I am still not happy with the time I spend restoring and repairing bevels on vintage or heavily used tools. I am growing a little desperate to find a way to speed me through sharpening so I can get back to projects. I have a Tormeck and a belt sander, which seem to produce flat facets across bevels that I wind up having to remove by hand. I am more of a sharpen by hand kind of guy, having used various of those techniques for many years. I bought a DMT Dia-Flat which does work, but after restoring a vintage Japanese chisel, several drawknives plus normal tool bevel maintenance the surface seems considerably less abrasive. I also find the Dia-Flat and my Sigma Power Ceramic #120 seem rough for normal bevel work or stone flattening. I have been thinking of buying a 400 or 600 Atoma, a combo DMT or Ez-Lap or maybe steel plates and diamond grit like those sold by Lee Valley.
My regular stones are: Sigma Power #120, Sigma Power 3F Carbon #700 and three Sigma Power Select II's: 3,000, 6,000, 10,000. I have read every thing I can find on this site regarding grinding and stone selections, still I do not feel I have a good plan for getting the heavy work done. I use to have a Delta bench grinder but got rid of it in favor of the Tormeck and belt sander as I was seeing too much bluing on edges. I sharpen lots of landscaping tools: shovels hoes, axes, mower blades....as well as wood working tools. I recently tried Diamond Film sheets from Lee Valley, especially because they can be wrapped around wood dowels to sharpen the curved blades I use in green woodworking. I liked the film but it just does not seem to last long enough to be worth using for rough work.
I sharpen all sorts of steel, Japanese white chisel steel, powdered metal on pocket knives and PM-V11, A2 on plane & spokeshave blades, Swedish high carbon steel, softer tougher tool steels... I feel like I need something between the Sigma 3F Carbon #700, which has been my workhorse, and the Dia-Flat & Sigma #120. I typically grind flat, actually slightly convex bevels, which I realize requires more work. My standard hand techniques do not seem to work well with micro bevels and hollow grinding would seem to require the removal of even more steel. My attempts to hollow grind on my Tormeck thus far have been dismal failures. Suggestions?
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