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Today is a new day

Sergio Villa

Sergio Villa

Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
269
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2
Location
Ct
A few days ago my Tormek T7 wheel reached the infamous diameter of seven inches. At this size it is not possible to true the surface with the tormek jig. Thus, since I bought the Tormek with a life warranty for the wheels i called Affinity Tool, the Tormek imported. Friday I sent a photo of the wheel and the serial number, paid the difference of $26 between the normal wheel and that for HSS and waited using the CBN wheel I have on my Baldor. Used this wheel before only for shaping purposes.
So I learn one thing. My Baldor is high speed so I turned it on, then when it reached speed I turned it off and sharpened the gouge 2/3 passes and the tool was sharp and the wheel almost stopped. But the metal dust was a mess, a real impossible mess. Finally this afternoon the new Tormek blade has arrived. Beautiful, fantastic, gigantic compared to the old one and the tiny 8inch CBN wheel. 2/3 passes and the gouge were finally sharp again as I want with no dust, no metal dust, no heat, no eye protection, no nonsense. What a difference. Today its a new, beautiful day, it just took a gigantic, silent grey wet wheel.
 
I haven't heard of Affinity Tools before, but I took a look at their web site. Free wheel replacement is a great deal since the wheels aren't cheap. I bought mine from Sharp Tools USA about 15 years ago. They didn't have the lifetime wheel replacement deal, but they do have great customer support. I have kept mine upgraded so it is the same as the current T-7 except for the color for the paint. I replaced the wheel on mine two or three years ago when it was down to about 7¾" diameter. I gave the old wheel to a friend because his wheel was so small that it must have been about 6" diameter. He was way past the point of being able to use the truing tool. I don't think that the new black stone was available when I replaced my old one. I see that they have a new T-4 with much better accuracy that replaces the T-3 which was mostly plastic and sort of flimsy.

Is the black stone wheel supposed to be better for turning tools?
 
When I bought mine there was a promotion that included the lifetime warranty on the wheel.

Bill Boehme said:
Is the black stone wheel supposed to be better for turning tools?
Click to expand...

From the Tormek website: "Tormek Blackstone Silicon has been developed for shaping and sharpening HSS and other exotic alloyed steels." It is supposed to remove material faster. I found it interesting that "It does not offer faster steel removal on ordinary carbon steel than the Tormek Original Grindstone."

They even have a 4000 grit Japanese Waterstone! I have no idea if that would be of any benefit to woodturning.

Tormek Grindstones
 
The 4000 grit Japanese water stone should not be used for anything other than carving tools since it is basically a honing tool and doesn't remove any more metal than honing on the leather wheel. Because of the ductility of carbon steel, the black stone would probably tend to smear the steel and maybe clog the stone as well. The black stone would be great for skews and other wide bevel tools, but it could be a disadvantage if mainly sharpening bowl gouges because of its aggressive cutting. Jeff Farris of Sharp Tools USA says that he recommends the standard gray wheel for turning tools.
 
Update on the sb-250 stone

Ok, I've used the new gray black SB-250 stone. Not extensively but sufficiently to give my first impression.
I did not use it on high carbon stones although Tormek says it can sharpen them so no comments on that. I have used it only for gouges, 5/8, 1/2, and 3/8 inch from Thompson tools. Well, the thing is magnificent. It sharpens in 15-20 second to perfection. I would say like the regular stone but without loss of stone,or, better, with much less loss of stone. It does not seems to me that it sharpens too aggressively, it is running at 90RPM overall, and I do not believe that it would be very good for shaping tools. For that I think a dry grinder is still much superior unless you want to spend hours with the Tormek. Regarding the opinion of Jeff Arris about it and the regular here is what he answered to a question on Tormek forum:
"Neville,

Sorry for the delay in replying. This summation is a combination of my recent experience with the SB-250 and the answers from the technical folks.

First, regarding the truing. For both your SG-250 and the SB-250 the new TT-50 truing tool is a significant improvement over the ADV-50D. I highly recommend it.

Laboratory results show that the SB-250 cuts high speed steel twice as fast as the SG-250, with half the wear. That will vary somewhat with tool shape. My experience would bear that out, though it did seem to me that the SP-650 Stone Grader was needed frequently to return fast cutting to the SB-250. However, using the Stone Grader on the SB-250 refreshes the cutting action but removes almost no material from the stone. It is quite surprising how little stone residue is in the water tray after an extensive reshaping session."

