Tormek sharpening system

Hi guys.

I think I've asked this before, but I would like that to hear your opinions about it if you have/use it.

Is it worth the investment? Have you upgraded it with a different grinding wheel grit or whatsoever, what was the result?

Thanks in advance.

I've had my Tormek for about fifteen years. It's on its third stone.

It's at its best doing straight chisels and plane blades. There's a jig/holder that makes sharpening them quite easy.

There are also jigs for things like knives, axes, scissors, and plane gouges. They also work well, but are seldom used by me. I've found that I can 'freehand' sharpen most knives, hatchets, etc. quite easily. Lightly curved gouges - like #3 ~ #7 sweep - I can also easily sharpen freehand. The simple little 'table' accessory does help with supporting gouges with tighter sweeps, or irregularly shaped knives and gouges.

As for honing, The regular leather wheel works great for straight or lightly curved edges. For more highly curved or intricate edges, you'll need the smaller, shaped leather wheels. I use the sharpened edges right off the Tormek, with no additional honing or other processing.

My Tormek is one of the most-used tools in my shop.

I've had mine for maybe 8 years and love it. With the proper expensive jig, it will sharpen anything but sandpaper. I've used mine on turning tools, and it does a much smoother and sharper (IMHO) grind than a dry grinder and Wolverine....but man, it takes forever....especially on the harder tooling like the ones Doug Thompson sells. To be honest, not long ago I bought a Worksharp 3000 and it's a lot easier to use, no watering the stone and easier setup. But (to me) the WS is relegated to straight edge tools like plane irons and chisels....the Tormek is much more versatile. I've wondered about the black wheel they offer, supposedly better for the harder steels....when I replace mine I'll consider it.

Thanks guys.

Fred, from what I've read on their instruction manual, is that it is a system for sharpening, if what you want is to remake a bevel they suggest using a grinder for faster results, and finish it with the Tormek. Dunno...

For good reason, it would take forever to reshape a bevel on a Tormek.

fred hargis said:

...I've wondered about the black wheel they offer, supposedly better for the harder steels....when I replace mine I'll consider it.

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I have the black stone, and it's considerably harder than the standard one. Does a really nice job on A-2 and harder steels, and shows a lot less wear and 'grooving' than the standard one. Actually seems to be a bit harder than the grading stone tool, so changing 'grits' seems a bit less effective. BTW, for Toni's carving tools, the Japanese waterstone might be a desirable option, but I'd bet it wears very quickly.

Toni Ciuraneta said:

...from what I've read on their instruction manual, is that it is a system for sharpening, if what you want is to remake a bevel they suggest using a grinder for faster results, and finish it with the Tormek. Dunno...

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That's exactly right, Toni. Also, they now make an adapter that lets you use the Tormek jigs with a grinder, so that you can move from the grinder to the Tormek to refine the edge. At least that's what the advertising says - I don't have that jig, so have never had the chance to try it.

Dad has the jig that allows you to move things like gouges from bench grinder to wet sharpener without changing any of the settings. This has made the wet grinder a much more valuable tool. He still uses the Worksharp for things like bench chisels and plane irons since it is so quick.

I must confess that I have a Tormek and have not used it much the last 7 years or so. I had bought it with the intent of sharpening turning tools and it seemed to work very well for that. I have not turned anything for about 7 years or so. There might be some correlation there. I consider it too slow for reshaping plane blades, but that is probably just my own particular bias.

I would probably use the Tormek again, if I thought it would be a way to sharpen carving tools. This winter I intent to try to make better use of the Tormek. I will have to look into that "black stone" that Jim is referring to.

I am curious, what is your intended use?

I have a T-3 and it works great in conjunction with my Rikon/Wolverine set-up. I will take all day to change a grind on a gouge, but IMHO...it should never be used for that. Fantastic on my plane blades!!

Bill Satko said:

I am curious, what is your intended use?

