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11th July 2020, 09:01 PM #16GOLD MEMBER
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Hi Jabell
Maybe we should start from the beginning before you oil up your honing wheel. You should clean the honing wheel thoroughly with solvent, with scrubbing or wiping if you have to, so that the original leather texture re-appears. Any steel particles that are embedded in the leather will diminish to the effectiveness of abrasives in the honing compound, and any dust/impurities will scratch your bevel, or chip your edge. After cleaning, you will have to wait for the solvent to evaporate. The solvent I used is shellite but white spirits will work also.
After honing wheel is cleaned, you will need to wet the honing wheel thoroughly with light machine oil or liquid paraffin. I like liquid paraffin because it doesn't stain and can be cleaned easily with a solvent. The purpose of the paraffin/oil on the honing wheel is to "float" the honed steel particles out of the way and to continually present new abrasives to the surfaces being honed.
After the leather is thoroughly wetted, you will need to apply slight traces of autosol all the way around the honing wheel for the first time. The paraffin/oil will help to spread the compound evenly around.
You don't need to recharge the leather wheel every time, only when you feel that it's running out of abrasives. A small tube will last quite a while. But feel free to buy a big can of it if you are sharpening a lot. You can also use autosol to polish your silverware.
Of course you can get diamond gel for that as well if you want a finer grit size polish.
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11th July 2020 09:01 PM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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12th July 2020, 02:06 AM #17
The words on the tube of Tormek PA-70 say
"Before first application impregnate the leather generously with light machine oil so that the compound penetrates into the leather."
(my emphasis)
I've always taken "light machine oil" to be equivalent to sewing machine oil. But I've been wrong at least once before
Camila oil is a vegetable oil rather than a mineral oil.regards from Alberta, Canada
ian
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12th July 2020, 01:03 PM #18Senior Member
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Thanks for your detailed response - just what I need as a first step into the world of Tormek honing. Having just acquired this Tormek T3 at a give away price($20), I really do not want to bugger it up by not taking the right initial steps.
Good suggestions from others above here are the Tormek paste, which is easily obtainable locally, or the diamond paste from Banggood. I'm not about to take up carving anytime soon, just the usual joinery work, so is the diamond paste worth the bother(and the delivery wait)?
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12th July 2020, 01:16 PM #19
IMO diamond paste is not worth the attempt, much less the effort of acquiring any.
To be effective, the diamonds in diamond paste need to embed themselves into a flat cast iron, or milled steel, plate. The Tormek hone is leather on a cylindrical disc. Honing on flat cast iron or steel plate is a totally different action to honing on a cylindrical disc.
Follow the Tormek priming instructions -- you may need to clean the leather band first, you may not.
have fun getting your chisels sharp
carving tools need a different technique entirelyregards from Alberta, Canada
ian
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13th July 2020, 12:15 AM #20Senior Member
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My chisels are in a state of shock!
Decades of inexpert rubbing on various blocks resulting in a myriad of facets, suddenly wiped out and replaced by uniform and accurate faces that are sharper than I thought possible.
One of my grandfather's chisels I just discovered from the antiques forum was manufactured only from 1885 to 1901, so it's kinda nice to give it some love after at least 120 years.
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13th July 2020, 10:59 AM #21GOLD MEMBER
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Tormek honing paste vs Autosol vs diamond paste
The Tormek's honing paste is obviously formulated for Tormek wheels, it has just the right amount of oil in the suspension, and the abrasive is the next logical grit size after the 1200g sharpening on the main wheel.
However, I chose Autosol because the two pastes look almost identical and Bunnings is only 5 mins from home, and it's about half the price.
Therefore there isn't a strong case for choosing some kind of diamond paste unless you are using a 4000g water stone and you feel like doing a bit more. But it doesn't mean you can't use diamond paste though. There are a few caveats:
You should avoid diluting a diamond paste with oil or water; the oil will over-oil the wheel and water will make the leather brittle; Mixing your diamond paste with an alcohol-based or soft wax-based suspension is good.