And here is the link http://www.tormek.com/forum/index.php?topic=846.msg1847#msg1847
 
I think that there will be a bit of transition time to get used to the more aggressive cutting of the black stone and reduce the force to be more like you would use on a dry grinder. That is the essence of what I gathered from sifting through information on the Tormek web site. The stone appears to be great for things like skews that take forever to sharpen using the gray wheel. With gouges, the amount of bevel in contact with the stone is very small so a delicate touch seems to be in order if using the black stone.
 
The aggressive cut of the blackstone is a little more (50% as Arris said?) than the normal stone on which, for sharpening not shaping there is the need of very little pushing on the tool. With the black stone, do not forget I own and used one, it works very well and very easily with gouges, no danger of oversharpening like in a dry grinder or worse a CBN wheel. Still you can see the dust in the water after a few sharpenings or after using the stone grader. I do only three (3) passes per side of gouge. No learning curve at all.
 
Have you tried sharpening a skew yet? I can sharpen gouges very quickly with the gray wheel, but sharpening a skew can be painfully slow.

A few people have been singing the praises of a CBN wheel. I'm not sure what to think about that, but it will be several years before I need a new wheel so I have plenty of time to contemplate that question.
 
Well, some day, I may have to dig out my Tormek and play around with it some more. In order to do that, I might have to adapt my grinding platform to fit it. I do currently have a black wheel on it as the original grey one wore out years ago. I bought the thing before I even started turning. I have heard of some who have put CBN wheels on their Tormek, and the clones of this type of wet wheel system.

I don't think I can agree that the CBN wheels will take off more steel. Mostly, it is because most turners tend to over sharpen. Once the 180 grit wheel is broken in, it leaves a highly polished surface, and as long as you are not over grinding, tool wear should be comparable. Now, there are 400 grit CBN wheels available. I did a couple of gouge sharpenings on the black wheel and played with them. I could detect no difference in edge durability, or clean cutting ability.

More testing is needed.

robo hippy
 
Robo, i have a CBN s said. It digs in very fast. Obviously it is not necessary to push. I just turn the grinder on then off and start sharpening. Even so and with few light passes it was possible to see the steel change shape. With the Tormek, black wheel it is impossible to do that. It run at 90 RPM and dos not have the aggressively of the CBN. Dry grinding and wet grinding are just different things, not comparable.

Yes today I sharpened skew, the biggest that Thompson sells. For a long time I sharpened the skews with the dry grinder because it was easier to control the shape given the obvious metal loss and the Tormek wheel was maller. Then I finished with a diamond hone.
With the grey wheel, at ten inch in diameter it is much easier. Finally I can have again the bevels slightly convex even on such a heavy skew. I use the Tormek with the rotation away from the tool and free hand. The black wheel works very well with both gouges and skews.
P.S.: a lot of talking is going on this forum about safety. This is good. I insist. Active safety must come first, i.e. prevent the accident s before they happen: lower speed in reasonable terms obviously, being out of danger zones, gouges rather than scrapers to hollow deep dry bowls and vases (a scraper can be thrown at you with just a little catch) etc. but when it comes to sharpening Tormek and other wet grinders are the safest and give the best results. Dry grinders run fast and are good for shaping when necessary, once in a while, but need masks, eye protection, and with CBN wheel the metal dust is terrible. I obviously tried wet rags, magnets in strategic location etc, all is in essence useless.
 
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Sergio Villa said:
Dry grinders run fast and are good for shaping when necessary, once in a while, but need masks, eye protection, and with CBN wheel the metal dust is terrible. I obviously tried wet rags, magnets in strategic location etc, all is in essence useless.
Click to expand...

Sergio, you can eliminate the metal and AO dust problem with a shop vac and a water filter hooked to the grinder's dust port (or make a port). You hook this View attachment Water Filter.pdf in the line (with a 5gal bucket) between your grinder and vac, and all the metal and dust will be trapped in the water.
 
Yes that seems to be a good idea but the addition to my shop, where I have the lathe, grinders and accessories is so small that to use the dry grinder I have to move the vacuum pump. In any case now I will use the dry grinder once every new tool, just to shape it. In essence very little.
 
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