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Hi Bill, I'm thinking about using it to sharpen my carving tools, up to now I sharpen them by hand with my india and Arkansas oil stones, making the bevel when needed on a grinder. At the same time I have a few felt wheels mounted on a shaft that I use for stropping them. The idea is to have everything on a single spot and machine, to speed up the process and something that I can take with me when I go on holiday to my in-laws, without having to pack things individually, bring the oil on a leakproof bottle and so forth.
Or instead of having part of my bench full of different stones scattered on it with the risk of dropping one (it has happend already). Hence my question, as it is not cheap I want to take an informed decision before making my mind up.

I heard that some people have changed the original stone by another that is faster in removing metal.

I got lucky and found a used Tormek T-2000 with a whole bunch of jigs for a great price. I love it for my turning gouges. I've also used it on various other cutting tools, from axes to scissors. I've not tried it on plane blades, but I know a lot of guys like it for that. (I think I'd still do my final honing on a piece of flat MDF with honing compound on it, like Ken Werner taught me.) It's also very handy for establishing a new, consistent bevel on knives.

For your carving tools, I suspect one of the harder stones might be a better choice than the one that comes with it.

Vaughn McMillan said:

...For your carving tools, I suspect one of the harder stones might be a better choice than the one that comes with it.

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The only 'harder' stone than the 'stock' grey one would be the black one. It works quite well - particularly on some of the harder steels.

Tony, Here's what I did to allow me to use all the same jigs, and settings, on my variable speed dry grinder and my tormek clone.

http://familywoodworking.org/forums...-new-turning-tool-items-I-ve-picked-up-lately

Jim DeLaney said:

The only 'harder' stone than the 'stock' grey one would be the black one. It works quite well - particularly on some of the harder steels.

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I would naively have thought that the Japanese stone (while softer) would handle harder steels pretty well (at least for the finish grind). My naive (not having used any of them) thought was that the black was "rougher/faster" but not necessarily better at harder steels. Having said that most of the carving chisels I have aren't exotic steels and sharpen just fine on most stones. The 13k Sigma Select II japanese stone leaves a mirror edge on pretty much any of my tools (the main complaint being the water issue - which the tormek doesn't really solve ). I'm sort of making this up out of whole cloth based on my experiences with other unrelated stones that may not have related performance characteristics at all.

I think my next upgrade in the sharpening situation will be some sort of quasi-powered honing setup with multiple leather wheels (sort of like what Brent has in what he linked to but with a differently enabled motive force).

Edit: I'm also a smidge dubious about the tormek as an "at the bench" sharpening solution, it seems like a great deal for knife sharpeners and other dedicated sharpening situations... but haven't had one to try myself so maybe I'm missing out on it Willing to be convinced otherwise (and if I see one used local for low $$'s I'll probably give it a shot someday).

Ryan Mooney said:

...I'm also a smidge dubious about the tormek as an "at the bench" sharpening solution, it seems like a great deal for knife sharpeners and other dedicated sharpening situations... but haven't had one to try myself so maybe I'm missing out on it Willing to be convinced otherwise (and if I see one used local for low $$'s I'll probably give it a shot someday).

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I keep mine on a bench next to the shop's sink, and it's always 'at the ready.' I'll often pause in the middle of a project and touch up my chisel or knife on the Tormek, then go right back to work. If the edge isn't chipped, I can often just take a few passes on the leather honing wheel to keep everything nice and sharp. I can often hone an edge half a dozen times between sharpenings.

BTW, a mini lathe makes a nice stropping setup. Put the buffs on a common shaft - maybe three of them - and work from the back side of the lathe, so that the buffs are turning away from you. For me, it's the most useful function I've found for a lathe.

Ryan Mooney said:

...I'm also a smidge dubious about the tormek as an "at the bench" sharpening solution, it seems like a great deal for knife sharpeners and other dedicated sharpening situations... but haven't had one to try myself so maybe I'm missing out on it Willing to be convinced otherwise (and if I see one used local for low $$'s I'll probably give it a shot someday).

