Thread: Tormek sharpening

What sort of chisels do you have?

Same question. What sort of chisels? I sharpen chisels to 25% on a Tormek and get good results.

Hi Dod.

The type of steel you have on your chisels will also determine how long they will stay sharp for.
(In this next sentance there is a word that is used to describe what I want to say but it illudes me for the moment)
The other thing you can do is put as best as I can discribe it in words is a secondary bevel on it. ie at the end of the chisel after you have sharpened it put a much smaller bevel at the end of it ie put a 25 dergee bevel ontop of the 30 degree one.
As best as I can remember from what i've read this effectively will make it stronger.

Good luck

Gino

As discussed in other posts recently even some of the name brand chisels are quite soft.
I have a quantity of reasonably new name brand chisels and some I inherited from my father.
I gotta say the old suckers are much harder work to sharpen but they leave the new ones in the shade for keeping an edge.

Ain't that the truth Soundman. I have some old chisels that I have picked up along the way and they really hold an edge.
If you are ever passing through Nannup in the south west of WA, go into the cafe/antiques/old tools shop there and check what they have. They bring old tools in from the UK now and then, including some chisels.
Conversely, I was given a cheap set of 5 chisels, made in China, some years ago. Of the 5, 4 were garbage but one, 1 inch, is great. It sharpens to a good edge and holds the edge well. It has a bow in it that prevents me flattening the back properly, but otherwise is a good tool. The rest are good for opening paint tins.

I just have carpenter's chisels. They are Marples blue handled ones. When I went to the Wood Show I even bought a brand new one for the test sharpen, just in case I had taken out the temper of my old ones. I took a small piece of pine to test the edge after sharpening. But it still seemed to crush the end grain rather than shave it.
I do exactly as the Tormek book says and have just the one edge, no secondary edge.
Then I use "Herb's Yellowstone" powder on a piece of leather to hone.
The edge semms really sharp when finished, but it never really lasts.
I have resisted the urge to buy second hand chisels from the markets because they may have the temper removed.
Dod

I bought a set of the new Marples chisels at the Sydney show - with the rubber grips etc. Good chisels, but definitely not great, and really don't hold an edge for long. Best way I've found to sharpen them (don't have a Tormek) is on a belt/disc sander - touch up on the belt does wonders, finish on a fine diamond stone if I'm wanting a very fine edge.

With this treatment I can get them razor sharp quickly - but they just don't hold it very long at all.

In contrast, picked up my new lathe weekend before last and bought P&N chisels. Initial sharpen on the sander again and I've been hacking the hell out of all sorts of woods the last 2 weekends teaching myself to turn again. These chisels are brilliant - hold an edge against almost anything I can throw at them. Dropped a big roughing gouge on the concrete floor - edge down - and took me all of 30 seconds to get it sharp again on the belt/disc sander. Still have a lot to learn about correct angles etc of course - but I almost can't go wrong with these things.

I gotta put the Marples chisels to one side for hacking framing timber etc and get myself a decent set. I think I've finally worked out why the expensive ones are so expensive

In the not too distant past fine wood working did a chisel comparison & test they concluded that both the marples and the stanley )look suspiciously similar) were quite soft in comparison to many other brands.

A couple of the old chisels I have picked up along the way have been Stanleys. They don't have a big reputation and sell at very reasonable prices. I got one for $5 from a junk shop.
I have found them to be nice and flat, to sharpen to a good ege and to hold it quite well.
Watch for rust pitting back and front anywhere near the edge. Sharpen into a pit and the thing is worthless, or will take up your time grinding past it.

Every time I go to a market I look for Titan chisels, Australian made and with very good steel, hold a good edge. Use to pay $3 to $4 for each, now they all know me every time I ask they are $8 to $10 get some one else to buy for me. I all so have 1 very good ETC brand but only 1. There are 5 others that belong in the scrap steel bin along with the stanleys that have been gifts, but I would not tell the person that gave them to me that.
DonN

Gino, I think hollow grind was the term you were looking for, and there was an article on this in Australian Woodsmith, a why and how to.
I picked up a set of old chisels some years ago at an auction and found they hold their edge very well, after reading this I found that some of them are Titan, thanks fella's.

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Although your newer chisels may be a little soft, the problem may not be entirely with the steel.
Although the idea of the tormek as a complete sharpening system is alluring, it seems to combine grinding, sharpeing and honing all into too few steps. IMHO grinding is the establishment of a suitable hollow ground bevel and/or removing nicks straigthening blades etc. The tormek system with its water cooled stone and jigs excels at this. Sharpening is the process of begining to form a cutting edge. A ground tool is not suitable for cutting as the edge under a microscope will look like the business end of a saw. It may even feel sharp and shave off your arm hairs, but the "saw teeth" will quickly blunt/break and leave a dull tool. If this ground edge is polished/stropped with the tormek stropping wheel, it will appear sharper again but will still suffer the same fate, hence the quick dulling of the tools.
As mentioned above, sharpeing, the next stage establishes a cutting edge, be it straight or slightly rounded for plane irons. I like to sharpen with a 1200 grit Japanese water stone and a veritas honing guide for most tools as it allows the repeatable setting of a variety of angles and allows for very controlled curving of the cutting edge, plus the ability to dial up a micro bevel if necessary. Sharpeing should remove the deeper grooves left by grinding and refine the "saw tooth" edge.
Honing or polishing is the final stage and i prefer to use Japanese 6000 grit plus nagura (8000 grit when i can afford/justify one). Honing further refines the edge and polishes the bevel. The edge will still have a saw tooth pattern under magnification, but the saw teeth will be now very refined and much stronger. They will not break/dull so easily and will leave you with a much sharper tool which lasts much longer.
A quick test of sharpness is to slide your thumb nail along the edge of the tool CAREFULLY!! If you thumb nail glides frictionlessly along the edge at a perpendicular angle then your tool is sharp. This test is better then the old shaving arm hair test as it tests for the refinement of the saw tooth edge.

David Finck, in his brilliant book Making and mastering wood planes, suggests that with carefull grinding (he uses a small hand cranked grinder) one can go directly to the 6000/8000 grit stone. He reasons that with carefull slow grinding (or water cooled in the case of the tormek) a tool can be ground right to the very edge, in contrast to high speed grinding, when producing a wire edge on the grinder can quickly draw the temper out of the very very fine edge. This means, that when using the 6000/8000 grit stone, the bearing surface of the edge is so small that the pressure generated is immense, quickly producing a sharp tool and a good quality edge. This may mean that you could experiment with grinding on the tormek when necessary, re-dressing the wheel with that special tormek stone dressing stone to then sharpen the edge to the very tip and then proceed to the polishing stone. The use of a fine grit stone befor stropping will surely produce a longer lasting edge in any event.
If all this seems a bit much, consider the japanese shokunin who go through about seven grits of sharpeing stone to achieve the edge on their tools. This not being enough, they also reserve special polishing stones from particular sedimentry layers from particular quarries, as dictated by the master who forged the blade, to only sharpen individual plane blades. As one famous japanese blacksmith put it, the best edge is produced when two surfaces meet at a point with no discernable thickness, therefore, striving to create the sharpest edge is essentially the process of creating nothingness!!

Hope at least some of this helps

Cheers, Tim

[This message has been edited by Vonrek (edited 09 November 2002).]