By the way, just in case you haven't thought of it, you can only hone your chisels/blades in a single direction - with the direction of rotation from behind the cutting edge to in-front of it (equiv. of pulling on manual honing). Otherwise, you will cut your leather into shreds
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22nd July 2020, 10:51 AM #22GOLD MEMBER
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autosol cuts finer than its grit level suggests it should. It will improve an 8k stone quite a bit (same thing as tormek pa70 as far as I know).
I have some pictures you guys might like (these are backs of chisels).
1 micron diamond (I don't have a full back of this, just the back of a chisel to the edge )
https://i.imgur.com/2lD38Td.jpg
veritas (formax microfine) compound:
https://i.imgur.com/hUwJyDg.jpg
jackson lea 1 micron chrome ox. There are some strays in it, but overall a bit finer and about as fast as veritas - and the same price for 3 pounds of it as 6 ounces of the "microfine"
https://i.imgur.com/GOcJ9Y0.jpg
Actual graded 0.5 micron chromium oxide:
https://i.imgur.com/MbZ5trE.jpg
(no scratches wide enough to reflect light at a different angle)
5 micron calcined alumina (too coarse for a hard surface)
https://i.imgur.com/B8IQObU.jpg
But here's what it looks like off of a soft buffing wheel:
https://i.imgur.com/NDjGaAV.jpg
This turns out to be very handy for buffing a tough little roundover on a chisel.
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22nd July 2020, 10:48 PM #23GOLD MEMBER
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Two comments from above - I forgot to specify that the pictures were achieved using WD40 for a lubricant and Corian sections for the "stone base".
Corian at such fine levels can be difficult to use because it's so finely finished from the factory - the tool can suspend itself in a micro thin layer of WD40. There is a rough side on the back of it that's just barely rough (not polished) and it works better for practical purposes by breaking the tension.
I use it only because I have a bunch from my kitchen.
I have tried other very inexpensive compounds (like $3 for 3 6 oz sticks from harbor freight, etc). I think it's worth getting quality. If the "veritas" or formax microfine is the same cost there as "good" buffing compound, then so be it.
If there is any significant metal polishing industry out there, you'll find large sticks of higher quality western or japanese made compounds for cheap.
One other point - it's tempting to see the lack of visible scratches in the 0.5 micron graded chrome ox and think that you need to chase that. The reason there's so much alumina in the rest is because the 0.5 graded chrome ox is *really slow*. In order for it to work completely, you almost have to bring something at least as fine as the veritas compound to the edge before it, and even then, the deeper scratches left by stray particles in the veritas compound will take a while to remove. Leave the pigments like chrome ox and very fine iron ox to strops (that aren't intended really as anything but bare strops) and use diamond if you want very fine and uniform.
Here in the states, micronized diamond powder is down to 10 cents a carat if bought in quantity. It's *really* good.
The stray particles in the sticks look bad when used on hard surfaces, but when you use those sticks on a buffing wheel, you find out why the pro users don't care that they're there - the buffing wheel doesn't really do anything harmful with them.
Most of dirt on the 5 micron calcined alumina buffed picture is just wax and filth, the surface is very close to perfect mirror and that coarse fast cutting compound leaves an edge off of a buffer at least as fine as 1 micron diamond does on a hard lap.
I posted a bit about using the buffer in several places, as well as some videos on youtube (that will be hard for anyone who isn't an ardent sharpener to sit through, I'll admit). If you type in "unicorn edge" you may find a discussion of what's going on with that kind of edge. It halves sharpening time for chisels, makes an edge that is sharper and easier through wood than flat microbevels or complete hand sharpening, finishes with the inexpensive yellow compound above and so far, makes very soft borderline unusable chisels hold an edge as well as high end chisels. It uses no expensive equipment and I make no money off of it.
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23rd July 2020, 02:47 PM #24
Unicorn Edge
DW, your video makes a LOT of sense. I like it, greatly.
Edt- this is a MUST WATCH video.
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23rd July 2020, 11:58 PM #25GOLD MEMBER
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If you have a buffer, you will soon like it a lot more!!
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13th October 2020, 08:36 PM #26
My two year old broke my stick of veritas green compound in half. Here's a pic of the cross section. The homogeneity leaves a bit to be desired IMO.
Cheers,
Zac.
Sent from my Nokia 4.2 using Tapatalk
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27th October 2020, 05:42 AM #27GOLD MEMBER
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