Comparison of 4 grinding machines for wood turners

hi and welcome in this video i would like to show you four different types of grinders

and sharpeners and tell you about the advantages and the disadvantages of each machine. I will start

with the bench grinder and afterwards i'll tell you about theTormek T8. From Robert Sorby we have

the ProEdge, that's a linisher and we have here the Koch grinding and polishing machine.

This is a slow running bench grinder meaning it runs 1450 rpm. A fast running bench grinder runs at

approximately 2950 rpms. Most bench grinders come with one white wheel and one grey wheel. The

white wheel is aluminium oxide. It's good for our woodturning gouges. The gray wheel i have

replaced with a cbn wheel. I like cbn wheels a lot. The gray wheels make too much heat for

our turning chisels so you better take them off or don't use them on your HSS gouges I have replaced

it by a CBN wheel because i'm a big fan of CBN always a flat surface, hardly any heat... Well let's

start for instance with this roughing gouge. Normally a bench grinder comes

with plates over here and over here and most of the time these plates are not quite accurate,

because they are mounted on these positions and they are hardly ever accurate. That's why

we very often use this system. It's built by One Way

It's called the Wolverine system and it comes in very handy for example if you want to grind your

roughing gouge. If i grind this roughing gouge i'm looking here to see if the bevel is on the wheel...

now it is and it has got a straight top

it's not round it's flat on the top this means that grinding this i only have to move it

like this and if i do that and i keep it steady i only need one pass

mwah... two passes

to get it sharp again

and remember, if you do this don't push on the wheel. Let the wheel do the grinding

and you just move the tool and don't push it to the wheel and you will have a great bevel

but there are of course a lot of tools that are not that don't have a straight

line on top. Most of the time they will be round like this or like this

so let's take this one this is my bowl gouge it's a 16 millimeter bowl gouge

with a short bevel grinded as a fingernail

and i am going to sharpen it on the cbn wheel therefore i use the vari-grade from One Way

when i started being a professional woodturner i thought i had to do this all freehanded

well i don't anymore, I have a jig for everything now

this is the vari-grind from One Way and with this jig i use for most my tools that have a round

top in this case a fingernail to use the vari grain i have to consider several things

the vari-grindd has three things to be aware of there are three points you have to take care of

first it is this angle. The angle between the tool and the post of the jig

second thing is the protrusion in front of the jig how much gouge is there in front of my jig

and last but not least is how far away is the jig from

the grinding wheel because as you can see now i have a sharp angle on my tool and

if i move it like this i have a very steep angle with my tool if you want to make it

easy for yourself, make sure that if you have a jig like this that you only vary in one of the three

variations of the jig for instance

in my on my jig this angle is always the same and i have a line here which tells me

where the v-arm has to be

the protrusion is the one i vary with so...

I can use this jig from tormek we'll talk about that later and set my protrusion here

or here

which will give me a definitely different angle but because you always, well let me reframe that

in a different way... because I always am searching for this thing

I found another solution. I drilled a hole underneath my bench grinder

and a hole I can't lose, so now I have to put this post here in the v-arm

and leave it there and i can see... well... that all looks good

yeah I stop it with my fingers because otherwise we'll

still be waiting for it in 20 minutes... as you can see I have a very nice bevel

only the top of it right the rest is just taken away, this is my smooth bevel

that is what i can do on a cbn wheel with this line if i would do the same thing on this wheel

put my V arm

in here and clamp it... and then do the same again... i can see i get a totally different

angle and that of course is because this wheel every time i grind the wheels getting smaller

that's why i have this

it's a very expensive jig i put it in the v-arm

and press it against the wheel clamp it and now it has the right

angle here you see another disadvantage of the aluminium oxide wheels they have grooves

it's not flat anymore if you do your rough grinding there you can't keep it

flat that's the big advantage of a cbn wheel it always has a flat surface.