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I agree with Jim. My Tormek is great for a quick touch-up on a bowl gouge. I can put the gouge in the jig and make a couple of passes on the stone in the same time or less than doing it with the Wolverine, and remove a lot less steel in the process. Like Jim, I generally don't bother with the honing wheel (even though I have the special one made for gouges). I go straight from the stone to the lathe. I do hone my skews, but I very seldom use a skew, so they stay sharp forever, lol.

I have a Tormek and rarely use it. The stone uses a huge amount of water, so takes a while to get wetted before sharpening anything, and cannot be left with water in the reservoir since that only covers a portion of the wheel.

Most of my sharpening is done with diamond plates - I have even gone to an extra coarse diamond to reshape bevels etc. After getting to the extra fine diamond I switch to synthetic waterstones, at 4000, 8000, and sometimes 13,000 grit.

Since I only turn intermittently, I have gone to a Wolverine jig for bowl gouges, etc. which has very little setup time.

Vaughn McMillan said:

I agree with Jim. My Tormek is great for a quick touch-up on a bowl gouge. I can put the gouge in the jig and make a couple of passes on the stone in the same time or less than doing it with the Wolverine, and remove a lot less steel in the process.

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Yah I'll grant the less material removal, but you're $400+ in once you get any jigs which is 4 or more gouges so the payback still doesn't seem quite worth it to me for lathe chisels. If the edge is enough measurably better maybe...

The low material loss may be a sufficiently compelling argument for carving tools though where the cost per usable inch of tool is somewhat higher (is that a new cost metric? dunno but it seems like a good one ). In that case though I'm still thinking some sort of honing setup would be better bang for the buck as I just don't really take my carving chisels to a stone all that often unless I've really horked up the edge badly (which is almost always my fault for doing something wrong) and honing on leather or mdf is generally sufficient for quite some amount of use.

Charlies point about the stone soak time issues also resonates with my other hesitance to drop the coin on it (and somewhat mirrors my japanese water stone annoyances). It does seem like a good idea for "bulk sharpening" still so if I was opening a knife sharpening shop.. sure..

Not trying to be a wet stone here but I keep looking at them and liking the "cool" factor but am having a hard time convincing myself of the practicality... Of course practicality isn't everything always either

Regarding the partially wet stone: I used to routinely leave water in my pan (thus soaking only about 1/4 of the wheel). I pretty much never emptied it, and in the dry SoCal climate, I had to add water every day that I used it, and sometime multiple times. If the trough was dry, I'd fill it, turn on the motor, let it run for 30 seconds or so, add water to replenish what had soaked into the wheel, and then start sharpening. Every once in a while, I'd remove the trough and scrape out the detritus that had gathered at the bottom of the trough. I can see not leaving the stone wet in freezing conditions, but never saw any downside otherwise. (Of course that could just be my ignorance showing, but it never seemed to cause me any problems.)

Point taken on the cost and the steel removal. One of the reasons I like the Tormek better than a dry grinder is that it's easier to control and finesse the grind, regardless of the metal lost. Also, the edge I get on a bowl gouge from the Tormek is noticeably better and stays usably sharp longer than what I get off a 120 grit Oneway dry stone. (My opinion, of course...other may disagree.) If I had a good CBN wheel on a dry grinder (and the Tormek gouge jig, which I do prefer over the Wolverine jig), I'd probably use the Tormek less because the CBN leave a finer edge than a dry stone and run they VERY smoothly. After using a gouge sharpened on a Tormek or with a CBN wheel, I don't want to go back to using a dry grindstone on my gouges.

Yes, either the Tormek or CBN setups are expensive, but IMO they're worth it.

You guys oughta be in sales, or at least get a bit of commission

The question remains (since we got sidetracked a bit into the spinny world) - would it be a good choice for carving tools?