Alexander Grabovetskiy, woodcarver, School of Woodcarving · Published 2018
How do you fit Tormek jigs to a Work Sharp?
Quick answer: Fitting Tormek jigs to a Work Sharp needs a bar, and Work Sharp stopped making theirs in late 2017. Buy Tormek's own bar for a bench grinder instead, mount it on a scrap of wood, and clamp that to the bench. It then serves every machine you own.
Work Sharp stopped making the bar attachment that took Tormek jigs, some time in late 2017. The way round it is Tormek's own bar for a bench grinder, screwed to a piece of scrap and clamped to the bench, which then works on every machine in the shop.
My favorite sharpening setup is the Work Sharp. So it stands today, and I have tried the others.
A Koch system sits in this shop, a Tormek stands next to it, and one more machine besides those two. They are good machines and nothing is wrong with any of them. I still reach for the Work Sharp.
Key takeaways
- The Work Sharp grinds on a flat disc.
- A wheel leaves a concave in the bevel, and that concave makes the point weak, which is why I stopped grinding on one.
- A Tormek gives you two grits. This machine gives you as many as you care to buy paper for.
- Work Sharp quit selling the bar attachment in late 2017.
- Tormek's bench grinder bar replaces it, mounted on an offcut of wood and clamped to the bench, which is all there is to it.
- Homemade turns out better. One bar, clamped wherever you need it, and every tool shape in the sharpening course then goes on it.
What happened to the Work Sharp bar?
The older machines had one, and I still own an older model. You could order that bar separately as an attachment. It bolted on, it received Tormek jigs, and that was the whole thing solved.
Some time in late 2017 we found out Work Sharp had stopped making them. That created a problem for some of you.
The bar Tormek sells, on a piece of scrap
An alternative exists, and it lets you keep every single Tormek jig you already own.
What I did was buy the bar Tormek sells for a bench grinder. Then I made the mounting myself, so that it adjusts and so that I can move it.
The wood came out of the offcut bin. When I set up my dovetail jig I cut a test piece to check the joint, I liked how it came out, so I kept it. That dovetailed block is what my Tormek bar is now attached to.
I am not sure how clear that is on camera. The short version is that the bar sits on a shaped piece of wood, and the wood is what gets clamped to my bench.
Why the homemade one beats the original
Now there is no limit at all.
I can carry it over to the Work Sharp, or to the Koch machine, or to another grinder, and it still works fine. It raises and it lowers.
That is better than the bought attachment ever was, because the bought one lived on one machine and nowhere else. This one lives in my hand. Clamp it wherever the work is, and use whatever jig the tool in front of you wants.
Which Tormek jigs does it take?
All of them, and that is the point, though two of them get most of the work in this course.
The SVS-50 multi-jig, about $70, holds the big gouges. It arrives as two pieces and only the main body is wanted for a gouge, the other half being for skew chisels.
The SVD-186 handles the bent and skewed tools. A back bent gouge is a different shape again. Its body carries a scale marked zero through five with an arrow, and that scale is how much fingernail you are putting into the edge. On zero you get a dead straight edge, and further up the scale you are shaping a fingernail gouge.
I really like these jigs. Whoever worked them out is a genius, and I mean that. Which is the awkward part of the story, because I do not want Tormek's wheel and I very much want Tormek's jigs.
Why the Work Sharp and not the Tormek?
The first reason runs through everything else I do at this bench. It has a flat surface. Not a wheel, a flat disc, and what comes off a flat disc is a flat bevel.
The second reason is grit, and I will come to that below.
What does a concave actually cost you?
Set a chisel or a gouge against a grinding wheel and the wheel writes its own shape into the steel. You get a concave.
That concave is the whole argument. It weakens the point, and a weakened point is the one thing I will not accept on a carving tool.
One more thing about the concave, because it is easy to hear this as snobbery. Far from it. A hollow ground bevel is fine on plenty of tools and for plenty of work, and turners live with it happily. My objection is a narrow one. I grind long and low, and on a long low bevel that hollow reaches into steel the tool cannot spare.
A way around it exists. Grind a really, really high angle and the concave stops mattering, because plenty of steel is left standing under the tip to carry it. But if you want your angle as low as it will go, and I do, then the concave turns into a big problem.
Put numbers on it and the reason gets clearer. My bevels run long. About twenty millimeters on a full size gouge, which is three quarters of an inch, and a few tools go out to twenty-five. Down at one millimeter, on the micro tools, I still take five and a half. Over a length like that the hollow eats into the steel right behind the edge, the steel gets thin, and thin is where a tool breaks.
How low do you set the angle, and why?
People ask me the degrees all the time and I have to disappoint them. I do not measure. On some tools it is not even possible to measure.
For what it is worth the usual advice runs from 10 degrees up to 30, and at 22 degrees you will be safe. I go lower. Under 10. Under 5 if the tool will let me.
One reason, and it is the only one that matters at the bench. A lower bevel digs into the wood much better.
Here is a test that costs nothing at all. Lay the tool on the wood as if you were carving and slide your hand under the handle. You should barely fit, knuckles brushing the surface. If it grabs the wood at that height, the bevel is right for hand work.
| The system | What it does to the bevel | Grits | What it takes from you in return |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Tormek system | a wheel, which hollows every bevel out | just two | a weak point under the tip |
| The Work Sharp | flat glass discs wearing whatever paper suits | eighty upward | no bar sold for it now |
| Tormek's grinder bar | the same jigs, on a different machine | whichever suits | some wood and a clamp needed |
Is the machine any good in itself?
