Tormek, specialty stones

[Mike Holbrook]

I do not like the standard stone that came on my Tormek 2000. It does not seem to want to cut the A2 & HSS steels I need to sharpen. I was just at the Tormek site and find that they offer a Blackstone silicon stone designed for cutting the harder steels. I also find a Japanese Waterstone 4000 grit. They also have a new stainless steel shaft that is suppose to be easy to change stones with by hand, no tools. My original grind stone presently has rough spots all over it. I think I got them from pressing too hard in an attempt to get the stone to cut the steels.

I am mostly interested in using my Tormek for shaping and grinding things like chisel & plane blades. I have waterstones for final polishing so I am not sure if I need a 4000 grit waterstone. I sure would like to hear from someone using these stones before dropping the hammer.

[John Coloccia]

The standard wheel will cut A2 and HSS without difficulty. The Black wheel cuts HSS a little better, and can also handle metals like tungsten carbide if I remember correctly. It won't help with the A2. It sounds like you have two things going on.

- you need to true up your wheel....rough spots are not good. That sucker needs to be flat
- you probably need to resurface the wheel. Truing it up will take care of the surfacing, but you need to use the coarse side of the surfacing stone periodically. The wheel gets glazed in use and cutting performance will fall off until you resurface it.

Like you, I just use the Tormek to establish my bevel, and then I finish polishing by hand, so my opinion is save your money with the Japanese waterstone.

[David Weaver]

Ditto - I'm using a black wheel right now, but for most tasks, I don't really see the difference between it and the gray wheel. It is maybe less bothered by hss turning tools, but I thought the gray whee did fine. I am really having trouble remembering why I even bought it. Black wheel or gray wheel, they both grind fairly slowly on an HSS plane blade, which should be done on a dry grinder, anyway, given that it's heat tolerant.

I had the waterstone, but never used it. I think it'd be nice to have for carving tools (but so would a lot of things), and for plane blades maybe it would give a better basis to go to the stropping wheel (i.e., an edge off of the waterstone wheel would be less of a polished jagged edge).

[John Coloccia]

Ditto - I'm using a black wheel right now, but for most tasks, I don't really see the difference between it and the gray wheel. It is maybe less bothered by hss turning tools, but I thought the gray whee did fine. I am really having trouble remembering why I even bought it. Black wheel or gray wheel, they both grind fairly slowly on an HSS plane blade, which should be done on a dry grinder, anyway, given that it's heat tolerant.

I had the waterstone, but never used it. I think it'd be nice to have for carving tools (but so would a lot of things), and for plane blades maybe it would give a better basis to go to the stropping wheel (i.e., an edge off of the waterstone wheel would be less of a polished jagged edge).

Does the black wheel wear as quickly on the HSS tools? I'm finding that unless I'm careful, it's easy to wear a groove in the wheel when sharpening gouges. I was wondering if the black wheel is a bit more durable.

[David Weaver]

I think that's the reason I got it. It seemed like the HSS tools made rows you could plant something in on the gray wheel.

HSS tools still "dress" the black wheel if you know what i mean, but the grooves aren't as deep, and sometimes the extra "smarts" the abraded surface puts back into the cutting action of the wheel is welcome.

The black wheel wears maybe a little slower otherwise, but it is completely unconvinced with the grading stone (i.e., compared to using a diamond T tool to scratch up the wheel, the black grading stone is useless in my opinion). If you don't ever touch it with a diamond T grader or the truing tool (i don't like to do that, too lazy) it becomes very smooth and difficult to reactivate a little without having to hone turning tools or do something that scratches the surface of it.

I could get along without it, i guess, but I don't mind having it, either. I guess I'd rather use it to do turning tools, because you don't have to pay quite as much attention to where they're digging in, but I think I like the gray wheel for general tool steel sharpening. I have an older tormek with the plated steel arbor, and if you've ever tried to get a wheel off of one of those after it's been on for five years, it's friday fright night at the movies. It was enough to make me purchase the stainless steel arbor, which the machine should've had in the first place, but I haven't changed stones again yet to put it in. I think that stainless steel arbor is far and away the biggest improvement in the new tormeks over the older ones. Man alive I hate taking the stone off when it's fused to a rusty arbor, and there is no way around having that arbor get splashed continously while you're sharpening.

