Tim Rinehart
10-31-2012, 8:42 AM
Not like I needed another tool or reason to buy one, but our local Woodcraft had a demo yesterday with a rep from Sorby doing about 2.5-3 hour demo on various Sorby products, among them the new Turnmaster line.
The demo started with a talk about the Sorby ProEdge sharpening system, a belt driven sharpening station. The advantages of this system seem compelling, though not the price at about 5 benjamins as I understand. The primary advantage I see are that you are not hollow grinding your tools, so you do get a bit better of an ideal ability to ride the bevel on the workpiece, and especially for sharpening a skew it seems to be much better. I already freehand sharpen my skew with a belt grinder I lay on it's back, so I've already figured that one out. They even have diamond coated belts for this sharpener. I think this would be ideal for someone who doesn't have an existing slow speed grinder that they have tuned to be wobble free and true, or with a CBN/Diamond wheel. Were I starting out and had the cash to spend...it seems like a very good setup.
The demo went next into the Turnmaster line of tools. This is a nicely designed setup that I suspect they came out with as an alternative to folks who are interested in the EWT line concept. Like the EWT tools, these all do their primary work in a scraping fashion. The price point on these is very reasonable, and the costs of the heads is downright cheap so you can keep various cutters mounted and just quickly change on the head only one one handled setup. The cutters are available in a variety of shapes and materials, with the Titanium Nitrided ones being a nice compromise on cost vs edge holding at just a few dollars more. The thing that sets these apart from EWT tools was the simple but ingenious way the head can be rotated 45 deg left or right to shear scrape for fine turning the last few cuts of a piece.
The demo also went into the use of the Ultima hollowing tool, a pretty cool self-clearing design. If they had any in stock, I'd have been interested given the 20% discount yesterday, but they didn't, so I'm going to try one before I decide I really need it.
I didn't buy anything, but my friend Bruce did get one of the Turnmaster tools, so I'll see what he thinks after taking it for a drive on his own and then perhaps letting me borrow it for a weekend ... or two.
The demo started with a talk about the Sorby ProEdge sharpening system, a belt driven sharpening station. The advantages of this system seem compelling, though not the price at about 5 benjamins as I understand. The primary advantage I see are that you are not hollow grinding your tools, so you do get a bit better of an ideal ability to ride the bevel on the workpiece, and especially for sharpening a skew it seems to be much better. I already freehand sharpen my skew with a belt grinder I lay on it's back, so I've already figured that one out. They even have diamond coated belts for this sharpener. I think this would be ideal for someone who doesn't have an existing slow speed grinder that they have tuned to be wobble free and true, or with a CBN/Diamond wheel. Were I starting out and had the cash to spend...it seems like a very good setup.
The demo went next into the Turnmaster line of tools. This is a nicely designed setup that I suspect they came out with as an alternative to folks who are interested in the EWT line concept. Like the EWT tools, these all do their primary work in a scraping fashion. The price point on these is very reasonable, and the costs of the heads is downright cheap so you can keep various cutters mounted and just quickly change on the head only one one handled setup. The cutters are available in a variety of shapes and materials, with the Titanium Nitrided ones being a nice compromise on cost vs edge holding at just a few dollars more. The thing that sets these apart from EWT tools was the simple but ingenious way the head can be rotated 45 deg left or right to shear scrape for fine turning the last few cuts of a piece.
The demo also went into the use of the Ultima hollowing tool, a pretty cool self-clearing design. If they had any in stock, I'd have been interested given the 20% discount yesterday, but they didn't, so I'm going to try one before I decide I really need it.
I didn't buy anything, but my friend Bruce did get one of the Turnmaster tools, so I'll see what he thinks after taking it for a drive on his own and then perhaps letting me borrow it for a weekend ... or two.