tormek t3 not sharpening square

[DTR]

[I have one of these as well as the Tormek dresser. Please note that the diamond T-bar is NOT a substitute for the T dresser. Used freehand, it is fine for the occasional cleaning of the T stone. However, since it follows the curves of the stone, it will soon exaggerate these and create an out-of-round wheel. All dressers need to be anchored, which is when they "turn" the wheel - like a lathe does. Unanchored, they do not create a round, more of an oval.

DTR, the T-dresser is perfect for a high speed grinder. I use one on my 8".

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Derek. But you say it must be anchored; I can see the logic in that but it's not something I've come across outside of this forum (and I'm not a complete stranger to the metalworking industry). How do you anchor it on a basic tool rest, do you use a jig?

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

I also use mine on the dry grinder. The reason for putting the usb so close to the wheel is to provide the reference necessary to keep it true. You provide the anchorage with firm hand pressure. I've used it many times and always check the wheel with a straight edge after. Bottom line, it works. I would never use it to true the wheel if it was badly gone (like after multiple heavy grinds with a big bowl gouge) and would always defer back to the truing tool but as a quick n dirty to keep you cutting to save time it is very fast and surprisingly accurate.

There are those that advocate using it on the wheel WITHOUT the water bath in place ie completely dry. The claim is that its far more abrasive and removes ceramic even faster. Personally I've not tried that method and don't believe any increase in speed is necessary over the method I've documented. Also, Tormek wheels aint cheap! I'm not inclined to have it disappear in 5mm increments!

But the reason I started experimenting with this method is that the SP650 is not in my view a particularly effective means of reawakening the stones cutting capacity. To really be effective you need to put some serous weight behind it and anyone who has attempted to grind a tool with a large surface area bevel will be familiar with how long it takes on the Tormek and that's with frequent use of the SP650 to bring the cut back. The key to efficient steel removal is to have a stone that is cutting constantly. The cutting efficiency dulls very quickly with wide surface area tools (big plane irons, skew chisels, HSS etc). Bear in mind this is more about shaping than sharpening. Just honing an already happy edge with the stone graded to 1000 grit is a doddle. I'm talking about regrinding the bevel of a large plane iron or similar, not a secondary bevel 1mm wide. And before anybody suggests it, I already have the Silicon blackstone wheel which is of course designed for HSS. Almost imperceptibly better than the regular grey wheel is my experience. At circa £100-£120, that's quite a luxury and in my view poor value for money.

The Tormek is an interesting beast in that its very flexible over a great many edge tools, from lawn mower blades to scissors etc. But what its absolutely useless for is removing lots of steel, particularly HSS and just forget carbide altogether. Great at sharpening an already close to edge and tickling it back to wonderful. It's the one area where I've always been a little grumpy with Sweden's marketing because they definitely would have you believe its the panacea to all things sharpening.

Pitted against doing it all by hand though.....sore finger territory......lets not go there

 

[Sheffield Tony]

How much does it matter if the wheel is out of round ?

Obviously it is good if it is not tapered, dished etc across the width. Dressing freehand could attend to that. I have a low cost Tormek shaped object which has a wheel with a distinct wobble. A plane iron, for example, mounted in the jig, rides up and down a little as the wheel goes round. All this will do is make the bevel slighly less concave, no ?

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

[I have one of these as well as the Tormek dresser. Please note that the diamond T-bar is NOT a substitute for the T dresser. Used freehand, it is fine for the occasional cleaning of the T stone. However, since it follows the curves of the stone, it will soon exaggerate these and create an out-of-round wheel. All dressers need to be anchored, which is when they "turn" the wheel - like a lathe does. Unanchored, they do not create a round, more of an oval.

DTR, the T-dresser is perfect for a high speed grinder. I use one on my 8".

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Derek. But you say it must be anchored; I can see the logic in that but it's not something I've come across outside of this forum (and I'm not a complete stranger to the metalworking industry). How do you anchor it on a basic tool rest, do you use a jig?

