David, Thank you for posting your review of these sharpening systems. It's very useful and timely to me. Michael Staples PTG Associate Member On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:05 AM, David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>wrote: > After our lengthy discussion I wandered into my favorite > spend-whatever-extra-money-I-have-store, The Japan Woodworker, with my > chisels in hand to try various sharpening systems that they had available. > I won't bother you with everything but I tried various systems, hand and > machine, including the Tormek T7, Lap Sharp and Work Sharp systems. The > best system, I found, was the Lap Sharp system ($795) LS 200-2009. It can > be used either wet or dry and features replaceable abrasive discs in a > range > of grits and has a honing guide that will hold all types of chisels and > plane irons at precise angles which are easy to duplicate. The system is > fast and easy to use but expensive. The Tormek T7 ($599) system also works > well especially if you use gouges and things as it has some accessories > that > makes sharpening them easy and quick (also expensive). Using quality > diamond or wet stones with a proper guide also does a good job but it is > slower than the machines and by the time you purchase the various stones > (some up to $90 each) and guides is not that much less expensive than a > quality machine. The best machine for the money that I found (in fact I > ended up buying one) is the Work Sharp WS 3000 ($199). The is a dry system > using replaceable pressure sensitive adhesive disks of various grits that > adhere to a thick, removable glass disk. The system comes with two glass > disks and you adhere the abrasive disks to both sides creating a sequence > of > 4 (or more if you want to buy more disks) progressive grits that is more > than adequate to get a very finely polished and sharp result. Very simple > and quick to use and easy to duplicate honing angles. You do need to > purchase a Wide Blade Sharpening system design for this machine to > accommodate wider blades (especially plane irons) over 2 inches wide ($60). > The replacement disks are not expensive and available in grits from 80 - > 6000. You can also purchase a leather honing disk for fine polishing > ($28). > > One comment, at least according to the folks here, is that if you use > Japanese chisels (which I do), it's not recommended that you use hollow > grind systems (like the Tormek). The reason is that the Japanese chisels > are made of two types of metal laminated together--a high carbon steel > (which is the cutting part) and a low carbon softer steel for the backing. > The hollow grind systems tend to remove too much of the backing which can > impact performance and longevity (though honestly I didn't quite get > exactly > how). Nevertheless, they advise to use a system that creates a flat bevel. > All the machines mentioned above will create a microbevel, btw, but only > the > Lap Sharp and the Work Sharp systems create a flat bevel as opposed to a > hollow grind that comes from sharpening on a turning wheel as in the Tormek > system. One other advantage over flat bevel systems is that as the Tormek > wheel wears of course the diameter changes and thus the "hollowness" of the > grind also changes and becomes more acute over time. A flat bevel system > doesn't have that problem FWIW. > > That's my report. > > David Love > www.davidlovepianos.com > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101020/b0845369/attachment.htm>
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