Folks, I'm fed up of spending ages at the bench stones shaping the primary bevel of my chisels & plane irons. However, I'm not in the league of never wanting to sharpen a chisel again (very enjoyable thread that) I'm just looking to speed things up. For context, my approach to sharpening is to keep re-honing the secondary bevel until it's worked its way too far up the blade, then grind the primary back down again - my reasoning is that this makes for quick resharpening, at the expense of less frequent but more tiresome re-creation of the primary bevel. Also every so often I nick a blade and then it takes forever on my "coarse" 250 grit waterstone. So time for some power assistance - and the usual set of dilemmas...
Ideally I'd like it to be quick, run cool with no chance of damaging the steel, but also to cut aggressively enough that I can change the primary angle of a beefy chisel without sellotaping it to the tool rest and going back every hour to check on progress. Oh, and repeatable. And preferably not a hollow grind (though I don?t suppose it really makes a huge difference). For the real edge I'm happy with my waterstones.
When I say quick I'm thinking maybe re-form the primary bevel on a LN plane iron in a minute or so? Maybe create a new bevel on a 1/4 inch thick blade in a few minutes?
Here's my current take on my options, and I'd appreciate knowing where my uninformed, theory-no-practice opinions are off the mark from people who actually use these techniques!
- Tormek - pricey (£280), and I believe it's geared towards creating a keen edge as opposed to removing material quickly; Jet do a cheaper (£190) copy of the tormek, it's got a go-faster knob, but really the same probably applies as to the tormek;
- Makita horizontal grinder - I read SteveK's posts from some time ago describing clogging and uneven wear; I'm also wary of uneven grind depending on distance along radius; and anyway, I can't get this grinder in the UK :( Though there are some cheaper imitations with what look like inferior tool rests;
- 8 inch dry bench grinder - fills me with dread of overheating the tool steel (though I'm sure it'll be fast!); pretty cheap even though better stones and decent tool rest would ratchet up the price a bit;
- belt sander - 4" belt/disc sanders seem to be around £100, or £50 for the cheapest (& flimsiest?), so not expensive. I'd have to make a crude jig as the commercial ones I've seen only fit vertical wheel grinders. Not sure about heating of the blade - I see Sorby make one formatting linkfor around £240 with a little
- Learn how to use those bench stones fool! - maybe it's just me, but recovering from a nicked blade would take several tens of minutes with my 250 waterstone.
Having laid that out I guess I'm edging towards the belt sander. Before I just get on with it anything I've missed?
Rgds all, graham.