To anchor simply means to prevent movement. That means clamping on the Tormek (which is not possible with the diamond T-bar, and therefore it is only for the occasional freshening of the surface, not truing it, per se), or held firmly on a tool rest (as in the case of a high speed grinder).

To use the wheel out of round is possible, but it quickly becomes a pain in the wotsit as it is difficult to maintain an even pressure.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

The out of trueness and/or runout is OK if the surface of the wheel is still flat on to the tool egde. In other words wobble from side to side that doesn't change the circle being described by the outer edge is permissible and all Tormeks I've seen have it to a greater or lesser degree. When you true the wheel, the diamond cutter is fixed to the usb and therefore will scrape the plane of the wheel parallel to the usb. A little bit of side to side movement wont affect any grinding. If there is eccentric movement up and down and it cant be trued then you need to look at the bearings, bushings in the wheel hub etc to find the problem.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

My Tormek wheel is distinctly egg-shaped, and still grinds perfectly OK as long as I 'freehand'. I haven't dressed it in years. It's about time I did, really.

Now - I most certainly do not suggest this is best practice - it most certainly isn't! - but on a slow-speed grinder, quite a lot of eccentricity can be tolerated without marked ill effects on the ground tool if freehanding, I've found. Provided the wheel periphery - the grinding surface - is reasonably flat and straight, you could grind tools in jigs quite happily, too.

(That's most emphatically NOT the case for high-speed grinders. Significant wheel eccentricity is likely to lead to a lot of vibration, and bringing a tool to bear for grinding on a rapidly-rotating out-of-round wheel is likely to be downright dangerous.)

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

agreed. With the slow grinding and hand control you can achieve a lot without getting too mad about perfect truing. Even when sharpening my bowl gouges, they scoop out the middle over time and it doesn't seem to affect the grind that much. I probably true it about 3 times a year these days. In fact the thing which normally drives a truing is when I need to sharpen a bench tool that requires a dead flat surface.

 

[paulm]

Glad I upgraded to a Sorby ProEdge, it's a lot less faffing about and much more efficient at a multitude of tasks !

Cheers, Paul

 

[jimi43]

Glad I upgraded to a Sorby ProEdge, it's a lot less faffing about and much more efficient at a multitude of tasks !

Cheers, Paul

I looked at this on the web and came to the conclusion it is nothing but a posh belt sander with a decent jig system and selection of specialist belts....

Tell me I'm wrong Paul!!

At £250 it's a bit expensive if that's all it is.

Jimi

 

[paulm]

That indeed is all it is Jimi !

However, it's high quality, robust and accurate with a well made repeatable jig and table indexing system, so a world apart from a cheapie linisher, though they have their uses too !

Cheers, Paul

 

[Trafalgar]

hi guys iv had a tormek t3 for 12 months now, very good machine,
ideal for my needs, but ive found lately its not grinding square,
even on a block plane iron or 25mm chisel its seems to grinding the ends off the square,
any help or advice on how to rectify this?
also what is the best bevel edge chisel? i do all types of carpentry and joinery
so something all round is what im after, i have red handled bahco chisels just now,
are narex any good?

I don't know much about this machine but I do know that you don't need a jig to grind square on a regular grinder. All you need is an accurate combination or try square to check progress. Lean on the high side a bit until it's even, make a couple of finishing passes, done.

 

[AndyT]

Now - I most certainly do not suggest this is best practice - it most certainly isn't! - but on a slow-speed grinder, quite a lot of eccentricity can be tolerated without marked ill effects on the ground tool if freehanding, I've found. Provided the wheel periphery - the grinding surface - is reasonably flat and straight, you could grind tools in jigs quite happily, too.

Agreed - to add a further evidence point - in the woodworking shop at school there was a big old wet grinder of about 20" diameter. It had a sort of parallel linkage into which a plane iron could be clamped. As the wheel slowly turned the operator could slew the holder from side to side while the linkage kept the ground edge at right angles to the wheel and water dripped onto it from above.

