Newbie son asking about Axe face w/ T7?

[CountryGuy]

I purchased a Tormek for my 17yr old Son doing custom CNC work.  He is making tacktical axes and knives.   I'm having fun too.. For sharpening & edge setups we quickly found out about wet stones and Tormek! Primo stuff.   

That said:   Here is our Q.    Can he use the Tormek T-7 to make light bevel cheeks on the axe face? 

Givens:  1/4 plate.   1045 to 1095 stuff.   Axe sharp edge of say 3"-5" in length w/ a taper starting 2"-3" back and down to the edge.    In essense,  can he use this to make a 1/8" reduction down each side ?  Or is that just too much metal?  We have other alternatives, but simply wondered if this could work? 
thanks all,
CG

[Rob]

As a general rule the Tormek is great for sharpening and rubbish for shaping.  By shaping I mean removing lots of metal to alter or reduce the profile of the tool.  It is possible but you'll be there for a long time and your fingers will be sore by the end.

More fit for purpose tools include dry grinders (but watch the heat) and/or belt sander/linisher style tools.  To be honest, a regular belt sander held upside down in a vice with coarse grit good quality cloth backed abrasive (say 40 to 60 grit) will remove metal pretty quick without going to a lot of expense.

[CountryGuy]

Thanks!  Agreed.  We have the belt sander w/ 60 ready to move metal.  Just was not sure of the ability's here.   I also wondered if it is possible to put on other wheels (a very corse 10" junk wheel) if you do need to shape.    PS-  Perfect term!  Thanks. 
I am gathering up all my parts to sharpen !  REady to go to it.    Tx  CG

[Rob]

Excellent...I sense your enthusiasm :-)

I cant claim any ownership of the term shape, it was around long before me :-)
With respect to using a non standard wheel, that's an interesting question.  I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer that but Jeff will be along shortly or one of the other chaps who will know better than I.  My ten penneth would be not to use a "foreign" wheel for two reasons:

1) Tormek's hub design is quite specialised for their own wheels, we hear of problems with people taking wheels on and off quite a bit so its not something I would feel confident about (but in truth I just don't know much about it as I've only ever changed mine once to the Silicon blackstone)

2) The Tormek runs at very slow speeds so even if you managed to mount an "animal" of a wheel, aren't you still going to fall down the hole of too slow a grind speed for heavy metal removal?

I appreciate it wouldn't get hot due to the water but on balance my gut feel is you'd be better off with a ceramic 60 grit belt on a sander upside down in a vice and just observe and be careful with any tempering of the metal.  I shaped a massive ancient skew chisel that belonged to my Father recently and just used my bare fingers to gauge how hot it was getting on the sander.  Once it was too hot to hold I quenched it in water. 

There is another school that says you shouldn't quench HSS tools because it introduces micro cracks in the metal but I think that's only when they get really hot not the hand hot temperature I'm talking of.  Also your axe wouldn't be HSS would it....carbon steel I guess which means it can be quenched.

[Herman Trivilino]

As a general rule the Tormek is great for sharpening and rubbish for shaping. 

The Tormek makes a great partnership with the dry grinder.  No one knows that better than you, Rob.  While I don't have the fancy set up you do with the BGM-100, I often use the Tormek and my gry grinder together.  Once I set up the jig and start grinding with the Tormek, I can look at the freshly-ground surface and see where I need to apply the dry grinder.  After a bit of dry grinding I'm back at the Tormek, and the process repeats.  They are set up beside each other so I can move back and forth easily, and the water from the Tormek keeps the steel cool.  You have to be careful, though, not to spend too much time on the dry grinder.  It's easy to over heat the metal.

Keep in mind that I'm not a turner.  I'm much more likely to be working on a mower blade than a turning tool.

[Herman Trivilino]

Once it was too hot to hold I quenched it in water. 

That's a good tip.  I'll have to remember that one.

I understand your concern about quenching HSS, but to my way of thinking it's not really a quench if the steel is barely too hot to handle.  It's more like a bath.

[Rob]

That's what I figure.  And (your post before Herman) you're right, dry grinder and then Tormek for the fine stuff.  If the axe grinding poster has a dry grinder then by all means use that.  Anything to get rid of metal fast basically.

I will say one thing, I've been experimenting very recently (this week in fact) with grinding using sanding belts because of this horribly out of true skew I had to deal with.  This thing is a behemoth of a skew that my Dad had in his turning kit, I wanted to try using a chunky skew to round the corners off a spindle piece without using a roughing gouge.  This is where you take it from square to cylindrical and its more difficult with a skew so chunk is helpful.  It was so mashed up by years of 1970's hand grinding on what was probably a concrete paving slab!!  I started on the dry grinder with the Torlok as a rest and it heated the metal so fast that it became counter productive.  So I experimented with a low grit cloth backed belt.  In my case I have one of those combi sanding machines, you know flat 4" bed and a 6" disc sander in one machine.  Even the circular sanding disc positively stripped metal off the thing but little control.  The flat belt was superb when I improvised a toolrest that allowed me to hold it at approx. 15 degrees which is whats needed for a skew. 

So on balance, if I were given the job of massive steel removal and the choice between dry grinder and abrasive belt, I would probably err on the belt now because it didn't heat as fast but it sure moved the steel.