TormekT-8 Original – Water Cooled Sharpening System for Edge Tools – US Version – English Handbook

Used it to sharpen plan irons and chisels with the jig included with the machine. It is fast, precise, simple and did an outstanding job. No jig provided for sharpening knives, so I had to order one. It did a good job sharpening knives. it was not as easy sharpening knives as sharpening plane irons because you had to keep the blade parallel to the cutting edge of the stone which took some practice and required developing the skill. The result was a very sharp knife but the knife edge did not look pretty or uniform. All in all this is an amazing machine and worth buying.

It is expensive, but it's a great tool. It does a remarkable job at sharpening kitchen knives--and they stay sharp. No more hiding the one good sharp knife (laboriously sharpened with a stone) that I need, and then my wife finds it and begins to use it and somehow dulls it. All the knives that I sharpened are still sharp! I have sharpened a few chisels, but no plane blades yet. Flattening the back of a chisel is easily done on the side of the wheel. I knew that I could change the apparent grit on the wheel from 220 to about 1000 by using the abrader block that comes with the tool, but I had not realized that I could use the honing wheel to polish the entire bevel to a fine finish. (Use the included angle setup tool on the smaller honing wheel to accomplish this step.) I think I prefer to use a fine water or diamond stone to remove the wire edge after the other sharpening steps are done. I have used the honing wheel for this purpose, as suggested by the manual, but it is a bit difficult to get the back of the chisel exactly tangential to the honing wheel at the contact point. I inadvertently put a small reverse bevel on the back of a few chisels before I realized my mistake. They would still shave, however.A diamond wheel truing tool is included. This permits the user to true the surface of the wheel to be exactly parallel to the bar that supports all the jigs that are used with the Tormek system.If you are willing to spend the money, it is a cleverly designed system which can sharpen a variety of tools.

I'll say that I started with a Chef's Choice sharpener, that never worked and you couldn't vary the angle on it. Then I went to the belt style sharpener where it just ate through belts almost every time I sharpened just a couple of knives. So then I said, OK, you get what you pay for and just spent the money on the Tormek T8. For accessories, I purchased the rotating base, the cover, a Blackstone Silicon stone, and the blade sharpening jig kit. I'll have to say I'm very impressed. This system comes with a wire-bound book that tells you not only the theory of sharpening (advantages/disadvantages of the stone rotating towards or away from you, etc.) but also how to sharpen just about everything that has an edge. There is a tiny learning curve (as with everything) and I started on a knife and axe that I didn't care about if I scratched it, and I had no problems--everything came out perfect. With just 4 passes on each side I got my Buck knife so sharp that it would cut through the edge of a piece of paper just under its own weight. It comes with a marker to paint the bevel of a blade so that you can perfectly fine tune how the bevel contacts the stone. It also comes with a jig that allows you to set the angle of a blade if you want to achieve a certain result. The machine comes with everything you'll need to get started. Just using it on an axe and a hunting knife and I was confident enough to sharpen our expensive kitchen knives. The Tormek system is worth every penny. My plan is to get the Japanese Waterstone so that I can get a mirror edge on my expensive knives. Thanks for reading my review!

A quality (but expensive) tool. It is easy to set up and provides repeatable results. I use bevel chisels and was easily able to set up & remove chips in damaged blades. I followup sharpening on diamond stones & quickly hone the face & heel. Being a circular sharpening stone it leaves a slight bevel in the blade... but this doesn't matter as the diamond stones only touch the face & heel. I use this system to quickly repair damaged blades but rely on diamond stones for final sharpening.

The Tormek has been on my tool wishlist for a long time. It is very expensive, so I experimented with glass and wet sandpaper, diamond stones and Japanese water stones. I managed to get my tools sharp but it was messy, time consuming and often frustrating. My wife bought me the T-8 for Christmas and I love it. There is a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it you can get perfect, razor sharp edges on everything, with the right jig. Some people complain about how slow it is, but once you get your initial bevel on a tool it takes only a minute or two to restore a perfect edge. I added up what I spent on stones and other sharpening stuff, and I wish I had purchased one of these long ago. I looked at the used market, but they are rarely for sale and only at a small discount, so it is an investment I know will hold its value.One word of advice - be careful about adding oil to the leather wheel. The unit comes with oil to condition the wheel and honing compound to add on top. The instructions say to keep adding oil to keep the compound wet. This only creates a thick layer of goop. The advice on the Tormek forums in unanimous that you should not add oil after the initial conditioning.