Tormek Grinder Question

[Hilel Salomon]

I'm not trying to reopen the question of which type of grinder to use, but I do have a question about using the Tormek for the Irish/Ellsworth grind. I use both a dry grinder and a Tormek, depending on my mood, time etc. The tool setter to give you a proper protusion for the gouge and distance from the holding arm to the stone is a neat idea but.... Is it only me???
When using it in the Irish/ellsworth mode, the gouge has very limited access to the stone when sharpening the left side of the gouge. The holding arm's is too close to the stone. Also it is useless to try and hone the gouge w/the holding arm. I also find that there is a lot of give on the holding arm.
That said, I still like using the Tormek for a very fine edge on turning gouges, and when I simply go from dull gouge to sharp gouge and pile them for future sharpening, I use the Tormek.
I bought, but haven't set up the jig for getting a Tormek grind on a dry grinder, but I wonder if I've been doing something wrong.
Regards, Hilel.

[Jeff Farris]

With a protrusion of 75mm and a jig setting of 6, the Ellsworth settings are at the extreme limits of the design of the jig. You do have to watch and adjust the position of the jig on the Universal Support to insure that you're going to be on the stone as you make your pivot.

You're right. It is difficult to impossible to use the jig on the honing wheel.

[Sean Hughto]

Hey, Jeff, cool of you to show up here! I've had a Tormek for a long time, but only just started with turning. What's your thoughts on the blackstone? Is it really only helpful if you have no other grinder for shaping (to speed things up a bit)? Will it treat my carbon steel tools the same as the grey? Thanks for any thoughts.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Wow. I was going to chime in, but since Jeff answered, that's all that's required.:)

I'll answer your question about the jig setter. I think it's awesome. I recently learned, the trick to getting a smoother finish is directly related to a sharp, sharp tool. DUH! I learn slow. So now I leave the Tormek set up and touch up before finishing. The TTS makes that a snap. I used to turn the whole bowl before sharpening, so the gouge was fairly dull, (I know that now) when finishing up, so my finish was never quite smooth, and required more use of the 80 grit gouge. Which is still my favorite tool.

I free hand the leather wheel. I use the little wheels to hone the insides.

[Jeff Farris]

Sean,

The Blackstone holds up a little bit better and cuts HSS a little bit faster than the original SG stone. If you have no other options for shaping, one would likely serve you well. On the other hand, my personal opinion is that you would be better served by setting up a dry grinder with a BGM-100 Bench Grinder Mount for shaping. It is likely to be less expensive than the SB-250 (unless you get a top quality dry grinder) and will be significantly faster than the SB-250 when shaping a tool.

Hilel,

I missed the part about the Turning Tool Setter the first time around. I'm not exactly sure what your question is, but here are my thoughts on the product.

It is a cookie cutter. It produces 11 profiles (that we've detailed so far). If you want a profile not among those 11, the TTS-100 still provides a positive and convenient protrusion stop. Custom profiles (thousands of them) are possible with the Tormek jig system, but other than a protrusion measure, the TTS-100 won't help with them. It is built to deliver on those 11 profiles.

But cookie cutters were invented for a reason -- consistent cookies. Those 11 profiles contain shapes that I have turned with for almost 20 years and the others are shapes suggested by Darrel Nish at Craft Supplies and a couple other professional turners and turning suppliers. They're excellent choices for any turner's tools. There are shapes for both beginners and experts, and the documentation suggests which are which. If you use them, you will find that you will spend significantly less time fiddling with your set ups and significantly less time grinding (because the match to the grindstone is nearly perfect every time). You'll take less off your tool each time you sharpen, because you won't be re-profiling even a little bit -- which I always seem to do when "eyeballing".

Whether you use the TTS-100 or not, gouges in the gouge jig and skews in the multi jig all rely on three components: 1) tool protrusion 2) jig setting and 3) Universal Support position. The more careful you are to repeat those three elements accurately, the more successful you will be.

[Hilel Salomon]

Jeff,

Thanks for your frank and helpful answers. You're absolutely right about repeatability. I was just commenting on the protrusion element. My problem w/using the tool setter is that I am a maniac about having scores of gouges w/different profiles. The way I handle this is by using the marking pen technique you suggested early on in one of your demos. It really doesn't add much more time and therefore I keep different profiles different. For example, I like the original profiles of the Thompson gouges and keep them. Likewise, the original profiles of the Hamlet, irish grinds suit me for some projects. Having just started using spindle gouges, I change the original profiles to a variety of irish and not so steep grinds.
No doubt, a good turner is already sighing or cursing at this schizo habit, but it's generally true of my other hobbies as well.
Thanks again, Hilel.

[Jeff Farris]

Hilel,

Having a wide variety of specific profiles is just fine. It is a much more logical habit than that of constantly re-profiling tools.

However, there is a technique that will save you a great deal of time and minimize the minor errors that cause profiles to start to drift away from their ideal.

Once you've sharpened a tool the way you want it (using the marker method), make a block of scrap wood that just fits between the Universal Support and the grindstone. If you take a block and hold it to the side of the stone and against the Universal Support, trace the circumference of the stone on the scrap. Find the apex of the arc and rip the block to that size. From now on you only have to capture the block between the Universal Support and the grindstone to get an accurate repeat of the previous position. Unlike the TTS-100, a spacer block will allow the bevel angle to drift as the diameter of the grindstone diminishes. However, the change is incredibly slight. It takes a change of about half an inch in the stone diameter to change the angle by a couple degrees, and for a turning tool anything within 5 degrees is fine by me. If you reset the angles and make new spacer blocks every couple of years, you'll always be within a couple of degrees of your desired bevel angle.