Stone Grader SP-650

[tooljunkie]

Yes I think you are correct Ken on that there are two groups on this forum.

I may be in the middle at 49 years of age but also that I was into woodworking along time ago but lost a place to do it for many years. I have had most of my planes for a long time that came from my Grand father who apparently was quite the master cabinet builder from England & specialized in refinishing furniture & French Polishing.

I never really knew him I was too young but I did keep his planes but I wish I could have to learned from him.
I was a young boy when I received the planes & even then I was interested in tools even though I was not into woodworking yet.

But maybe it was the start of of my tool addiction & passion for woodworking.

I am not a master but I take it slow & hope to improve now that I have a new 20'x36' deticated shop.

I really should learn more about the planes I received but I too love the looks & feel of the Lie-Nielsen low Angle Jack Plane as well as the Veritas Low-Angle Planes.
I don't own any of these yet. 

Thanks Ken
Dan

[Ken S]

Nice post, Dan.  I too, am fortunate enough to have some of my grandfathers' tools.  They are treasures.  Our grandfathers lived in an era when Stanley, Preston, and Record made quality products.  With our present day technology, makers such as Lie-Nielsen and Lee Valley have surpassed the older toolmakers, albeit at a much higher price!  That does not mean that our classic tools are not capable of fine work in skilled hands. 

I hope you (and others) will continue to post.  There is much to be learned from our combined experiences.
The woodworking portion of this forum could certainly use a dose of new life.

Ken

[Steve Brown]

Dan and Ken,
My Grandfather came to this country from Hungary at the turn of the century at the age of 29. He left his wife and daughter in Hungary. He was a carpenter, made most of his own tools as well as a number of musical instruments. He couldn't speak English, but he was able to send for his wife and daughter, buy a house and raise nine kids through the Depression. I have a couple of his planes. I spent my entire life as a carpenter and construction manager for the likes of Turner Construction. I'm now 65, am putting my first shop together, and I'm finally doing what I dreamed about virtually all my life. So now I am slowly accumulating the best tools I can afford like the Tormek and the Jet shaper and so on. We do have a wealth of history, experience and knowledge in our community. Nice that we can share these things.
Steve   

[tooljunkie]

Yes
Absolutely Ken.

I wish I could have known him more & that I could have got more of his tools.
As it was more distant family who had not bothered with with my Grand Father or us at all all came out of the woodwork sort-of speak & grabbed all the best things they could.

So as it was there wasn't allot of his tools left.
I was told he had allot of wood planes & chisels galore.

[jeffs55]

The Tormek only comes with one stone and it is either 220 or 1000 grit depending on how it left the factory. It is graded into the other grit by the stone grader. It goes from 220 to 1000, there are no intermediate steps on the factory stone. I have a Jap 8000 grit bought from somewhere. It is not necessary. 30,000 grit would be totally useless in my humble opinion. That would seem to duplicate window. That might polish something in a month or to of polishing.  I have and used to use a white Arkansas stone, it too is practically useless. My knives were sharp but I dnt know that they were sharper than the Arkansas pink made them. The 8000 is a stropping type thing.

[Ken S]

Steve,

The story of your grandfather is remarkable.  We can learn so much from that generation.  Like Dan, I believe you and I honor our grandfathers by following them in woodworking.  I believe we are links in a chain, benefitting from those before us and, hopefully, helping those after us.

The imp in me would like to place a useless, but intriguing, gadget in my tool box to puzzle my heirs.  They might even find a use for it!

This is a fascinating group post.  I hope more like it will follow.

Good luck building your shop; you have certainly paid your dues.

Ken

[Steve Brown]

Dear All,
So, from what I can gather from all you guys, one possible pretty good progression scenerio for sharpening chisels and plane irons would be: Start with the existing 25 degree bevel using the Tormek 220 grit wheel, dress that out to the 1000 grit wheel, move up to the Tormek Japanese 4000 waterstone, create a micro bevel at 30 degrees on an 8000 waterstone using a Veritas MK II sharpening guide meanwhile creating a slurry with a Naguro stone to help keeping the back of the chisel/plane iron from sticking to the 8000 grit waterstone while polishing the back. Strop/polish with the Tormek leather strop wheel after the 8000 grit micro bevel step.  Lastly, periodically as required, flatten the 8000 grit waterstone with the Shapton Glass Diamond Lapping Plate. Try to refrain from holding up a 7-11 to pay for all this. Sound pretty much like a state of the art approach, anybodY have anything to add? By the way Jeff, is there a spell check function on this thing?
Steve

[Ken S]

Jeff,

You must be a faster sharpener than I am.  Polishing a chisel bevel to a mirror finish with Arkansas stones took me six weeks.  (Just kidding, but it was a very slow and painful, to my hands, process.)  The most annoying part was that after all that work, I had produced a skew chisel.

I believe the problem is operator error/inexperience.  I have since embraced microbevels and water stones.  Of the two I would say the microbevel is the more important factor. 

The main improvement I have found is the Tormek.

You might want to look into microbevels. Leonard Lee and Ron Hock cover them well in their books, as do the Lie-nielsen youtube series.

Ken

[Herman Trivilino]

I get perfectly good results on my chisels and hand planes using only the stone that comes with the Tormek, followed by the Tormek honing wheel.  I think anything more than that on these tools, and many others too, is overkill.

