whole length of the universal support there appears to be a concave gap (ie bar is bowed) which may by 2+ mm deep. I think that is a problem.

If you move your straight edge so that it only lies on the 'working part' of the universal support (ie to the right of the threaded rod as per your first photo) is this straight? If it is, it would indicate that the concave appearance is caused by the non-working part between the rods. If the concave part is still applicable to the working part of the universal support bar, can you measure or estimate the amount?

If it transpires that your universal support is not out of specification (although no technical tolerances are listed) then off square grinding comes down to a mixture of factors. The following may seem like a lot of reading, but you will see that you are not alone, and there are some good pointers how to overcome the idiosyncrasies of using a Tormek!

You have not indicated whether you are new to using a Tormek or whether this is a new problem. Whatever, there are many on this forum who have got the Tee shirt etc..

http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1469.msg4791#msg4791

Handtool working
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1463.msg4748#msg4748

Square Edge Issues with SE76
http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1366.0

[Herman Trivilino]

A flat hot dog...fantastic...I love America :-)

Flat, yes.  Hot, no.

Well, there is the rare fried baloney sandwich.

[Rob]

Oh right...you eat it cold?  Like we would a ham sandwich.

[grepper]

Personally, I found the following information extremely helpful.  It even includes useful information on knife selection and handling: 
http://brunching.com/idiotsandwich.html

[Herman Trivilino]

Thanks, Mark.  That was educational for me, now I know that the end without the wood is the end I'm supposed to sharpen.   

That actually makes more sense when I think about it. 

[grepper]

I know what you mean Herman.  And all along I've been trying to sharpen the whole thing all this time!  No wonder that one end would never get get sharp.  I mean really...  Who knew?