Next machine is the Tormek t8 it is not a grinder like the bench grinder but it is a sharpener

meaning if you want to grain on the Tormek T8 you better take a day off of work because it

is it's a slow machine and that is also how it is designed. It is designed to

sharpen your tools to take as less as possible material from your tools and make it superb sharp

it's also the machine that has a a very easy to read and easy to understand manual

they've done a very good job over there NL "Nat slijpen van snijdend gereedschap" NL

let's look at the machine like i said it is a sharpener

and all the things i do over there with the jigs over there i also do on the Tormek but in a slight

different way for instance if we have over there the vari-grind we have a vari-grind

also here for the Tormek but then it is called the svd186 you see it's the same thing

I use it for example to sharpen my

spindle gouge. A spindle gouge has a round tip and i want to have my spindle gouge

extremely sharp. This angle for this gouge never changes only the protrusion changes

and over here the distance from this arm to the wheel must be set. first the protrusion

set next the support arm when i

let the machine run

when both wheels are spinning

it's in the right position

so if i now put my bevel on the wheel the bevel should be on the wheel perfectly and it is...

so like i said i'm a fan of these cbn wheels and one of the reasons i have a cbn wheel on my Tormek

is that I no longer have to use water in this container. Tormek

normally sells these machines with the traditional stone or with a diamond wheel

the result of of cbn or diamond or the stone is exactly the same in this case

they give you a perfect bevel a very small disadvantage of this

steel wheel is here you see these are very fine steel particles that have been

sharpened off grinded off because it's running so slowly the tip is getting a little bit magnetic

and you have to get rid of these. And now I have a wonderful bevel but if you feel very gentle

over here you feel that there's a very small burr. And i still would like to get rid of that

so i have another little cbn thing and the burr is gone... I said in the beginning

it is a sharpener not a grinder if you want to grind with this because you hit a

nail or something it takes a long time. That is why Tormek also sells this support arm.

with this thing. Where do i need that for? well that comes in handy if you mount this

on a bench grinder, you maybe have somewhere in your workshop, you can first

re-shape your gouge and then with

the tool in the same jig go back to your Tormek and then get that superb finish

on your bevel. Let's look at another tool, the skew You want a skew to be perfectly sharp.

This jig the SVS 50 is made to produce every time the same angle on your skew, also

if you take this piece out and you can grind your roughing gouge with it. So to sharpen this tool

the support arm over here was in this position

to do this for the skew

it has to be positioned using the other hole

next thing to do is make sure that the protrusion is right

and now i can grind it

so that's sharp again if i touch with my finger on one side of the gouge

i feel that there's a little burr and i want to take that off. I now go to the

other wheel this is leather and it's made to take the burr off there's polishing paste on it

and i just have to set my support arm to the right distance. There it is already

and now feel where the burr is,

over there

and to check if it is sharp LIES: you already cut yourself... RONALD: yeah yeah yeah it was

when we recorded the the dutch version... If i started all over again and I had a workshop and I

needed the grinder and i only had space for one grinder this just might be the one

Because I can do fast grinding and I can do polishing. The HT 4004 from Kurt Koch and on this

machine I can use the Tormek jigs. and i have a Tormek as well so why not use the jigs right?

so let me grind my spindle gouge first. I will grind it rough and then i will polish it.

starting with the rough grinding I have my tool in the jig again

I know my protruse protrude protrusion that's a nasty word

and then I use this jig

to adjust the

support

oh one more pass... so now you see the rough shaped profile. pay attention to the quality of the bevel

we will refine that. Refining the bevel we'll do with the same jig to

set the jig support. tool still is in the jig and I put some polishing paste on the wheel

now look at that bevel is that some nice bevel... the Kurt Koch HT 4004

very nice machine... I like it! the disadvantage is that the polishing paste

sprays away a little bit... the white wheel over here

you will immediately notice that it gives much less heat to your gouge

than these aluminium oxide wheels do

this is aluminium oxide and the aluminium oxide over here is

together with ceramic material and there's a lot of air between the ceramic material

and you will immediately notice that it results in much less heat

I got this machine when I was demonstrating in Ireland making pepper mills. It was

next to my lathe and I said what's this what I do with it? It's a grinder you can sharpen

your tools in it... okay okay I wasn't convinced so Florian Koch, Kurts son was downstairs.