[John Coloccia]

I think that's the reason I got it. It seemed like the HSS tools made rows you could plant something in on the gray wheel.

HSS tools still "dress" the black wheel if you know what i mean, but the grooves aren't as deep, and sometimes the extra "smarts" the abraded surface puts back into the cutting action of the wheel is welcome.

The black wheel wears maybe a little slower otherwise, but it is completely unconvinced with the grading stone (i.e., compared to using a diamond T tool to scratch up the wheel, the black grading stone is useless in my opinion). If you don't ever touch it with a diamond T grader or the truing tool (i don't like to do that, too lazy) it becomes very smooth and difficult to reactivate a little without having to hone turning tools or do something that scratches the surface of it.

I could get along without it, i guess, but I don't mind having it, either.

I'm not even sure I know where my grading stone is, actually. I only ever use it rough, and it gets beat up enough from turning tools that it gets a good flattening with the truing tool long before i gets glazed.

I hadn't though of using a standard grinding wheel truing tool on it. Like you, I'm very lazy ESPECIALLY when it comes to sharpening (which to me is firmly in the category of getting ready to work as opposed to doing actual work). I need to give that a try!

[David Weaver]

Yeah, the cheap one shaped like a T with 36 grit. It takes a minute or so of standing there for it to scratch the wheel up well, but in my pea brain, I imagine how much wheel (and time) i'm saving by not setting up the truing tool and running off a fraction of a mm of wheel.

I have two posts on my tool, one in the vertical and one in the horizontal, both are on it all the time. I just push the horizontal post right up to the wheel and put the diamond T dresser against it since the wheel likes to pull it (even more lazy, the tool rest bar does the work of keeping me from having to hold the T dresser with any force).

I really like the way the tormek works with a fresh wheel. I really don't like the way it works when the wheel isn't fresh.

[David Keller NC]

Mike - As John notes, you need to re-surface the standard Tormek wheel occasionally to get it to cut effectively. I've found that the only way to do this is with the diamond truing tool - it not only flattens the surface, but also cuts away the top millimeter or so that's clogged. The black silicon carbide stone grading tool that comes with the machine isn't too effective at doing this, in my experience.

[John Coloccia]

Funny.... Does ANYONE actually use the grading stone?

[Gary Hodgin]

I've stuck with the standard 220/1000 stone, but I only have one A2 plane blade. The others are HSS and O1. I go from the standard stone to Norton water stones and Shapton 12000 polishing stone. I haven't seen a need to replace the standard stone so far. I do grade my stone quite often.

Recently, I added the TallowTree Truing Tool Advancer, which doesn't seem to be available any longer. The truing tool works well but is very slow. I don't know how to speed up the truing process and still get good results. I've tried the T-shaped diamond tool with mixed results. I'm planning on adding the stainless shaft on my SuperGrind 2000.

[Mike Holbrook]

Thanks for the replies guys,
I try using my "grading stone" but just like you guys I find it almost useless. I know I need to true the wheel I have just been avoiding it because it seems like such a pain to do it. To tell the truth I have had very little success with the Tormek grinding wheel, thus very little inclination to tune it. I made a post on this a long time back and apparently my experience is atypical, but I stand there for hours without doing much and usually end up with a bevel that is askew in one direction or the other. I have both the truing stone and the little diamond thingy, neither seem to do much. I have a large assortment of jigs too, nothing seems to help much. My brain has a problem with trying to true a big wheel with a little pointy diamond, so maybe that is part of it. I have been thinking about using the thing for a boat anchor but it is kinda over kill in my canoe. I do use the leather belt fairly often, it actually works better for me than leather belts on my belt sander. Hmm maybe I could just put two leather belts on it.

My belt sander, on the other hand, seems to cut through just about any steel quite effectively, at least with my large assortment of belts made for the knife making industry. The Trizact belts seem especially good at cutting without heating up the steel. My issue with the belt sander is I have not figured out how to get a good consistent bevel yet. I am thinking about trying some sort of jig for it. I think LV has something.

[Gary Hodgin]

Funny.... Does ANYONE actually use the grading stone?

