Plane blade edge from a Tormek?

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I've owned a Tormek for over 30 years. I use it on my bench chisels and planes. I do not own carving or turning chisels so cannot comment on the suitability of this bit of kit.
After hollow grinding on the Tormek I've always been old school and finish off on a fine oil stone. with a few strokes on the flat reverse of the blade. This has given me a good edge for hard or softwoods and takes little time to re-sharpen when needed on the oilstone with a few more strokes across the stone.

Colin
 
I know it's not popular to hear sometimes, but I don't know of a professional cabinetmaker or carver who doesn't work finer than that
Well you do now. Bespoke Cabinetmaker and only ever used combination stones of who can guess what grit, I very much doubt its 600 at the most, and just think of all the beautiful furniture produced in the centuries up till mass production came in, all done on (probably) oil stones.
It’s my opinion that people like you are frightening people off woodworking as they find it so difficult to sharpen to your unnecessarily high levels.
 
Absolutely.
You've hit the nail on the head.
Carvers require a superior edge to all their tools.
The ratio of time spent actually carving, to the time spent preparing a gouge's edge, vastly exceeds that of ordinary chipies
Speak for yourself!
In any case all chisel use is a form of carving and everybody wants the best edge they can get without too much trouble.
Except for sharpening enthusiasts of course - nothing is too much trouble! :ROFLMAO: In fact - the more trouble the better!
 
Laughing apart - anybody into practical woodwork really needs to get basic simple sharpening sorted early on. Oil stones, coarse medium and fine, freehand, no machines. If not they end up in a maze of conflicting ideas and expensive gadgets covered in brass knobs etc.
It's like learning fine cookery but not knowing how to boil an egg. A bit silly really.
Most accessible youtube demo is Paul Sellers but save yourself £200 and use oil stones instead.
 
It's the end of the year, almost. There's acrimony over sharpening again (yawn), and it's surely time to haul out this hoary old sharpening chestnut for no good reason except, perhaps, some small amusement. Slainte.
Nice one Richard - seen it many times!
No acrimony involved - all harmless fun - it's christmas and sharpening can be funnier than christmas cracker jokes!
 
Well you do now. Bespoke Cabinetmaker and only ever used combination stones of who can guess what grit, I very much doubt its 600 at the most, and just think of all the beautiful furniture produced in the centuries up till mass production came in, all done on (probably) oil stones.
It’s my opinion that people like you are frightening people off woodworking as they find it so difficult to sharpen to your unnecessarily high levels.

I'm guessing you do most of your work with power tools and you sand to finish.

The fine cabinet work done 200 years ago wasn't done with a 600 grit stone. You need to look only about as far as the older texts to see what they referred to as finish sharpening (turkish oilstone, washita followed by "Emery powder" or fine corundum). These are generally on par with the finishing regimens now. I posed the same question from the same frame as you at one point because I was a fan of modern sharpening stuff and thought it was finer. It isn't. Lapidary and polishing supply was a common trade and widely distributed, even to remote areas of the US.

No offense to your clients, but most customers don't order or pay for work that's done by accomplished amateurs at this point. and I don't mean me as an accomplished amateur, I mean folks who do work for SAPFM, let alone folks who do work at the level of someone like George Wilson (who was an instrument and toolmaker more than anything else, but did plenty of carving).

What's inaccurate is the suggestion that it takes any more time to sharpen really well than it does to do a mediocre job.

If the taste has changed now to sanded plywood with trim and polyurethane or two part spray finish, that's fine, but it's not the kind of work most amateurs are going to be looking to do. They may wish to do things like cut hand mouldings, carve, or work entirely by hand. It takes about one minute to sharpen a plane iron (a little less than two if you count time taking a plane apart and resetting the cap iron) -it's poor advice to an amateur to tell them to truncate what they're doing (this is jacob's gimmick) to a level that's not capable of creating a finished surface. There's no reason for it - it doesn't cost time, and it doesn't cost any significant money to get a fine edge.

The word bespoke is a bit overused these days, too.

This is bespoke work:
http://www.cybozone.com/fg/images/wilson6.gif
George used to frequent (after he retired) an american forum. A couple of "pros" were gunning for him to tell everyone his sharpening routine because they were sure he would describe something cheap and coarse, and a bunch of beginners wanted to know it because they thought the major element of his work was probably a secret sharpening process. Both were nonsense. When he finally relented (after trying to get people to understand design and what tasteful work is), it turned out that he used either a dry grinder or a jet wet grinder followed by a series of spyderco stones and then green compound on leather to finish the edge.