As to the new plane irons and chisels, I always check to see if the back is flat.  If it has machine marks on the back, I'll flatten it and then sharpen it before I ever use it, unless for some reason I'm in a hurry to use it and don't have another on hand.

[Steve Brown]

Herman,
Do you know anyone who has used the Tormek 4000 grit Japanese water stone?
Steve

[jeffs55]

I used the Arkansas stones on knives only and they were brought to a final edge from a new factory edge. Therefore, the time required was not all that great but still several minutes. The final stone used was also the translucent grade, not white as stated. According to Dans Whetstones this is the hardest grade. As I said, this is largely for self gratification as it is so fine as to be unnecessary for any reasonable purpose. It is basically for bragging rights as it is nearly as smooth as glass and would take forever to use unless your item was razor sharp already.
I am not aware of a spell check mechanism.
Your scenario is way overkill. As I mentioned, I have the/an 8000 grit Jap stone and it is actually more of a polisher in my opinion. I am sure it might ad the nth degree to an already extremely sharp edge but it too is for bragging rights. Also, the leather wheel is not necessary after the 8000 grit stone, there is no burr to be removed. The 8000 grit wheels are softer then the Tormek wheels but with the minimal usae that they would see, they should last for a while. I think I bought mine from Woodcrafter and the first one I got wobbled like a weeble. I tried to reattach it with no success. The good folks at Woodcrafter paid to pick up the bad wheel and shipped me another which worked fine. All i ahve ever sharpened is knives and I agree with Herman when he said, the 1000 grit is really all you need.

[ionut]

Hi Steve,

You can use only the Tormek without involving the water stones. Sharpening on 220-1000 Tormek, Honing on Tormek Japanese 4000 stone, and a short final step on the leather wheel.
If you want you can put a microbevel on an 8000 stone afterwards, the most time consuming would be clamping the tool in the jig at this stage, but if you do this don't strop on the Tormek leather wheel. I don;t see stropping as being necessary at this point, if you still want to do it do it on a hand strop backed by a piece of wood.
I stop at the Tormek machine and my tools are slicing the end grain of any wood, soft of hard leaving a waxy look on the end grain. I have used to put a microbevel a while back in the 8000 stone, the gain was a longer lasting edge but the edge wasn;t lasting so long to justify the time spend doing that step.
I do my flattening completely by hand up to 8000.

Ionut

[ionut]

Hi All,

Ken- The microbevels are required only in the process of hand sharpening to shorten the polishing time and to minimize the wear on the stones. If a machine is able to achieve the same amount of sharpness the microbevel is not required anymore. I used to put a microbevel with the Tormek Japanese stone but I believe that was inherited from the manual sharpening process. The offset between the stones on Tormek can be used to put a microbevel but I stopped doing that in my case, first because I didn't see a difference in the way the tools are cutting and second because the microbevel is an approximate +2 degrees from the grinding angle (or whatever anybody would decide to make it) and the next sharpening session would require to remove more material than needed to obtain a burr.
Steve - I own a Tormek Japanese 4000 stone for a couple of years now I think and it is a great stone, even though it is a softer one I would probably have to go through the original Tormek a number of times before I would ever have to get a new Japanese Stone. There are a couple of things to pay attention at when you work with it. Make sure it is always clean, it gets black in no time. To clean it use only the fine side of the grader and do not apply too much pressure. Also I would suggest to use the grader on the Japanese stone parallel with the stone and not across it, that way will be less likely to bring the stone out of square by just cleaning it. The diamond holder head on the truing tool has a play which will cause pretty severe chipping on the edge at the exit side of the stone if that play is not removed. You can remove the play by simply using an electric tie that goes through the head and gets tied on the reference back of the truing tool. The Tormek Japanese stone has another huge advantage, if the 1000 grading is not properly done honing on the honing wheel would create a sharp edge but not a long lasting sharp edge and that's because the leather would not be able to remove large scratches, they will get only rounded and polished scratches creating multiple points of failure at the edge of the tool. The Japanese Tormek stone would flatten those scratches fast leaving the edge perfectly straight.

Ionut

[Steve Brown]

Hey Ionut,
Thanks for the feedback. It's great having someone help who has and is using the equipment in question. So for you, ths Japanese waterstone at 4000 is good. If you're going to flatten with the 8000, stropping not necessary. Microbevel, not necessarily required either if you use the 8000. That's good. That all makes sense. I'm not sure I get all that about truing up the Japanese waterstone, but I'll try it once and see if I can figure out what you're talking about. By the way, which 8000 stone do you have? What's your thoughts about the Norton 6000/8000 combo waterstone? I was thinking it probably wouldn't hurt to go through that 6000 to 8000 progression when polishing the back, especially if you had that on one stone. Also, what's your take on lapping the bench stones? Did you say you had the Shapton plate lapper? Thanks,
Steve

[nhblacksmith]

Just remember a 4,000 grit water stone will take you to a 3 micron edge, and an 8000 grit water stone will only take you to a 1.2 micron edge but power honing on the Tormek leather wheel with Green Chromium Oxide will take you down to a 1/2 micron edge and takes relatively little time.

Neal