Thread: Tormek Sharpeneing System

Hors, the T-7 has been superseded by the T-8

Originally Posted by Hors

Christmas is coming up (and Santa said I have been good)

Looking at Tormek T4 or 7/8

Will T4 do the job for a parttime turner just getting back into it, or should I push for a T7/8

I think that you would be better off with a dry bench grinder and CBN wheels. Probably cheaper as well. Add in the Tormek BGM-100 tool rest, and you have the best off all worlds.

Lathe chisels are usually HSS, and impervious to heat. The slow Tormek is helpful with bench chisels and handplane blades, but is less suited for lathe chisels.

Contact Jim Carroll for advice here. He stocks appropriate bench grinders and CBN wheels.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I'm with Derek, all you need is a dry grinder

But you're a turner. Your tools are high speed steel, so you don't need to us a CBN wheel and the associated expense

I'll be the dissenting opinion.

I am a turner for 90% of my woodwrecking, and run cbn on a 6" Abbott & Ashby dry grinder and cbn on my T7. I have been down the White Alox, Light blue and Pink wheels and the Tormek lasted 4 years. I get consistent grinds, from a known flat surface. Yes the start up price is horrendous. That is your decision.

I use my A&A as a bevel setting and edge repair and the Torment to hone a fresh edge.

I do agree with Derek about ringing Jim and seeking his advice.

Thanks all. Great info.

I am going to research cost of dry grinder, with CBN wheels and a good jig system

Originally Posted by Pat

I'll be the dissenting opinion.

I am a turner for 90% of my woodwrecking, and run cbn on a 6" Abbott & Ashby dry grinder and cbn on my T7. I have been down the White Alox, Light blue and Pink wheels and the Tormek lasted 4 years. I get consistent grinds, from a known flat surface. Yes the start up price is horrendous. That is your decision.

I use my A&A as a bevel setting and edge repair and the Torment to hone a fresh edge.

I do agree with Derek about ringing Jim and seeking his advice.

I have an Abbott & Ashby 200mm (8") dry grinder set up with white / pink alox wheels and the Tormek BGM100 mount system plus a Tormek T7 with the Woodturners Kit and a few other jigs. Yes the start up price hits the hip pocket nerve but you end up with the best of both worlds. The BGM100 & Tormek jigs on the dry grinder permits rapid removal when shaping tools or changing grind profiles plus it's probably a good option for bowl turners who need to constantly resharpen but don't require a honed edge. The Tormek T7 permits sharpening and honing of spindle gouges and skews to very keen edges which makes fine spindle turning far easier. Slower but then again you don't have to visit the Tormek all that often if you are in the habit of producing a convex grind and using a honing plate etc.

One thing I would caution about going down the CBN wheel route is to consider the health risks from metallic dusts. The other things to consider are balancing and getting CBN wheels to run true on an existing grinder has proved to be troublesome for some turners, and guards have to be modified to accept the wider wheels. I'm not against & haven't used CBN wheels because I'm happy with what I have got.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

One thing I would caution about going down the CBN wheel route is to consider the health risks from metallic dusts. The other things to consider are balancing and getting CBN wheels to run true on an existing grinder has proved to be troublesome for some turners, and guards have to be modified to accept the wider wheels. I'm not against & haven't used CBN wheels because I'm happy with what I have got.

I would have thought the dust from dressing alox wheels would have been far for detrimental to your health?

It did take me a while to get my CBN to run true and I actually ended up using teflon tape between the wheel and the adaptor (which is where the run out is more than likely coming from) and then I used Locktite to keep the adaptor in place...it's been running fine for a year now.

Josh

For the sake of the uneducated (me), what is a CBN wheel and is it any better than one of the white (coloured) type ones?.

CBN is Cubic Boron Nitride, which is similar to diamond, and only a tad softer. Imagine a grinding wheel made of diamond grit - nothing to wear and always sharp. In reality, diamond grit does actually wears out on steel, but CBN does not. CBN just goes on and on, ever sharp ...

The advantage of a CBN wheel in not wearing is that it does not require dressing, never loses its shape, and this means that one never has to adjust settings.

White, pink, blue and grey wheels are wear. They have to in order that fresh, sharp grit is released to do the cutting. And so the wheels are ground smaller, out of shape and out of square, release lots of extra dust ... wear out.

Importantly, CBN wheels are made from steel and act as a heat sink. They run cool, and blades do not heat up much. Coloured wheels heat up and burn steel. You can safely grind to the edge of a blade with CBN in a way that you cannot with a coloured wheel.

My grinder with dual CBN wheels (180 grit and 80 grit) ...



Regards from Perth

Derek

Lets go right back to the start, you have a couple of options and all depends on what you have to begin with.

A spark grinder with alox wheels 60g and 120g set up with the tormek jigs is a great way to shape and sharpen your tools.

The next step is to add those jigs to a Vicmarc slow speed bench grinder, most bench grinders run at 2800rpm so using the 1475rpm slow speed grinder is a great way to sharpen your tools.

The Vicamrc slow speed bench grinder comes with the 60g and 120g Alox wheels as standard so use these and wear them out then upgrade to the CBN wheels CUBIC BORON NITRIDE.

After this there is the Tormek T8 slow speed wetstone grinder the ultimate sharpening system.

At each step there is a larger expense but there is saving when sharpening as you only need a light hand to sharpen the tools, there can be a lot of wasted material when sharpening freehand .

The tormek system is the most user freindly system available, there is no second guessing have I got it right or do I need to adjust again, The tormek system allows for the wear and tear on the wheels

Hi Jim

I used a Tormek for several years before adding CBN wheels to my half speed dry grinder. The dry grinder set up has effectively replaced the Tormek (which I still have and occasionally use).

The advantage of the Tormek was twofold: firstly, it grinds cool (and I would emphasise "grind" since it is not a sharpening system in my workshop - perhaps for a turner, but even there I think that it has been overtaken by the speed of CBN). Secondly, the Tormek has precision tool rests that take the effort out of handskills. However, these same tool rests are available for the dry grinder (which is what I have done).

The Tormek is slow as a cart horse and really has lost any advantage over a CBN set up dry grinder.

I would not advise anyone to work through their grey/white/pink wheels and then get a CBN wheel - a big selling point of the CBN wheels is that they are a complete game changer. Why wait until later?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

I would not advise anyone to work through their grey/white/pink wheels and then get a CBN wheel - a big selling point of the CBN wheels is that they are a complete game changer. Why wait until later?

Speaking for myself, I'm waiting until later because I'm too tight fisted to throw away perfectly good grinding wheels.

Additionally the wheels that came stock with my new grinder are already so much better than what I was battling along with before that I'm still happy to use them.

For the record, my grinder is a slow speed Creusen. http://www.creusen.nl/metalworking_c....php?cid=5&s=1

Originally Posted by Woodturnerjosh

I would have thought the dust from dressing alox wheels would have been far for detrimental to your health?

That's why I prefer the Tormek system - no dusts of any sort, no sparks, no possibility of friction burns or wheels exploding. I very rarely use the dry grinder, more a legacy tool now that I have everything as I like it.

Woodturnerjosh, Look up Ken Rizza of woodturnerswonders.com. in the USA. Ken sells cbn wheels and also sets of spherical washers which help align wheels on grinder shafts. If you go to his site the washers are under the cbn wheels heading at the top. He also has a video on how they work. Ken is a good bloke to talk to too.