John,
I do. There are two situations where I do this. One is when I want to change grit from either the rougher truing grit to 220 or from 220 to 1000. The other is a more common situation when I notice discoloration of the wheel due to grinding. This waste causes the stone to glaze and I'll grade the stone to remove the waste. The alternative would be to true, but this takes me a long time and unless I want to rough grind I have to grade anyway.

[David Keller NC]

Mike - Try truing the Tormek wheel with the (tormek) diamond truing jig. If the wheel is signficantly out, this might take a while, but the surface you get at the end is very, very aggressive and will take off steel fairly rapidly. Of course, no water-cooled wheel is going to come anywhere close to the steel removal capacity of a high-speed dry grinder or belt sander, but that's sort of the point - it's impossible to burn the tool on the Tormek.

However, it's really not possible to burn the high speed steel in a turning tool - it stays hard even if blued. For that reason, I have a dry grinder for turning tools because it's very fast, but use the Tormek on carving tools, plane blades, cabinetmaker's chisels, etc... where dry grinding to a thin, delicate edge is a sure recipe for disaster - DAMHIKT.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I do use my grading stone and it does seem to make a difference and can reduce the polishing time a bit.

As for having the bevel be a bit askew, I have found that I can fix this by:



Be very careful to make certain that the blade edge is fully against the side edge
Be consistent in how pressure is applied while sharpening
Probably the trickiest part is that you want even tightening on the left and right side of the jig that holds the blade in place. If you tighten one side more than the other, it can throw things out of skew a bit. I understand that the newest version of the jig is better than the original.

I only know this because I have had some trouble with this in the past.

As for the water stone, the biggest problem that I have heard is that it does a fabulous job, but, if you then desire to use the normal stone in it you must change the stone. So, you are left with a soft stone that does not do a great job when you must make some larger adjustments. If that is how you sharpen anyway, then this may be exactly what you desire. In a perfect world, you would own two tormeks, one with the water stone...

[John Coloccia]

In a perfect world, you would own two tormeks, one with the water stone...

Four, actually. For turning tools, one would always be set at the "A" setting, and the other always at the "B" setting :D

I'm going to need a sharpening room pretty soon.

[Mike Holbrook]

I'm sure it must have something to do with my style but I simply can't get the Tormek "grinding stone" working for me as a "grinder". I have tried hard for quite a while. I have tried inking the bevel, jig, no jig...but I always seem to spend hours and end up worse than when I started. My stone currently has sizable hills and valleys horizontally all across the surface. I guess from using too much pressure in an attempt to get better results. They were not visible with water covering the surface while working. I have used the kit for truing the stone and it did improve how well the stone cut, but not for long. I figure it will take me hours with that small diamond to grind that whole stone back flat and I just don't feel up to it. I think my problem is I have sharpened by feel for so long I just can't adjust to the very different feel of the blade in the jig. Apparently I am using too much pressure against the stone, but it seemed to be the only way to make any progress.

I am wondering if it is possible to put two leather wheels on a Tormek? If not I will probably ditch the "grinding" stone and get a waterstone so I can use it more for medium instead of coarse processing. I am confident I can do my coarse processing with: my King Green Stone, a diamond coarse "stone", granite stone & paper and my belt sander. Yes I have lots of sharpening gear, I want even get into sharpening scythes which involves specialized stones for field use and peening (hammering the edge on a small anvil).Suffice it to say I have lots to sharpen even without the wood tools. I guess the bottom line is I feel like, in my world, the Tormek may make a better medium process sharpening tool than a coarse one

[Johnny Kleso]

I own a Jet and I could get by with the tool holder and rest on my bench grinder..
Both the Jet and Tormek was made as a all in one solution to sharpening..
Most woodworkers use it was a very slow bench grinder not the all in one it was made to be...

If you need to remove heavy amounts of metal buy a cheap 6" bench grinder..

Mike,
Take your time dont rush and move the blade side to side 1/2 off in both directions in a fairly quick but smooth motion..

[Leigh Betsch]

Mike you can not get a Tormek to work well with a glazed and loaded wheel, you really need to learn to use the diamond dresser. You can realistically take off .010 in a single pass with the diamond dresser, at 60 seconds a pass I can't imagine how it could take hours to true up a wheel, you would have to have 5/8 deep grooves in the wheel. Once you have the stone trued and cleaned up you might get a different opinion of how it works. If not sell it a move on.

