New to tormek

[Lillis]

Hello.
I just got my T-7 yesterday. I really liked the machine, and the quality of it.
I have some questions.

My first knife i tried was a total failure Probably gone for the wrong angels, it was an old knife so it does not bother me. But i now understand that i have many hours in front of me to master the Technic.

When i bought the T-7 my thoughts was that i don't care to spend some extra money on a grinding machine, because maybe i could help others and sell the service. That way the more expensive machine felt more reasonable.

Is it possible to grind at a selling level with the T-7?
To be able to take charge for the service, the result most be 100%.

Is it a big diffrence with the Japanise stone, compared to the standard stone+leather honing?

I have read most i can find and watched most of the youtube videos on tormek.

[jeffs55]

It will not take you "many hours" to be able to sharpen a knife well on the Tormek. There is one person at least on here that sharpens professionally using only the coarse grade of the regular stone. I don't know how his customers are satisfied but good for him. The problem as I see it is when you sharpen thick blade knives. Due to the way the knife jigs are made you are not going to get the same grind on both sides of a blade. One side will have a visibly different grind angle on it and this just does not look good to me. The knife will be sharp, it is just cosmetic. But then, isn't cosmetic what you pay a professional for? I would go with the regular stone as it with the honing wheel are all you need. I have a 4000 grit Japanese stone and seldom to never use it. Sharpening and kind of curved blade is a challenge as you must learn to lift the blade as you pass it over the wheel in order to not grind the curve into a straight edge. That is your learning area. In short, practice a lot on some cheap knives.

[grepper]

Welcome to the forum!

You don't need anything other than the standard stone and honing wheel to get knives extremely sharp with your new T7!  Professional shops do use the Tormek.  In fact I know of one that actually charges $2.00 US  extra for hollow ground bevels, and specifies that they use the Tormek for that.  Just watch the videos with Jeff Farris on Youtube and do what he does.  It's not that difficult.  As Jeff55 mentioned above, be sure to lift the knife handle perpendicular to the stone when sharpening the curve at the tip.  Intuitively you would think to pull the handle towards yourself pushing the tip down along the wheel surface, but if you do that it will create a wider bevel at the tip than the rest of the knife.

Jeff55, what do you mean by "thick blade knives"? 

I know one issue is a pocket knife with many blades so that the blade to be sharpened is offset from the center of the handle.  This is not a problem if you are able to clamp onto the blade, but will cause an unequal bevel if you are clamping to the handle of the knife.  There are ways around that problem, so if it's an issue for you just let us know.

The first issue you are likely to encounter is sharpening knives with a narrow chord, i.e., the distance from the spine to the cutting edge is small.  Fillet knives, small pocket and paring knives are good examples.  With narrow chord knives the jig can hit the wheel lifting the blade from the stone.  If you run into that issue, just search the forums as it's been very well covered, or post here.  Folks here are more than willing to help out and respond quickly.

Curved blades and serrated knives are an issue.  It will also take practice to not get a concave cutting edge on knives with a straight edge.  If you lay the edge of the knife on the cutting board and you can see light between the board and knife you know the edge is concave and veggie cutting will be difficult.

[Ken S]

Welcome, Lillis. 

Yes, it is certainly possible to earn extra money sharpening knives with your Tormek. However, just like learning to pilot an airplane, study and practice before soloing will improve the outcome.

You have a real advantage over most of us in this area; you live in Sweden.  I would suggest you contact Stig at Tormek.  Ask what classes might be available for you either at Tormek AB or who Stig might recommend as a teacher.  Good training with an experienced sharpener and teacher is invaluable. Not only would the instruction be of great benefit to you, you would also benefit from having a contact person for future questions.

Whatever time and expense would be involved in doing this is so much more important than purchasing extra jigs.  You can always purchase these later.  When you do, you will be doing so from a position of knowledge and experience.  There is so much which is not included in basic training videos. For examples, many fine knives have a bolster (a protective thick area between the hand and the blade).  With sharpening, the bolster will need to be thinned in order to properly sharpen the knife.  This is a real world situation not covered in the online or handbook training.  Also, maintaining or reestablishing the proper curve of the blade is very important.  If you try to cut with an improperly curved knife, even one which is very sharp, you will notice the problem.  This issue also is not covered in basic training materials.

The Tormek is a well designed fine tool in skilled hands.  Use your advantage to obtain that skill.  When you do, please share your experiences with the forum.

Best of luck,

Ken

[Lillis]

Thanks a lot for all your help and answers, Im sure there will be more soon
Will start with more practice and, trail and error, but it was a good idea to join some training class. Will look in to that and see whats available.

I know I have seen some video where they explained that if the knife blade is very thin, you could measure the angel to the knife jig. But i cant find it, was it -10° on the angel or something like that?
Also, is it the same for both knife jigs?

Thanks again!

[grepper]

RE: "I know I have seen some video where they explained that if the knife blade is very thin, you could measure the angel to the knife jig. But i cant find it, was it -10° on the angel or something like that?"

Lack of coffee I suspect, but I'm not sure what you are asking.  Could you please clarify what the problem is?

RE: "Also, is it the same for both knife jigs?"

Do you mean the standard knife jig vs the long knife jig?  If so, yes.  It's the same.

[jeffs55]

Jeff55, what do you mean by "thick blade knives"? 

A thick blade knife is one that has a blade that is very thick at the spine. Thick is more than 1/8" thick at the spine. The thicker blades change the grind angle when all else is the same. Jig one up and sharpen it and notice the bevel, there is a difference in the ground edge from one side to the other that can be seen with the naked eye.

