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All Customer Reviews for 2.Tormek T-3 Sharpening System
 Re: Tormek product reviewBy:Paulm 22-May-2009 I have the bigger model Tormek and am very happy with it also. Well worth getting the diamond truing device purpose made for the Tormek to keep the wheel true, as you say it will wear unevenly, but quick and easy to true up every now and again. Good for doing the kitchen knives too, but don't let on to anybody else or you'll have all the friends and relatives queing up to have you sharpen theirs as well ! Re: Tormek reviewBy:Peter 22-May-2009 I have one, and you are spot on. One trick I did was to stick a couple of rare earth disc magnets from Axminster under the trough with silicone. Keeps the steel filings from floating around in the water and discolouring the wheel as much. Wipes off the inside easily. Re: Tormek reviewBy:brocher 22-May-2009 Hi yes good review. I have had the 1200 version now for about 4 years. I use it quite often for my chisels, plane irons, thicknesser blades (these can swish the water around, but they make a huge difference to make sharpening of these so easy) and kitchen knives. I have to admit that relations do want theirs sharpened=ned and have come to visit to get them done, and I have also been asked to take the tormek with us on visits to them to sharpen their knives! The diamond true is essential every so often to get rid of any unevenness which develops both across the stone's width and in its circumference, keeping the diameter identical in all directions, otherwise the stone starts to develop a "galloping style"! Re: Tormek reviewBy:Marios 22-May-2009 Personally in the past I thought that these grinders were a waste of money, they seem very pricy for what you get... That was until I spoke to the guy from my sharpening service. He has had his for around 10 years and has been using it commercially. He has gone through 3 large stones and the motor is still running beautifully. There is no rust on his machine and he often has it running for the whole day. The tormek is the gold standard in wetstone sharpeners, it will really take a lot to convince me otherwise. I can see why machines like the little sheppach or the triton can be attractive at their price as they in many ways represent good value. On the other hand I am uncertain about the Jet as the price is starting to approach that of the Tormek 2006 which most shops are clearing out. Around a month or two ago I bought the T7 and I am very happy with it. It does what its meant to do and does it out of the box without having to fiddle for days. I think this is one of those cases where you DO get what you pay for. From a cynic, I am now a convert. If the budget goes that far go for the Tormek, if it doesn't it maybe worth waiting for a little longer! regards Marios Re: Tormek reviewBy:Kyle 22-May-2009 Well, my decision to buy a Tormek, and I am NOT sorry I did, was that the cost was not that much more than buying a high quality slow speed 8" grinder, $250, a gouge jig, $150, a skew chisel jig, $50. Oh, and you'd have to also buy at least 1 new high grit stone, $35. A GOOD tool rest, $75. Running about 500 bucks already. Being a NON pro woodturner, the ability to sharpen a gouge was the kicker. I could not see any other device that could sharpen a gouge with repeatability as well as the Tormek. The grind is super, and it seems to stay sharp long enough for me. Not to mention that it keeps all my turning tools sharper than I could have ever imagined. I used to think that I could hand hone the chisels razor sharp, but the Tormek gets them sharper than I could by hand. No, it's not as fast as a dry grinder, but it's a lot faster and more consistent than by hand. Don't get me wrong, I still want to get a cheap dry grinder for other purposes, but the Tormek is definetely the way to go if you need to sharpen gouges. Now you have to add the benefit that you can sharpen ALL of your kitchen knives, and make the boss happy..... The wife is now so spoiled with sharp kinves, that she complains all the time when they get the slightest bit dull. I even offer to sharpen all of my friends' knives. Botom line, if you need to sharpen gouges, and want to buy the grinder gouge jigs, and are starting from scratch, (no grinder yet) consider paying a couple hundred more to get the Tormek, Re: Tormek reviewBy:Chris 22-May-2009 Well said. I absolutely love the decision I made to bite the bullet and get one. Its also amazing how long my tools stay sharp too. Re: Tormek reviewBy:Bernie 22-May-2009 I to haven't regretted getting the Tormek. The edge I get seems to last a lot longer than off the grinder at least in my opinion. So