Let me be honest with you about what this machine actually is. I walked into a store one day and found an inexpensive machine imported from overseas. Two hundred dollars at the time, a little less now.
I had my doubts. The thing is flimsy. It does not even sit flat on my bench. Switch it on and the wheel itself flexes and rides. I walked in and out of that store more than once before I bought the thing.
What sold me was the wheels. They are glass, and you stick sandpaper onto them. The machine runs slow, and slow is what makes it safe to use. I can touch the disc with my finger while it turns. Nobody says that about a bench grinder.
One small thing as well. The light on it clips on and detaches, so I can carry the light across to another machine and keep using it. I like that.
How many grits, and what do they cost?
On this machine you change wheels and you change the paper on them, so you can go as coarse as you wish. Go the other way and you can take it to extremes. Eight thousand grit. Higher, if you like.
What I keep on the shelf is 80, 120, 220, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 3600 and 6000, and I can reach 12000 when I want it. There is a leather wheel for stropping and a felt wheel for buffing, which has a workshop of its own.
Swapping one takes about ten seconds. The paper costs almost nothing, it lasts a long time, and when it wears out I tear it off and put another on.
Now look at the Tormek beside that. One wheel, dressed two different ways, once coarse and once finer. Two grits, and that is the whole range.
What stones cost, and why that mattered
A flat stone gives a flat bevel, so on that count stones win outright. A workshop on diamond discs covers that, if you would rather cut with diamond. Then you use them.
One good water stone on my bench cost me two hundred dollars, and I work with four of them, so call it eight hundred dollars sitting there. They have to be trued flat again and again. They take up room. And they want water, all the time, which puts moisture in my shop right next to my tools. I do not like that idea at all.
None of which means hand sharpening is wrong. I love sharpening by hand and I get good results by hand. It just takes so long.
Where you hold the tool on the disc
This is worth knowing before you switch anything on, because it is control for free.
The closer to the center of the disc you hold the tool, the less aggressive the cut. Out at the rim it turns much more aggressive. Same disc, same grit, same machine.
So on a brand new tool with a rough factory edge I work out near the rim and take off as much metal as I can in one go. Carefully. The one thing I will not do is let the disc touch the edge itself.
Four minutes, and why that matters
A whole tool, ground and polished, costs about four minutes of working time on this machine. One minute on the coarse paper, one on the worn finer side, one at 3200 and one more at 6000.
It is still hand work, all of it. You make the movements, you rotate the tool, you watch what is happening. Nothing has been taken out of the craft.
And if you carve for a living, every minute you save is a minute you carve.
Two habits close the job out. On the outside I stop a hairline short of the edge rather than grinding right out to it, because the steel on a big tool is not one thickness all the way across, and taken right out to the tip it can come out wavy. Then the wire edge comes off, either on a felt wheel with green paste or on the end grain of any scrap of wood, which costs nothing at all.
The inside gets a small bevel from a soft Arkansas slip with a little WD-40 on it, pushed away from me in one direction only. Down at half a millimeter no slip stone fits, so a folded scrap of silicon carbide paper wrapped round a wood chip does the same job.
Do you need to make one at all?
If you already own one of those bars, keep hold of it and stop reading. This is for the rest of us.
Starting from nothing, the order is simple. Buy the machine first, then Tormek's grinder bar, then find a piece of wood you already own. The jigs are worth having on their own account. The wheel they were built for is the part I do not want.
And if money is the hard part this month, put the whole thing off. Keep your tools honest on a stone, carve with what you own, and get the bar the month it stops being a stretch. The tuition here works on the same principle, and I say so plainly. You have to be real about money.
Where this fits in the rest of the course
Most of the workshops here run on a machine with a bar under the jig, from the straight gouge and the spoon gouge to the V-tool and the notch it grows. Build the mount once and the whole run of them opens up on your own bench.
The lesson itself is one short video showing the bracket from every side, so you can see how it goes together before you cut anything.
How it's done
- Buy the right part. Tormek sells a mounting kit meant for a bench grinder, and it is the piece that receives all the same jigs.
- Find an offcut. Any scrap with a flat face will do. Alexander used the test piece left over from setting up his dovetail jig.
- Mount the bracket on the wood. Screw the kit to the block so the bar stands where you need it, and so the height can still be adjusted.
- Add a steel angle at the base. An L bracket under the block gives the clamp something solid to bite on.
- Clamp it to the bench. The whole thing clamps down beside whichever machine you are using, then lifts off again.
- Set the height. Raise or lower the bar until the jig presents the tool at the angle you want on the flat disc.
- Fit the jig you need. The SVS-50 multi-jig for large gouges, the SVD-186 for the bent and the skewed, and the rest of the range as well.
- Move it to the next machine. Unclamp and carry it. The same mount serves the Work Sharp, the Koch system or a plain grinder.
Frequently asked questions
Does Work Sharp still sell the bar attachment?
It stopped in late 2017. Older machines had one available separately, it bolted on and it received Tormek jigs, and a lot of people were left without a way to use those jigs.
What replaces the Work Sharp bar?
Tormek's Tool Rest Mount Kit, the one sold for a bench grinder. Screw it to an offcut of wood, clamp that to the bench, and the same jigs go on as before.
Why not just sharpen on the Tormek?
Two things. The wheel grinds a concave into the bevel, which leaves the point weak, and the single wheel dressed two ways gives only two grits. On a long low bevel that concave is a real problem.
What to carve next