Trying to sell his machines of course, so they sent him to me he explained it to me show showed me

what the machine could do and i was convinced. nice machine... Next one is the pro edge from Robert Sorby

The big difference with this grinding machine or I should say linisher because it has a

sanding belt over there... the big difference is that this will give you a

flat bevel. There where all the other machines will give you a bevel a little bit concave

But is that an advantage or a disadvantage I don't know if you ask me I would say

it is a disadvantage but that is because i am used to work with a concave bevel

if you're not used to it it doesn't make a difference

and probably after two or three days i would be used to working with a flat bevel or straight bevel.

that's a big difference

the big advantage of this machine is that it is very small you can work with it in if your

turning space is two by two meters you still have room for this machine.

because it takes not much space on your table and also you can move this whole belt towards

you and away from you. Therefore it's quite easy to work on. If you put it on a low table you

can put the belt more backwards... Now on the machine is a fine grit belt which is heavily used already

When you buy the machine there's three belts that come with the linisher. One coarse

and two fine. If you want to reshape your gouge use the coarse one of course

taking this one off this machine comes with the same jigs as the other machines

this is the flat support you can use to sharpen a scraper. You just

put your scraper here and move it around. Also you can use this platform

with several other jigs. This one is made to grain your roughing gouge

just put it in there, put it against the belt, and turn it. Here's another jig

this simple triangle is used to put a skew against and in this way it becomes very easy to sharpen

So this is the Pro Edge deluxe. Meaning you have these jigs that come with it.

and these jigs are more or less everything you need if you are a woodturner.

this jig i haven't told you about yet But, well you probably recognize it already, it's the

same jig as is being used on the Tormek. here it is used in a slightly different way

we use this jig to make a fingernail grain for instance let's resharpen this into a

short fingernail bowl gouge. This is the rough shaping we first start with

This is the shape I want to have, it's a horseshoe

now let me switch this off for a minute. Put it in a jig and I want to have the protrusion 50.

there's also a good manual on this one ... and it also is on the machine

it says which angle for which too. The only thing i have to do now is just move the handle

before I continue I want to make sure that the tip of the tool stays cool

so i'm not cooling it down i'm just making sure it stays cool

because if this thing gets blue and then you put it in the water it's not good for your tool

one more pass

change the course belt now to a finer grit

to get a real smooth

bevel on my tool

so that's a smooth bevel

look at that! so we have a smooth bevel back on my bowl gouge... But remember, maybe

it looks now that these jigs make sure that my gouge comes off the grinder every

time exactly the same way but that's not the case! Let me give you a short example:

if I press only the nose against the belt and I will do nothing else the shape of my bow gouge

will change dramatically. So it's still my own responsibility to get the right shape on it.

did i make myself clear? yeah you did... good! The Pro Edge made by Robert Sorby

it is a nice machine, you can use in in very limited space and in the deluxe version

everything is there that you need.. So let's move on to the pros and cons of each machine

the pros of a slow running bench grinder - it is a stable all-round machine

- if you use a cbn wheel you have hardly any heat you can work fast with it .

the cons - sparks from your aluminum oxide wheel - you need extra materials to get it grinding in the way you want it to grind -

and the surface of your aluminum oxide wheel will not stay flat... the pros of the Tormek - you will for sure

get a excellent sharpening result. - The t8 has a brilliant manual - you can sharpen and polish

in one machine and it has loads of jigs so you can sharpen every tool and another

pro of this machine is that there are no sparks and there is no heat involved. The cons if you don't

use a cbn or a diamond wheel the stones will not stay with their flat surface. there's no grinding ,

it's just sharpening and another con is that is a very slow machine... The pros of the Koch 4004

you can sharpen grind and polish in one machine - relatively less heat if you compare the white wheel

to a normal aluminium oxide wheel. - you can work fast with it and there is a load of jigs available

the cons: the aluminum oxide wheel makes sparks and while polishing the machine sprays the paste

which leaves you with some sort of mess behind the machine. The pros and cons of the

Robert Sorby Pro Edge it is a very compact machine that you can use on a very little space because

you can move the belt backward and forward you can always find a good position to grind your tools

another pro is that you have a flat straight bevel. Then the cons. a con is that you have

a flat straight bevel - you have to replace one belt for the other to switch from the grinding

to the sharpening and the belts heating your tools... four grinding machines next to each other. I hope

you liked the video and I hope it helps you when you want to buy a new grinder... see you next time