CBN on The Tormek

The UPS girl dropped off a 600 grit, 250mm (10")X50mm (2') CBN wheel for the Tormek this AM. I'll have to live with it for awhile but first impression is...."sweet".  There was no problem fitting the wheel, off with the old on with the new. Checked for square with the jig support and if not square it's close enough. Did a "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" on the chisel rack and the 1" Stanly 750 won the honors.

As expected the CBN wheel cuts the bevel very quickly and did not leave an exceptionally deep scratch pattern. The bevel cleaned up nicely with the soft ARK. I followed the soft Ark with the translucent Ark and a few pulls on a strop with "green stuff".  You can't see it or feel it but I got very nice edge very quickly.  Maybe not better but it was much quicker to establish a new bevel and get to a working sharp iron vs. either the Tormek with the wet 220 wheel or the slow speed 8" grinder with the 180 grit CBN wheel.

As you should be able to see, the polished bevel is nice and even across the hollow grind.

That was the good part of the morning. 

The other:

I spent most of yesterday prepping and dimensioning some White Oak for a step stool build. In fact I had marked, sawed, and cleaned the waste from the tail board when I noticed a very small crack through one of the tails. Need I go farther? Of course not, when I went to the shop this morning to scribe the pins the crack had enlarged and now ran almost the full length down the middle of the tail board. What are the odds that there isn't any more of that White Oak board?

Here is the tail board just after cleaning up the sockets and quitting work for the night:

Oh well....Stuff happens.

BTW, it had been awhile since I had worked White Oak. White Oak really saws beautiful, it's great to work with a chisel, but damn it can be hard to face plane if there is any reversing grain. I'll bet the plane iron spent more time on the sharpening bench than than it did on the Oak yesterday.



A last photo, the CBN wheel on the Tormek:

Click 'em to make 'em big.

ken