[Herman Trivilino]

Jeff55, what do you mean by "thick blade knives"? 

This is an issue with the SVM-45 knife jig. Let's say you're grinding at a 40^o angle, 20^o on each side.  That 20^o angle is measured using the top edge of the knife blade as it lays on the stone. Then, if you flip the knife over you'll notice that the top edge of the other side is not 20^o, but only if the knife is very thick.

I doubt any customer would notice this difference, and it can be avoided using a homemade jig consisting of a platform mounted in such a way that it rests very close to the grindstone.

http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=1592.msg6634#msg6634

[Lillis]

RE: "I know I have seen some video where they explained that if the knife blade is very thin, you could measure the angel to the knife jig. But i cant find it, was it -10° on the angel or something like that?"

Lack of coffee I suspect, but I'm not sure what you are asking.  Could you please clarify what the problem is?

RE: "Also, is it the same for both knife jigs?"

Do you mean the standard knife jig vs the long knife jig?  If so, yes.  It's the same.

Could be the lack of coffee yes
What I was meant to ask was: When the blade of the knife is to small to measure the angle, what is the + or - angel you can measure on the jig? Dont know if its -10°, was just a guess.
Then i meant if that goes for both the SVM-45 and the SVM-140? that would be depending on the material thickness of the jig.


And i have a new question:
How do you oil your leather honing wheel? I used "sewing machine" oil, very fine machine oil. I read that some people use that for there leather.
But i think it is still dry, i pored alot on there and polished it in with a peace of cloth.
When im honing on the leather wheel, the honing compound is almost completely dry and that makes some dust of if.

How wet should the leather be, soaked?
What do you use to lubricate it with?

[grepper]

Thanks Jeff55 and Herman.  After all this time I was not aware of that issue.  Must be the thing is not clamping in the center of the blade.

Herman's solution works very well and solves most problems associated with the SVM-45/140 knife jigs, such as very small blades like a pen knife, thin blades such as fillet knives and longer blades like machetes. 

Sorry, but I don't know the exact answer to your small blade question. Maybe someone else might post about that.  Just guessing, but could you clamp it just slightly off center so there is just room for the Anglemaster? For me, if the blade is a really teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy little thing, I just do it by hand.

Lillis, I think your question about oiling the honing wheel is, by far, the most common question new users ask.  It's been asked over and over again.  When I first got mine, I wondered the exact same thing!  It seems everybody does.

It's easy to way over think initial oiling.  I used light machine oil, it might have been sewing machine oil.  Just don't put on too much! If anyone else has a better explanation please post it, but I think it's basically:

http://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=2250.msg10803#msg10803

Searching the forums should produce a lot of answers.

[jeffs55]

And i have a new question:
How do you oil your leather honing wheel?[/quote]
Be very careful and under no circumstances are you to over oil the wheel. There is no easy cure for an over oiled wheel. My advice is to barely oil it and let the oil soak in. As you know, when you apply the oil it has to migrate into the surrounding leather and therefore it goes from a highly concentrated area to an area of low to no concentration. It will take hours for you to oil the wheel properly. You cannot speed the process except by heating both the oil and the wheel. I would apply the oil to the wheel and leave it in the sun. Just my two cents.

[Ken S]

I would stop oiling (now that you have already started with oil) and switch to using the honing compound.  Eventually the honing compound will work into the leather and you will be up and running.

Ken

[Lillis]

So i have used my machine many times now, and here are some new questions

When you want to grind a kitchen knife to for example 30°, that means 30° on each side of the blade correct?
And when i want to set the angle to 30° and measure on the knife and not the blade, the angle should be 15° is that correct?

This is how understand it, and i have read it over and over again and it is really not that hard to understand the geometry.
But, i don't get the results that i want. If i know the knife angle and set up my jig i can clearly see that it is not grinding where it should.

I also grinded a filé knife, and what i can read the angle should be around 20°, that means that if i measure on the blade and not the edge it should be 10°.
But the knife really looked weird with a huge knife edge.

-Johan

[Stickan]

Hi,
I sent you an answer in Swedish also :-)
http://tormek.com/international/en/accessories/other-accessories/wm-200-anglemaster/

For information, we have many videos on the web-page that describes how different jigs or accessories works.
As well as the support@tormek.com, that will answer within 24 hours weekdays.

[grepper]

10° is extremely small for a kitchen knife.  That is why you are getting such a wide bevel, as the blade is very flat against the wheel.  Commercial razor blades are about 8°-10°.   When they are talking about 20° on a fillet knife, they mean each side is 20°.  20° per side is sort of standard for chef's knives.

Shun kitchen knives are 16°, which is generally a smaller angle than most kitchen knives, but they have very hard steel and can hold an edge even with that small angle, however they can be prone to chipping.

Of course you can make your edge anything you wish, so you can experiment!  On softer steel, a small angle may not hold up well.  In that case, try a more blunt angle.  Some brittle steels are difficult to sharpen at small angles without the edge chipping.  A cleaver, hacking, bashing, whacking, and smashing its way through bone would not remain sharp long with a small angle bevel.  But if you are cutting sashimi or maybe mushrooms and never even touching the cutting board, a razor blade at 8° might last a long time.

In general, a small bevel angle has less cutting resistance,  but may dull more quickly. 

Here is a crude, very general recommendation for bevel angles:

http://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Tips-for-Selecting-the-Right-Bevel-Angle-W44.aspx


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