I use the grinder if I want to change a profile then go to the Tormek to finish it. Also the fact that I can sharpen the LOML's kitchen knives and all her scissors she uses in her craft work is a big plus and made the sale easier. __________________ Bernie Tormek 2005 review 5 out of 5By:charley 22-May-2009 I’ve tried many methods of sharpening this past year - oilstones, Japanese water stones and the Scary Sharp Method. While all of these methods work well, they’re messy and time-consuming. As I’m not a wood turner or carver I haven’t even touched the surface of what the Tormek can do, but I’m very impressed with it even just for sharpening plane irons and chisels. The things I like best about it are:- it’s clean/safe to use, there are no sparks when used, it’s easy to use and best of all its leaves the cutting edge razor sharp. The Tormek is an excellent machine and can sharpen anything with a blade. I’ve been using it for 4 months and I can’t find any faults with it. If you’re looking for the down side of the Tormek, then it’s no way near as fast at grinding as a dry grinder, so if you get any dings in your tool blades its just going to take a tiny bit longer. But of course it’s much safer, as you don’t get the sparks or the heat with the Tormek (and lets face it you’re supposed to look after your tools, so there shouldn’t be any dings!!) So, apart from that one small fault on speed of use against a dry grinder – the only other small problem is the price!! It is an expensive tool, but it’s a quality tool and can earn its place in any workshop. I am sure it will become one of your most used tools, especially for wood turners and carvers as it allows you to sharpen difficult shapes as easy as pie!! I’m giving it the thumbs up with a full five out of five rating even though it’s expensive – I think it’s worth every penny!! Tormek T-3 reviewBy:Chems 22-May-2009 I've been learning the noble art of sharpening since last summer, and I managed to get decent results with a set of cheapo diamond stones and doing it free hand. I was looking for the cheaper Jet wet grinder, they didn't have any but they did have the Tormek T3 so after much thinking I decided to get one as its my Birthday next week so its a present from me to me. Never have I been so impressed with a tool in all my tool buying years (about 1year now:oops: ) I read the manual and got to work. Initially I got no-square results when grinding with the wheel in the Horizontal mode, switched to vertical and against the flow and its was perfect. The angle guide is so easy to use and its all so easy to set up. I had a Record No4 off ebay and it took the chips out of the blade in no time at all. Polishing on the leather wheel has to be done freehand on this model and its easily done. Backs can be flattened on the side of the stone too with excellent results. But the biggest revelation came to me when I sharpened my Record 60 1/2 Block plane to 22.5 degrees. I got for the first time ever end grain shavings! I have a pair of chest of draws which have dovetail draw supports, yesterday I planned and scraped and sanded one unit all flush, took me around an hour. Today it took me about 5mins with the planes all sharpened up.  Tormek reviewBy:Andy 22-May-2009 I recently bought a Tormek wet grinder and thought I'd post a few comments. The review is for the smaller of the two Tormek grinders, the 1200 rather than the more commonly advertised 2000. It's a fairly compact bench top device with the wet grinding wheel on the right and a leather honing wheel on the left. The grinder operates at a very slow speed which allows the use of the water trough. I guess one of the big selling points for the Tormek grinders is the range of jigs that may be used for sharpening a variety of different tools. There are jigs for everything from axes to thicknessor knives, draw knives to inshaves. More about the jigs can be found on the website. The direction of grinding depends on what tool you are sharpening, but in this case the grind wheel rotates towards the edge. So the water is carried up towards the edge, over the top and back down. The grinder operates at only one speed and in one direction. Jigs are held on a universal rail that runs parallel to the grinding surface. With a chisel of plane iron clamped into the jig, you move the tool from across the grinding edge. To vary the angle of grind the height of the rail above the grinding wheel can be changed. Two thumb screws lock it in place and a single knurled nut can be used for fine height adjustment. As new, the movement of the rail tends to bind, but after applying some grease into the mating parts, movement is much smoother and the fine adjuster works very