Sharpening Jointer Knives On A Tormek

one of the things I like to do as a woodworker is maintain my own equipment and one of the things I need to do right now is sharpen the knives on my jointer I just put this rough piece of stock through and there are some lines here that indicate there are some Nicks in the knives to do that I'm going to use my torment now I bought this long before I got into wood turning my first pot into woodworking well over 20 years ago it's still running just fine I've replaced the wheel once not that long ago and I really like this machine one of the first jigs I got for it was this one for doing your own planer and joined your knives sdhd 20 now if you use this to set it in here adjust the height the Knights go into this unit then it sits on here and holds the knife against the wheel while it spins it's wet wheel unit does a beautiful job it's not very fast like a grinder but does a super job the wet keeps the wheel cool you never have to worry about overheating your knives your blades whatever you want to sharpen so now I guess the first thing I need to do is take the knife's or one at a time take the knives out of the drinker and sharpen them let's take a look at taking the knife out now this should be obvious but in case it's not it's always easy to forget things the first thing you want to do when you're maintaining your joint here or any other power tool for that matter is unplug it accidents happen if the machine is turned on somehow while it's still plugged in and your pen is anywhere near that cutter you are going to have a serious accident I can't even imagine something that terrible happening now the first thing I do is move the cutter head guard out of the way I like to use a big clap just to hold it so it stays out of the way next thing I want to do in this case I use an 8 millimeter wrench to loosen the screws that are holding the knives in place and I do them one at a time I always number the knives so they make sure I do them in the same order one two three one at a time now when these are all loosened I'll be able to pull that knife out now with the nightclub I can see the mix the chips in it it's pretty bad so now I'll take this over to the tormek put it in the planer jig and sharpened now with the knife ready to go I need to put it into the jig first thing I like to do is use a sharpie marker and just color the entire bevel black makes it much easier to tell when you've actually got spots on it sharpened now if the whole thing color o'clock I'll put it into the jig older putting it with the bevel down there's a little lip that keeps from going in too far maintains it in a parallel angle a little cross and with these short 6-inch knives I just need to take these three but little snug up the end ones as well now I've pre-adjusted if there's an adjustment on the back which controls the tilts in this way and then these wheels are used to adjust the height so you can lower it down on to the wheel as you need to let me just test this now don't forgot stops to make sure that it doesn't go all the way past and adjust these there's a little follower and when it gets these stops that spark will go of course you're using 12 inch planer nice do the just the LuPone now I'll take a look and it seems to be sharpening evenly you can see some areas that are still a little bit black so they just need to be sharpened all the way across and then I'll be looking to see when those little Nick's it disappears well finished sharpening this it's looking pretty good and I'll use a magnifying glass the light behind it I can't see any Nicks but I believe that's got it now the next step will be to take it out of the Jake and homers do that I just need to turn this around and I want to hold it with the rotation of the wheel away from me this is the honing wheel it's a leather wheel don't ask me well I learned this when I wear gloves now when I do the honing putting that in your hand trust me on this you can get a fairly easy cut you want careful I'm going to start by humming the backside and then I will do the belt that's taken off that little bird asleep I believe that's got it now I'll put it back in the jointer I've taken out this piece and the springs and just blow the dust out of there to clean it up now I have a jig called the jointer pal that's used to set the knives at the right height this one was made by Delta well over 20 years ago I don't think they even exist anymore last it was told but they still are being made by a company called Woodstock international I found them on amazon.com and amazon.ca I believe they're around 32 or 33 dollars u.s. very handy I'm not sure how I could do this without this jig these Springs back in I'll set this back in place nice in here I just have to set it by eye as far as centering it in this direction and a game of trying real hard not to cut myself that is extremely sharp then I use jointer pal which has three magnets on each of these Ronnie's and I want to put a pair of magnets over the knife itself and have that hold it and when the jointer pal is down snug on here I know I've got the same height all the way along and I can tighten up these screws to hold now the three holding it should be tight enough they can do the fourth one without moving tonight I'm going to finish putting this one in and I'm going to sharpen the other two I'll come back and do a test piece on another chunk of wood and see how that turns out for Nicks hopefully there won't be any I did a little test after sharpening and replacing the Knights did a beautiful job very happy with it one thing I forgot to do on the first night was to put this rubber tray underneath so I had water all over my work surface put it into the second third made quite a difference now you might be thinking Bernanke's awful expensive I remember when I bought it a long time ago thinking that's a ridiculous amount of money well I sharpened my planer and joint our knives more times than I can count so over time maybe it's paid for itself maybe not but the thing is if I find out in the morning that my planer knives need sharpening by the end of the day I've got the sharpener my back to work I take them into somebody to do it professionally I'm gonna wait two or three days and it's been possibly a fair amount of money so I like the time savings if nothing else so if you haven't got one in you're considering it I recommend them like I say they're expensive but they're a wonderful machine the new ones are more powerful a lot of that just gonna happen since I've got mine to think you'd like one anyway thank you for joining me hope you enjoyed this be safe in your shop thanks for dropping by don't forget to subscribe take care

Channel: Gord Rock

Views: 4,504

Keywords: Tormek, sharpening, woodworking, jigs

Id: 8-iANdQUCyA

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 23 2016