Wet Grinder for Establishing Primary Bevel?

[Michael Peet]

Hi all!

Currently I use a dry grinder to make the primary bevels on my blades and chisels, but spend about 10 times as much time cooling the steel in water as I do actually grinding. I was considering getting a Tormek grinder during Woodcraft's 10% sale this weekend, but I read some reviews in which people said it is slow for establishing primary bevels.

Anyone have any firsthand experience?

Many thanks,

Mike

[ken hatch]

Michael,

I have both a Tormek T-7 and a grinder with a CBN wheel. The Tormek is slow and if you are in a production shop that could be a problem, I'm not. My CBN wheel is fairly new and not completely set up, once I rig it to use the Tormek jigs I may change my mind but for now the Tormek ease of use trumps the speed of the CBN wheel.

BTW, I've been thinking of adapting the CBN wheel to fit on the left side of the Tormek. I'm not sure how the CBN wheel would work at Tormek grind speeds but......could be the best of all worlds.

ken

[Winton Applegate]

I don't have much experience with the really coarse and or soft wheels, also CBN wheels all discussed here but they sure sound like the solution rather than a wet wheel. I have a a slow Delta wet wheel and it takes for ever even though the wheel is soft and fairly coarse, more coarse than the Tormek wheel.

These guys know what they are talking about so I would go their dry wheel way if I were going to use power.
Mostly I use a really coarse 120 grit water stone if I need to really dig at a bevel. If that is too slow I go for a small white wheel I have but have to be careful as you are.

Anyway after years of listening to these guys the above (dry, very coarse, soft) seems the best powered way to go.

PS: the limiting factor of the wet wheels is once it is set to turn fast enough to get the job done quick it is slinging water so bad nobody can get near it.

[Reinis Kanders]

I started to use CBN wheel with Tormek as described by Derek in the earlier thread recently and it works great. New bevels in no time without any water needed, leads to nice experimentation with different angles for chisels, etc.

[Jack Lemley]

Reinis,

What grit CBN and where did you purchase? Wondering if any of the vendors offer Creeker discounts. What size wheel did you get? I have the T-7. Regrinding damaged chisels is pretty slow going.

Thanks
Jack

I started to use CBN wheel with Tormek as described by Derek in the earlier thread recently and it works great. New bevels in no time without any water needed, leads to nice experimentation with different angles for chisels, etc.

[Kees Heiden]

When you spend 10 times as much time cooling as actually grinding, then something is amiss.

What kind of grinding wheel do yu use? I have a 3X norton wheel, 46 grit (I think) and it runs very cool.
Keep the wheel clean with a diamond wheel dresser.
Use light pressure, pressing the steel hard into the wheel heats it up fast.
Keep moving back and forth.
Hold a finger very close to the backside of the edge to feel for warmth.
Don't be too panicky.

[Mike Henderson]

PS: the limiting factor of the wet wheels is once it is set to turn fast enough to get the job done quick it is slinging water so bad nobody can get near it.

Amen. That's my objection to wet wheel sharpening. You often need a special place to do it because of the mess. I use a WorkSharp with diamond disks for that reason.

Mike

[Reinis Kanders]

That older thread has a lot of info. I got 180 grit 8 inch wheel from Woodworking wonders or something like that, wheel was pretty expensive, but definitely worth it.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I started to use CBN wheel with Tormek as described by Derek in the earlier thread recently and it works great. New bevels in no time without any water needed, leads to nice experimentation with different angles for chisels, etc.

I missed that thread. Interesting idea. I may have to try that. I find the Tormek way too slow to set a bevel. I intended to hollow grind all my chisels and irons when I got the Tormek but soon ditched that idea.

[Wilbur Pan]

One time I was involved in a discussion on how slow/fast the Tormek is for restoring a damaged edge on a tool, so I timed how long it took the Tormek to repair a chisel. Here's what I posted in that discussion:

======

And to be absolutely clear, I do not think that a Tormek is faster than a dry wheel grinder by any means. I just wanted to measure how long it takes me to fix up a tool with my Tormek.

So first thing to do get the Tormek as optimized as it can be for removing larger quantities of metal. The best way I've found to do this is redress the stone wheel. This picture will show that I'm just as bad as anyone about letting the wheel get loaded up with metal as anyone, and may be a big reason why some of us are reporting results that are slower than what we would want.



The next thing to do is find a victim. I have one antique plane blade that could use refurbushing, but it doesn't really have a nick -- just a bevel angle that is much too shallow for my taste. So I decided to sacrifice a 3/4" Marples chisel. I took my chisel and banged on the concrete floor of my basement, and various other hard objects to try to get it dull.



I put the chisel into the straight edge jig (the older one), set up for a 25º bevel angle, and started grinding with the wheel turning towards the tool. I used a fair amount of pressure on the tool. This is what I got after about 2-1/2 minutes.



