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Do you prefer 600 or 1200 grit diamond wheels for Tormek T-8?

Rip Littig

Rip Littig

Joined
Apr 12, 2021
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The subject has come up in previous threads but I'm not finding preferences between the two. Everyone's circumstances are different but in my case bowls and platters with mainly M42 gouges are the focus. I have two bench grinders but just one 80 grit and one 180 grit CBN wheel. I plan to buy honing wheels with the T-8 but am unsure which diamond wheel is best for me, DF-250 (600 grit) or DE-250 (1200 grit)? Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions!
 
It depends on what I am sharpening. If the tool is very dull, then I would like a 120, which they don't make. For chisels and plane irons, if they are already pretty good, I would go to the 1200. I would use the 600 for things that need a 'little' work. For bench chisels and plane irons, hopefully they would never need a coarse wheel. For the skew chisel, pretty much the same. I would do any roughing work on a platform on my grinders, then finish off on the Tormek 1200. They still should be stropped, same as with flat work tools, as far as I am concerned.

robo hippy
 
I use the Tormek 600grit diamond wheel for all my turning tools I sharpen on the Tormek. It works great. My gouges and scrapers are very sharp. Any other tools that I might start out on the Tormek, like chisels and plane irons, I hand sharpen with a Lie-Nielsen jig on diamond stones up to 1200 grit to start, then up 8000 on Shapton Glass Stones. For me, I don't believe that anything beyond a 600 grit wheel is necssary, and many only sharpen to a much coarser grit and are satisfied. For planes and chisels, I'd never go beyond 600 on the Tormek because hand sharpening does a much better job and is a quick, easy process, once the correct edge is established and to maintain secondary bevels. Everyone has there preferences but I think a 300 and 600 grit Tormek diamond would be much more useful for woodworking and turning overall than a 1200 grit wheel.
 
When I want to *refresh* a gouge/skew, etc I use my 300 grit Tormek diamond wheel. It will do some mild re-shaping but for lots of steel removal, I have a high speed 10" high speed grinder. I use my 600 grit diamond wheel for touching up edges as I turn. It works good for what I do. I do have a Tormek 1,200 grit stone but rarely use it. About the only time I use the leather strope/wheel is on the skew.
 
The DC is good for reshaping, but it rarely gets used.

I use the DF wheel for resharpening, and hone on the Tormek composite honing wheel. Sometimes, especially with skews, I will finish up the honing with a quick pass on the paper wheel with 5 micron diamond paste (that‘s on a high speed grinder).

My DE wheel almost never gets used.
 
I use a Griz wet grinder with rock wheel, no experience with diamond wheels, but… considering this from a theoretical perspective, ie edges break down due to micro fracture at the edge. More, shallower scratches wear longer than larger, deep scratches. I have found this to be very true with hand tools (planes and chisels), highly polished edges (and not from stropping a low grit edge) last substantially longer.

The jury is still out for me for turning tools, mainly gouges. Its more difficult to get the “side by side comparison” as I could with hand tools, due to the variable in the wood I turn vs flat work with hand tools. I have done some testing, and polished edges cut better for a short time, as in a minute maybe, then seem to be equal to lower grit. Generally not worth the time for me to do, but that would not be the case with a 1200 gr wheel - will take longer to remove metal, but 2 passes vs 4 is not a problem. I typically grade the stone with the 1000gr side of the Tormek stone grader, supposedly equal to 1000 grit diamond, but I dont know that for a fact.

The fact you have bench grinders to take care of edges that need it makes me think the 1200 would be worth trying, but its just an opinion.
 
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