I'm the creeker that bought Davids 4000 grit water stone. I does a damn fine job of putting a polished finish on a hollow bevel! That being said I don't know why anyone would need a damn fine polish on a hollow bevel!

The first time I took my wheel off it was a struggle because the shaft was rusted, but I put a little wheel bearing grease (some of you traditionalists might be inclined to use animal fat) on it, now it is simple and fast to change wheels. A stainless steel axle would be better but a little grease works ok too. So I polish up my hollow grinds for no reason other than I have the wheel. I have a couple of Borg chisels that I use for rough work, I use right off the Tormek, the 4000 grit water stone works good to get a nice finish on these. The LN and Blue Spruce's get the full meal deal and go to the hand stones after the Tormek, putting a 4000 grit water stone finish on the hollow grind is just a waste of time, but I sometimes do it anyway. So in my opinion the 4000 grit water stone is really not necessary unless you are going to live with a 4000 grit finish for you final step.

[David Weaver]

Wish i would've thought of the grease thing, leigh. I could've saved 60 or so bucks.

[Brad Gobble]

Mike, send your stuff to me and I'll sharpen one tool a week for ya as payment!

Seriously, take your time and be patient with the diamond thing. If you have visible hills and valleys then you must reduce the entire wheel to the lowest diameter. This will take you an hour of carefully moving that diamond cutter back and forth. I just did this for a friend and it changed the performance of the device considerably. Luckily I haven't had to do this for my own Tormek, but it's day will come.

If you get sick of it PM me to take some of those attachments off your hands!

[Gary Hodgin]

Mine will get greased second thing tomorrow morning. First, I've got to get the grease. Maybe I won't buy the stainless steel shaft after all.

[Mike Holbrook]

I did it, put the little stump on the tool holder and ground away on the stone. It is better, not totally flat yet but getting there. Should have it back in shape tomorrow AM. I'm sure it will cut better as there is substantial scratching of the surface. I just hope the thing will cut for a reasonable amount of time this time. I will try dressing the stone with the diamond tool on a much more regular basis. Thanks for all the encouragement to stick with it.

Brad one tool a week want cut it, maybe a couple dozen a week plus you would have to pass a very stringent sharpening test on all the different steels and.......

Seems to me Tormek could come up with a better selection of stones at more reasonable prices, and more leather/felt surfaces & compounds. They could certainly make it much easier to swap out stones and the other wheel too. The "system" would then be closer to a system. I think "the cat is out of the bag" in terms of people having figured out that it is not as versatile a system as they might try to lead us to believe. I like Chris Schwarz's general wood workers concept of following a coarse, medium and fine regimented system in all the work. The Tormek system seems to me to offer a solution to the coarse process with the stone and a solution to the fine with the leather wheel and their compound. In my estimation their answer to the medium process is smoke and mirrors. Additionally, the Tormek coarse process is slow and awkward and the fine process is not fine enough, due to the nature of their single relatively coarse buffing compound.

For some time, I have felt like I could get more done on many steels with my old King Green stone and my other two King stones. Just like the Tormek though, there are some steels, like A2 and harder that are very slow to work on these stones. I think I will invest in some DMT diamond/metal "stones" and maybe one or two of the Lee Valley Sigma stones, then I might have a system that could handle just about any steel. Has anyone used the LV Sigma stones? They say they are the best with the harder steels, cutting very fast. The down side to the Sigmas being they wear faster than say the Bester-Imanishi ceramic stones. The Japanese stone types are complicated enough to give me a headache.

I think a strong case could be made that this sharpening thing is what makes or breaks a hand tool user. I am determined to come up with the best "REAL SYSTEM" I can. My guess is my long term success is ridding on that razor edge.

[David Weaver]

Schtoo has been dealing the select II stones (and other sigmas) for a while, and he has done some tests. I haven't used them, so I can only refer you to the tests.

While you cannot link to his blog on here per TOS, perhaps a reference (and I'll PM you a link) to a blog entry or two he has showing how fast they cut is in order. He has a site called tools from japan .

[Mike Holbrook]

Thanks David got the PM and I am on it.