Whenever someone points out errors in my thinking I take it to heart and do my utmost to locate the source of my cognitive shortcoming that I may correct it. Toward continual introspection and self-improvement, I have adopted a most helpful shop appliance to this end.Following several therapeutic sessions after yesterday's misguided post to persude others to my well-intentioned but faulty thinking, I've isolated the source of my misundertandings and insensitivities and can now reap the rewards of my cognitive and social conversion.
While it seemed intuitively that faster abrasive presentation removed metal faster, with tool steel this is apparently not so. One might think otherwise, but then one would be wrong as one who so sharpens is unlikely to draw a tool edge's temper—something seemingly beyond most of us grinding at higher speeds on dry abrasive media—a fact, it seems, I fortunately didn't know until now. So slower is, as a rule of thumb, apparently faster for most woodworkers.
But there are other, less easily seen, more esoteric principles at work beneath the surface.
Let me explain.
I must now embrace the homeopathic model. One of the key principles of homeopathy is that where therapeutic substances are concerned, less is truly more.
Wikipedia nutshells:
"Hahnemann believed that the underlying causes of disease were phenomena that he termed miasms, and that homeopathic remedies addressed these. The remedies are prepared by repeatedly diluting a chosen substance in alcohol or distilled water, followed by forceful striking on an elastic body, called succussion. Each dilution followed by succussion is said to increase the remedy's potency. Dilution usually continues well past the point where none of the original substance remains."
While it escaped me all these years, it can no longer be denied. By moving the abrasive over a tool's bevel ever more slowly, more material is actually removed than if a faster rate of abrasive presentation is employed. How? Because each abrasive particle is given more time to perform its task. That's how.
Not only is this so, but slower, cooler abrasive presentation better preserves each abrasive particle, keeping each cooler, less apt to fracture from impact and overheating alike, thereby lasting longer. It's almost as if each abrasive grain is afforded more time, more respect, just as slowing down an assembly line affords greater caring and respect for the condition and longevity of each individual worker, and if for no other reason, is this not simply the right thing to do? But I digress.
Suffice it to say, now that I've been rehabilitated, disabused of my incorrect notions—others less burdened than I over conventionalities of so-called expertise and accepted practice have the clear advantage here—I have now eschewed what I once believed for the greater good. I now accept, too, that it's far more important to preserve others' self-esteem than to disrespectfully, arrogantly and insensitively press for an opposing viewpoint. You should have no cause to correct me from here on out now that I've learned my lesson.
But back to our new model. Obviously there are limits, otherwise one could commit homeopathic homicide with 1/10,000th or less of a baby aspirin, which I now know not to be the case. No, one cannot, no matter how one might wish, endlessly apply Zeno's Paradox to achieve ever faster grinding results. I hope someone can propose a practical lower sfpm limit—perhaps somewhere between a Tormek and static media—that can be agreed upon. And as consensus now seems to be our socially responsible path to knowledge, I will readily embrace that enlightened paradigm and adopt whatever result may spring from its loins as my own and would urge others to do likewise.
As another SC contributor has tested this new methodology and found slower grinders up to 40% faster, I must accept this finding, as one simply cannot argue with science, with empirical evidence, as it were.
I feel so much better now. :)
