Whwn not using the Tormek, do you let the wheel sit idle in the water
resevoir? Or do you empty the water after each use?

"Doug Miller" wrote in message
...
In article .com,
"brianlanning" wrote:
I received my $299 tormek the other day from the amazon sale, the
planer knife jig, which I got for 40% off, will be here in a few days
(there's my dual drive-by). I just got around to playing with it
tonight. I haven't seen the video since I don't currently own a
working vcr, but I did read the book cover to cover. I sharpened two
chisels and noticed a couple things. I also have some questions.

Borrow or rent a VCR and watch that video, too.

I was shocked by how much water the stone soaked up.

Yep, they do hold an astonishing amount of water, don't they?

I used the angle-finder thingy to to start off. I had a 1" marples
that was in sad shape. It took far longer to grind than I think it
should have. I would say that I ground on it for maybe 10 minutes.

Whether that's reasonable or not depends on how sad a shape it was in.

Each time I looked at it, I could see a line moving slowly up the
bevel.

Sounds to me like you didn't get the angle set quite right. I've found
that
it's faster and more accurate to just set it by eye.

[snip]

I went back through the tivo and found the sharpening station episode
of nyw. The guy there only put the grader on the stone for 6 seconds
(I counted). But I think the manual sasy 30. What do you do?

20-30 seconds works for me.

Do you do your chisels in a batch, doing all the coarse grinding, then
grade for 1000 grit, then do all the fine grinding? or do you regrade
between each chisel going back ad forth between 220 and 1000?

One chisel at a time, coarse then fine. That's the only way to do it: put
the
chisel in the jig and keep it there until you're done with it. The reason
is
straightforward: once you take the chisel out of the jig, unless you put
it
back in at *exactly* the same angle it was before, you're basically
regrinding
the edge all over again, only this time at 1000 grit instead of 220. And
your
chance of reinserting it at *exactly* the same angle is exactly *zero*. So
you're better off to just do all your grinding at 1000, than to switch
chisels.

The book says to flatten the backs of the chisels on the side of the
wheel. I'm thinking that I should be able to get literally a mirror
finish on the back and the bevel, but it just isn't happening. It's
really sharp, but I can still see lines on the back for example from
the original machining. Should I go back and do it again to get the
complete mirror finish?

It takes a *long* time to get rid of the factory machining marks, and
produce
a mirror finish, no matter how you go about it. I prefer using wet-or-dry
sandpaper on a large glass plate, with water as a lubricant.

I was reading someone else's post on woodnet, i think, about how the
manual says nothing about breaking in the leather wheel. There's
certainly nothing in the book about it. Should I be doing this, and if
so, how?

The manual says to oil it regularly. I'm not sure what other "break-in"
anyone
might think that it might need.

I have exactly one hand plane, a stanley jack plane I think. I plan on
buying a lot more once I have a few more machines. I noticed that the
iron has a curve, to stop the corners from digging in I guess. How
would you grind this curve on the tormek? The manual suggests a
technique that doesn't seem very doable to me. I think it would just
square off the iron anyway. Do you have a technique for this?

Freehand.

I'd say I'm probably 90% of the way there. The chisels were in bad
shape with nicks in the edges. Now, they're completely straight,
square, and sharp. They're also a lot shinier than when they started.
I was able to shave thin pieces of end-grain off of some southern
yellow pine I had handly. So I'm very happy with it.

Enjoy. From my perspective,the best thing about the Tormek is that it's so
easy to keep an edge sharp -- so I sharpen much more frequently. It's much
less work to touch up an edge that's "almost" sharp, than to resharpen one
that's truly dull.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.