Trend fasttrack???

[tsb]

I'm useless at sharpening chisels, but I saw the trend fasttrack on QVC the other week, and don't know whether to treat myself. Does anyone have any knowledge of this sharpening system. Does it work and is it worth the money. Qvc said its a "professional bit of kit for use by professionals!!!" so it must be good

 

[Andy Pullen]

Is that the jig that you clamp your chisels in then rub them over a small diamond stone, If it is I saw it demonstrated and I was embarrassed for the demonstrator having to sell such a terrible piece of crap. We were all useless at sharpening until we practised and perfected the art. The main thing IMO is to make sure they are ground enough so that sharpening is just a means to finish them off and if you dont press too hard on the grind stone they are far less likely to burn. People seem to try and sharpen from too poor a state and then spend so long they lose the consistent strokes that make a nice clean job. Sorry, i'm rambling now :shock:

 

[Andy Pullen]

Apologies if my reply sounded a bit brutal, but one of my pet hates is sharpening gimmicks. I was taught with good quality Norton India Fine sharpening stones and despite trying virtually every other type of sharpening stone since these are the ones that still seem to produce the best results without some of the down sides of others. You just need to go at them the right way. They are not for grinding, they are for the final sharpening and if you need more than a dozen strokes with your blade to sharpen it then you should have ground it more first. Practice a bit and you will outsharpen any gimmick that you might be offered and the one stone will last for life, I still have mine twenty plus years later.
Cheers Andy

 

[beejay]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with a sharpening jig in the workshop.
If it works for you then use it, usually it will give the required result and guarantee repeatability of angle,, and that's good for me.
Personally I like the easy option, if there's a jig then I'll use it. I don't sharpen by hand any more because I don't need to. I use a jig in my woodworking and woodturning and they work just fine. Wouldn't be without them
regards, beejay

 

[Richardhw]

I like things to make my life easy, I have one of these and it does work.
having said that it's not everything it could be, the stones are too short IMO. but I don't know how to sharpen any other way and up to press it's a reasonably priced "Gimmick" ( Andy, I don't think it's the same thing you are talking about).
Until I have the time to set aside to learn the proper way it will suffice and it's a sight more effective than my freehand attempt's :?
Tsb get the extra stones available if you go this route they make a difference and you will need some thing else for flatting the backs cos it just don't work for that :!:

 

[p111dom]

I had one and to be honest I didn't think much of it. I'd agree that the stones are too short but more than that the castings aren't very accurate so there was play on mine out of the box which meant that the angle could vary by several degrees. This got worse after sharpening just two chisels so I hate to think what it would have been like as a long term tool. With an edge made with a standard oil stone the plan was for the Fasttrack to keep up the edge quickly but I couldn't achieve a sharper edge than the initial rough grind and as for 'fast', I really think the name is a missrepresentation of it's ability. That said I now own a Tormek and despite the hype in many ways I find that dissapointing too. Many months ago there was a thread asking for your best and worst tool. From reccolection I listed the Fasttrack as the worst describing it as useless and the Trend T11 as the best.

 

[Anonymous]

tsb

Get a couple of stones (or one wth two grits, say 1000,6000 - I use a 4000/8000 norton stone almost exclusively these days) and a cheap jig such as the eclipse (or veritas II if you can afford it) and practice a while.

Sharpening is really very easy with a few simple tools, and you shouln't be put off buy all the people who try to make out it is 'an art'

 

[Andy Pullen]

One other point about this is that it appears to come with 180 and 400 grit stones. These just arent any use for sharpening anything finer than an axe. I would suggest that you require at least a 1000 grit stone to put a proper edge onto a tool.
If I was spending the same sort of money I would get a cheap £15 grinder from somewhere like B&Q and fit an Axminster white or ruby 80g grinding wheel (both of which cut better and cooler) for about £10 then a Norton combination med/fine oilstone from Axminster for £20. It isn't difficult to learn to sharpen and if you are going to do carpentry you have to be prepared to develop new skills, after all that's part of the fun isn't it?
Sorry to be a nag :wink:

 

[OPJ]

I'm with Andy Pullen on the India Oil Stones. Just bought myself some extra-wide (3" instead of 2") ones from Tilgear recently for an excellent price (coarse, medium, fine) along with an Ultra Fine Ceramic stone to finish it off.

I'm pretty confident now at sharpening a chisel or plane iron at a certain angle without the need for a guide (although I have just bought a Vertias one... Couldn't help myself! :roll: ) but I've found the camber roller assembly to be a great addittion to my sharpening kit; putting a camber on a smoothing plane's blade is something I haven't quite got the hang of. I think I'm just too concerned about wearing the stone away.

And that's another thing. I really like the plastic cases these things come in but prefer to make my own from short scraps of oak. If you do this, however, I've been advised at college that you should allow for some end-grain blocks at either end of the stone so that you do in fact use the entire length and width of the oil stone and don't skip the ends.