The iron, in its holder, used to bounce up and down quite a lot as the wheel turned, but to no ill effect.

 

[David C]

I expect someone else has said this already but..............

A proper Tormek diamond dresser seems essential to me.

It keeps the wheel surface parallel to the guide bar, which allows the square edge jig to do its job and produce square edges.

It also freshens the surface of the wheel so that it cuts efficiently. Otherwise the surface becomes glazed and clogged surprisingly quickly.

I should probably explain that large numbers of tool kits are set up in my workshop every year, so we do a great deal more grinding than the average bod.

Best wishes,
David Charlesworth

 

[Peter Sefton]

The old Tormek diamond truing tool used to just bob up and down and follow the shape of the wheel. The TT 50 is so much better and when the Tormek is set up well it is a very accurate grinder. I feel very few people could replicate the quality and constancy of this grinding by hand and eye. I feel the steel in your tools will last a lot longer if you use a Tormek grinder and a honing guide. So much steel used to disappear in sparks, I just see £s disappearing when I see people grinding on a fast bench grinder.

I am going to stop at this point before it turns into a sharpening war!

 

[Trafalgar]

All grinding wheels need to be kept clean and unglazed.

Otherwise, does the Tormek not have a plain tool rest? If so, I'd suggest using it and testing the tool being ground with a try square and correcting where necessary. This has represented orthodoxy for quite some time now. Whatever jig this machine is equipped with appears to represent an unnecessary layer of complexity to a process that takes a morning to learn if not less.

 

[Trafalgar]

The old Tormek diamond truing tool used to just bob up and down and follow the shape of the wheel. The TT 50 is so much better and when the Tormek is set up well it is a very accurate grinder. I feel very few people could replicate the quality and constancy of this grinding by hand and eye. I feel the steel in your tools will last a lot longer if you use a Tormek grinder and a honing guide. So much steel used to disappear in sparks, I just see £s disappearing when I see people grinding on a fast bench grinder.

I am going to stop at this point before it turns into a sharpening war!

Well, first of all unless a cutter is nicked the grinder should never remove length. One never grinds to produce a burr though with a large wheeled grinder it is sometimes difficult. One grinds to restore the hollow and stops just short of the edge. No burr is produced. The grinder reduces thickness at the hollow, but never length unless a nick is being ground all the way out.

Anybody regularly 'losing steel' on any grinder has a fundamental misunderstanding of the tool and the process being performed with it.

Honing is the only operation that removes length from a tool. The length removed is basically the size of the burr produced.

 

[Spindle]

Anybody regularly 'losing steel' on any grinder has a fundamental misunderstanding of the tool and the process being performed with it.

Unless, of course, they are wood turners sharpening their turning tools :wink:

 

[Spindle]

Forget length - a grinder removes bulk from the tool and there's only so much bulk in any particular tool.

 

[Trafalgar]

The only operation that makes a tool shorter is honing. Restoring the hollow shouldn't remove one angstrom of steel at the end of a tool.

Tools and cutters get shorter but not because of grinding as long as it is being performed properly.

 

[Peter Sefton]

The only operation that makes a tool shorter is honing. Restoring the hollow shouldn't remove one angstrom of steel at the end of a tool.

Tools and cutters get shorter but not because of grinding as long as it is being performed properly.

You are right particularly the last half of the sentence, the issue with fast bench grinders are with people over heating the steel, grinding the wrong angle, grinding out of square or all three!

As I said before "I feel very few people could replicate the quality and constancy of this grinding by hand and eye"

I was running one of my sharpening course's last week in a similar way I have been teaching this for the past twenty years, so many people can't grind and sharpen their tools, it's a skill that takes practice and often training.

There are a lot of woodworkers with very nice tools but who may have never been shown how to keep them in tip top condition or what they are capable of when sharp and working properly. Reading forums will help but I am sure we didn't learn our own trades or professions by just reading about it.