Wolverine Varigrind 2

[Brian McInturff]

So has anyone tried this yet? I've gotten really good at sharpening everything(but my Lacer style Skews) but I am curious what peoples thoughts are. I've not read anything about them on any of the forums so I figured it was time to start asking.

[Ryan Baker]

It's designed to prevent you from "falling" off the edge of the wheel. That means that you can't move the tool around when you want to, and you are stuck wearing a groove in the center. Doesn't seem like an advantage to me. It's not that hard to learn to keep the tool on the wheel. Otherwise, it's about the same as the Varigrind 1 (which has now been upgraded to have the improved hold-down knob). Some people seem to like it though. YMMV

[Scott Conners]

The one part I really liked about it was the plastic-coated bearing used to secure the tool instead of the bolt head pressing on metal. Seeing that they sold a retrofit kit finally spurred me to fix my original varigrind.
I've always thought it was silly that the bolt head on the original vari-grind still had the manufacturing marks in raised letters that chewed into the metal tab and made it hard to turn. All I did was unscrew the brass handwheel (it's held on by red locktite, so heat would be useful in removing, I just used force and it worked fine) and smoothed the head of the bolt on my grinder. You have to partially dissasemble the jig to get the bolt out, but the whole thing took me less than 10 minutes and makes a big difference in how easy it is to turn. I highly reccomend it for anyone who finds the metal-on-metal grinding annoying, it makes it much more pleasant to use.

[Brian McInturff]

Thanks for the tip Scott. I may do that to mine too. I'm not looking at buying the Varigrind 2 just thought it would open up discussion in case anyone was thinking about buying it.;)

[Bernie Weishapl]

I sold my vari-grind unit. I free hand my Lacer and Raffan radius skews. I watched Lacers DVD and saw him sharpen one in person.

[Burt Alcantara]

Bernie,
I'm surprised you don't use the Tormek for the skews. After sharpening my 3/4 Thompson on the T7, I finally realized what a skew could do. Prior to that I was using, gasp, gasp, Harbor Freight skews.

[Matt Haus]

I bought one last week and have only used it so far on a fingernail gouge. I bought it because the guy at hartville told me it would duplicate the ellsworth grind. I have not used it for such but will report how it does.