well. To set the correct grind angle, a handy gauge is supplied. The gauge has two dials, one to select the diameter of the grind wheel, the other, the required grind angle. You adjust the rail height so everything lines up and you should grind the correct angled bevel, very simple. At first I was getting quite a lot of juddering when grinding, but found this could be avoided by increasing the rail height (and increasing the amount of tool protruding from the jig – one to experiment with there!) A stone grader was supplied with my Tormek kit. This can be used to change the effective cut of the grind stone. The stone can be graded for a course or fine cut using different sides of the grader. As I've only been using the tormek for grinding primary bevels, I've not given it a try. But it's inclusion in the kit could be beneficial to others. The water for the grind wheel is held in a plastic trough under the wheel. This part of the grinder has 'on the whole' been nicely thought out. The trough can be removed for filling. It can also be lowered so that the stone doesn't have to sit in water when not in use. The other half of the machine is the leather honing wheel. This is not as wide as the grindstone, only about an inch. The same jig and guide rail approach can be used, but free-hand honing is easy enough. Again, this is not something I've experimented with very much, preferring to put a cutting edge onto my tools by hand with water stones after grinding the primary bevel on the tormek. To be honest I'm not too impressed with the honing wheel, perhaps I've still to work enough cutting compound into the leather. It seems to take quite a while to make any difference to the edge. I think I'll stick to my finer water stones. Also bundled with my kit was a video and book explaining the use of the grinders. Both use the larger 2000 for describing techniques, but everything is applicable to the 1200. The book is very good. It has a section on how to use the various available jigs. There is a nice introductory section on the basics of grinding. It's probably worth buying just to have a good reference on the available jigs. The video is a similar idea. Nothing special and not really worth buying. Good Bits: Very versitile - There seems to be a jig for most things. I can only comment on the one supplied, which works fine. There are a lot of jigs to keep carvers and turners happy. Well built - The build quality is very good all round. Bad Bits: Juddering - The juddering was a problem, but as mentioned before this can be resolved by experimenting a bit with the distance between the guide rail and the wheel. Expensive jigs – Some of the more complicated jigs are quite expensive. I doubt I'll be buying many of them, but turners and carvers might want to check the prices out first. Uneven grinding – One fairly major bad thing is the potential for an uneven grind. It's possible to grind more heavily on one side of the tool than the other. You can avoid this by being consistent in moving the tool from side to side across the stone, but it's worth keeping in mind. Trough attachment - Connection and removing the water trough can be a bit fiddly when the trough is full. Once in place it holds fine, but it's a shame they didn't provide a little more clearance to make moving it easier. Conclusions: Tips: JigsBy:Ziggy 04-Nov-2009 Tormek jigs are exxy. Are they worth it? I've worked with jigs from Tormek, Jet and Scheppach. A thrifty woodworker will be looking at the Jets for value for money and I can say in the case of the gouge jig and the platform that the quality matches the price. The Scheppach jigs that I've used work fine and the value for money equation compared to the Tormek is better. The Tormek jigs are well made, a pleasure to use and the instructions are excellent. The best choice if you are time-poor and cash-rich ;-} However, one drawback to the Tormek gouge jig (185) is that when your tool gets shorter through wear it's a pain trying to clamp the shaft at or below the point where the flute ends. The manual recommends grinding a flat for the screw alone to bear down on and it will be critical but difficult to get this accurate. With many turners this may be a remote eventuality but my favorite 3/8" (flute width) spindle gouge is not far off it from new.  Rusted Shaft - Design FaultBy:spakkaps 20-Jun-2010 I have the Supergring 1200 series, it has been in occasional use for around 4 years, the main shaft / washers etc have all rusted out, I noticed they are making these from Stainless now. I think it is unacceptable for these parts to have been made from Chrome plated steel, It was bound to rust out in a water based grinding machine. Disapointed |