At 14:34 -0400 13/10/2010, Terry Farrell wrote:
>You kinda got me thinking about some things with the Tormek and I've
>done a bit of reading - pretty much reinforcing some things that
>I've had an idea of. Reading in many of the forums on woodworking
>and sharpening I get the clear impression that many hard-core
>woodworker and/or those with good sharpening skills would not be
>caught dead using a power sharpener like the Tormek. And I have
>absolutely no doubt if a skilled sharpener has good equipment and
>the right skills they get excellent results, perhaps as easy and
>fast as I. For the experienced woodworker with very good hand/stone
>sharpening skills, I don't know that the Tormek has huge advantage.
>I even read that a lot of folks use the Tormek for grinding, but all
>fine work is on stones.
This thread has had me looking at all the info on Tormek and watching
the videos and thinking, like David Love, that it might be nice to
have one if there were not several dozen other things I need more. I
also spent a couple of hours attending to a few chisels and plane
blades that have got out of condition.
If I need to remove a lot of metal, change the angle, remove chips
caused by nails etc. I do it on the flat side of an ordinary high
speed dry grinder. To use even the most vicious of water-cooled
stones would take far too long. Someone mentioned that you can tell
things are getting too hot when the sparks begin to fly. Well the
sparks begin to fly the moment the steel touches the stone, just like
a lighter, so that's not a very good rule! The steel is getting too
hot when it changes to the colour that indicates the temperature at
which the steel loses its temper, and if you stop when any part of it
goes dark blue, you'll be safe. I keep a bowl of water next to the
grinder and dip the blade regularly in this. You can, to be extra
safe, wind the grinder up to top speed, switch it off and frind the
steel till it freewheels to a stop.
Once I have the angle of the bevel and the end square I move to the
agricultural wheel, which is 2 feet in diameter and 4 inches wide
running in a bath of water. This can be turned as fast as you like.
David mentioned the advantage of having the bevel slightly concave to
facilitate the subsequent sharpening of the edge. Well, yes and no,
I say. Since I am too lazy to build a jig onto the big wheel to hold
the blade at a fixed position (as with the Tormek- easy enough) I end
up with a straight bevel because the slight concavity that would
result from the curved perimeter of the stone is negated by the
slight inexactitude of my positioning of the blade. But that's fine
for me. The trouble with doing this stage of the work on a flat
stone is that there is always a tendency to end up with a more or
less convex bevel -- much less if you are experienced but never quite
flat. The Tormek, by the look of it, will produce more concavity
than is needed. It will also be much slower than my beast.
I next move to a fairly coarse water stone that I bought in China 35
years ago for about 10¢. This would be almost good enough but I
finish off, getting almost a mirror finish either with the Belgian
stone I bought for razors when I was 16 and which is now unobtainable
because the mine is used up, or with another 10¢ Chinese treasure
that does a pretty good job.
If you have learned how to use a plane you have most of the basic
skills to sharpen by hand because it's all a question of keeping the
angles and the pressure right, and it's just a question of practice.
I, and obviously some others, love to acquire and perfect skills that
do not require machines to supply the know-how. I don't remove
wrestpins with a T-hammer because any idiot can do that and I don't
see that as a skill but an unnecessary chore, but there are many jobs
in our trade that give us the opportunity to acquire skills that are
real treasures.
I mentioned in a previous posting that I finish off (either knives or
chisels, and even razors) on a 10 inch buffing wheel using white
soap. This must also be a lot quicker than using the Tormek
slow-running leather wheel with the paste.
In short, I'd rather they recalled at my funeral that I was able to
sharpen a chisel by hand than that I grew so rich that I was able to
leave a Tormek T7 to my children.
JD
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