I doubt anyone on here has done more work than he has by hand as he was required for decades to do it in front of people, and then after getting away from making and answering questions while making for nearly two decades, he ended up as a toolmaker, hand finishing most of the work to make period accurate tools.

I was a bit surprised by the sharpening process, but I guess not now.

The OP got his answer early, which is a good thing (from people who have actually used a tormek). I actually gave my supergrind to george, the fellow who did the work above. I doubt he uses it much, but I used it none.

If you can't sharpen quickly and finely, you'd wither in a cabinetmaking shop. Cabinetmaking has gone from things like solid wood with treated edges and carved elements to plywood and wood trim sanding the rubbish out of everything. That's fine, but I'm not sure how many hand tool hobbyist start dreaming of vacuum bags, spray rigs and veneer over MDF.
 
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Speak for yourself!
In any case all chisel use is a form of carving and everybody wants the best edge they can get without too much trouble.
Except for sharpening enthusiasts of course - nothing is too much trouble! :ROFLMAO: In fact - the more trouble the better!

This strange alternate reality continues to exist where it's difficult to get a fine edge (I would be done before you finished rubbing the parts of the tool that aren't actually the edge), and the missing variable here is any point where you've ever shown fine work.

At least Richard has - quite often, what he shows involves little hand tool work. That's the 50s/60s/70s way. Scuffing doorways doesn't count - there's little parallel between what Richard has shown and what you've shown.
 
Well you’re wrong again, all my work is finished from the hand plane, I hardly use sandpaper at all.
And I do hope you’re not meaning me when you’re talking about accomplished amateurs. And no sanded plywood either, I wasn’t suggesting it was time wasted I was saying it just wasn’t necessary to start with to sharpen to such a level, and the obsession with scary sharp is putting people off woodworking.
 
Same people, same content, but it’s nice to have some consistency in life isn’t it?

On topic - sharp enough is sharp enough. If you can do what you want with your tools, crack on. If you can’t, sharpen more.

If you just want to twaddle on about sharpening, can you add yourself to my ignore list so I don’t have to make the effort for you, please?
 
it's poor advice to an amateur to tell them to truncate what they're doing (this is jacob's gimmick) to a level that's not capable of creating a finished surface. There's no reason for it - it doesn't cost time, and it doesn't cost any significant money to get a fine edge.
Well I’m sorry but you’re wrong again, a quick freehand rub is perfectly capable of producing a finished surface. I should know it’s what I do all the time, it’s the finished surface that shines straight from the plane, no further work needed.
 
Same people, same content, but it’s nice to have some consistency in life isn’t it?

On topic - sharp enough is sharp enough. If you can do what you want with your tools, crack on. If you can’t, sharpen more.

If you just want to twaddle on about sharpening, can you add yourself to my ignore list so I don’t have to make the effort for you, please?

I looked for some of your work yesterday, or the day before, but couldn't find it. To the other folks, if you're giving advice that sharpening on a single stone of 600 grit is a great way to go and you're getting a finish surface, I'm glad I"m not your customer. Jacob tried this line with me and found that he'd planed about as much his entire career as I"ve planed in the last couple of years (and most of last year, I spent making chisels and a few knives).

The point is simple, if someone is starting out and it takes the same amount of time and the same cost to sharpen very keenly, it makes no sense to sharpen with a ragged burr and go from there. But I know many of you guys know too much for anyone else, despite never working close to the level of someone who would've worked by hand a couple of centuries ago, and the fall back is always "I couldn't find a customer who would pay me to do that".

It's a false dilemma. It cost somewhere around 30 pounds to get a fast edge finer than an 8k water stone, and somewhere around a minute or less for a dead dull chisel and a little over a minute with plane assembly. The tool works better, the sharpening interval is increased. What you're missing is the sense to experiment a little bit as part of working - and that's fine.

Let someone else work with a range of tools and decide for themselves. Save the high and mighty bits when you probably do mediocre higher volume work - save it for the oddball that comes by telling people they need to spend 750 pounds to get an edge. I'm not going to buy your nonsense when your expertise is in getting the paper on a drum sander.
 
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To the other folks, if you're giving advice that sharpening on a single stone of 600 grit is a great way to go and you're getting a finish surface, I'm glad I"m not your customer.
Again, you’re wrong, and I’m actually quite insulted.
I’ll let some of my work speak for me. Middle shot is the back of a music stand.
I’ll let my
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The work is fine. The suggestion that using no finishing regimen is better is false.
 

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