So all the nicks were gone after just a few minutes. Of course, one might argue that this isn't a huge amount of damage. So I decided to mess up my chisel some more. This is what I did to it:



Japanese chisel vs. western chisel. This was the outcome:



These nicks are about 1/16" deep. I set up the jig again, and this took me about 4 minutes to do:



I then used the fine stone conditioner on the wheel of the Tormek to convert it into a finer grit stone, and got this in about 30 seconds:



And I get endgrain shavings off of Douglas fir like this:



Now, normally I would take the tool from the rough grinding stage and go to my waterstones to hone an edge.

Again, I want to emphasize that I don't think that this is faster than using a dry wheel grinder, and as was mentioned above, you should use the tool most appropriate for the job. It just so happens that I don't have a dry wheel grinder. Some may also think that the amount of time that I spent on these operations is too long, but I can live with it.

At least we now have some numbers to discuss. 4 minutes for a 1/16" nick. Extrapolating, that's 8-10 minutes of Tormeking for a 1/8" nick.

[Kees Heiden]

All good and well Wilbur, but I think you make a little mistake in the very last sentence. Because of the tapered shape of a chisel edge, you need to remove a lot more steel for a 1/8" nick then a 1/16". I don't think that is linear. When I calculate correctly you need to remove 4 times as much steel when the nick is twice as deep.

BTW, I don't think grinding steel with a dry grinder is super fast either. Maybe with the CBN wheels?

[ken hatch]

One time I was involved in a discussion on how slow/fast the Tormek is for restoring a damaged edge on a tool, so I timed how long it took the Tormek to repair a chisel. Here's what I posted in that discussion:

======

And to be absolutely clear, I do not think that a Tormek is faster than a dry wheel grinder by any means. I just wanted to measure how long it takes me to fix up a tool with my Tormek.

So first thing to do get the Tormek as optimized as it can be for removing larger quantities of metal. The best way I've found to do this is redress the stone wheel. This picture will show that I'm just as bad as anyone about letting the wheel get loaded up with metal as anyone, and may be a big reason why some of us are reporting results that are slower than what we would want.



The next thing to do is find a victim. I have one antique plane blade that could use refurbushing, but it doesn't really have a nick -- just a bevel angle that is much too shallow for my taste. So I decided to sacrifice a 3/4" Marples chisel. I took my chisel and banged on the concrete floor of my basement, and various other hard objects to try to get it dull.



I put the chisel into the straight edge jig (the older one), set up for a 25º bevel angle, and started grinding with the wheel turning towards the tool. I used a fair amount of pressure on the tool. This is what I got after about 2-1/2 minutes.



So all the nicks were gone after just a few minutes. Of course, one might argue that this isn't a huge amount of damage. So I decided to mess up my chisel some more. This is what I did to it:



Japanese chisel vs. western chisel. This was the outcome:



These nicks are about 1/16" deep. I set up the jig again, and this took me about 4 minutes to do:



I then used the fine stone conditioner on the wheel of the Tormek to convert it into a finer grit stone, and got this in about 30 seconds:



And I get endgrain shavings off of Douglas fir like this:



Now, normally I would take the tool from the rough grinding stage and go to my waterstones to hone an edge.

Again, I want to emphasize that I don't think that this is faster than using a dry wheel grinder, and as was mentioned above, you should use the tool most appropriate for the job. It just so happens that I don't have a dry wheel grinder. Some may also think that the amount of time that I spent on these operations is too long, but I can live with it.

At least we now have some numbers to discuss. 4 minutes for a 1/16" nick. Extrapolating, that's 8-10 minutes of Tormeking for a 1/8" nick.

Wilur,

Do you use your Tormek on Japanese chisels?

ken

[Michael Peet]

When you spend 10 times as much time cooling as actually grinding, then something is amiss.

What kind of grinding wheel do yu use? I have a 3X norton wheel, 46 grit (I think) and it runs very cool.
Keep the wheel clean with a diamond wheel dresser.
Use light pressure, pressing the steel hard into the wheel heats it up fast.
Keep moving back and forth.
Hold a finger very close to the backside of the edge to feel for warmth.
Don't be too panicky.

It may be an abundance of caution on my part, not wanting to blue the blade. Or it may be my cheapo 6" grinder with the stock wheel (which I've never done anything to... *squirms uncomfortably*). I have no idea of the grit, but I use the rougher of the two wheels. I did build a nice tool rest for it though and I get nice, consistent grinds.

I don't *think* I'm pressing too hard; I barely touch the blade to the wheel, move it across stone so the whole blade gets hit, and come up. 4, 5, maybe 6 passes like this and then into the cup of water for a time out.

I wasn't aware of the CBN wheels before. Now I'm kinda leaning towards a new slow speed 8" grinder with a CBN wheel. I think this can be achieved for less than a new T7.

Wilbur, thanks a lot for posting your results. I am probably spending more than 4 minutes to regrind the hollow of my 3/4" chisel (A2), although I have not timed it.

Mike

[Reinis Kanders]

I ended up with Steel City slow speed grinder for $270. Cbn wheel is 150 or so plus 100 for Tormek jig. So it is not cheap, little less than Tormek, but it is faaaast
I like the grinder, motor is slim and without guards I can grind drawknife on the CBN wheels front.

[Reinis Kanders]

I like the chisel wars