Spyderco Forums

Hey guys,

I want to start doing my own regrinds (blade, not just the edge) and here in Europe it is darn hard to find a suitable belt grinder under 1000 (or more) bucks. So I thought about buying a Tormek T7 with a SiC wheel. Is it possible to do regrinds with this setup or does it take too much time?

BR Oliver

Are you talking about modification to the primary grind or edge bevel?

Hey Cliff, I mean the primary grind. But I guess this would work too slowly and the stone will wear down very fast.

BR Oliver

If you look at YT you can watch regrinds of chisels with the Tormek and the bevels on chisels are similar in width to the primary grinds on folding knives. However modern folders are made out of some very abrasion resistant steels so you are likely to want the silicon carbide wheel. Have you tried some of the actual super coase and fast cutting stones like the Sigma Power 120?

No I haven't tried the Sigma stones. But I guess it will take extremely long time to regrind f.e. a Manix 2 in Cruwear to zero by hand. Maybe I buy the coarsest Sigma stone and see how it works. Some time ago I wanted to regrind a ZDP-189 Stretch with a coarse diamond plate; just impossible. This would have taken me a year or so Maybe the Tormec with the SiC wheel would do the job also on high alloyed steels.

I've seen anEndura tormek regrind that was beautiful, but you're gonna be limited to saber hollow grinds

_centurio_ wrote:No I haven't tried the Sigma stones. But I guess it will take extremely long time to regrind f.e. a Manix 2 in Cruwear to zero by hand.

It depends on what you mean by regrind, are you actually keeping the same primary grind angle and thinning out the blade stock, reshaping the point, etc. or are you just radically thinning out the edge bevel by slightly increasing the primary grind angle?

I want to thin out the blade stock. Not only the secondary grind (edge).

_centurio_ wrote:I want to thin out the blade stock.

This can be done in 15-60 minutes depending on the knife, I do it all the time even on fairly radical steels like Maxamet. I just flattened four of them to a true zero grind.

WOW, ok I will try that with my Shapton 220 grit and give an update. But I think a good belt grinder will be the way to go in the future.

BR Oliver

_centurio_ wrote:WOW, ok I will try that with my Shapton 220 grit and give an update.

I have that stone, I would be curious what you think of it.

Hey, so I reground a Krush by Jürgen Schanz. Niolox (SB1) at 61 HRC. Edge bevel was ca. 2mm wide. Now it is near to zero. Did the regrind with a Shapton 220 grit (moss green) and finished with 120 grit sandpaper. Looks relatively good (the pics are quite bad and on them the grind looks horrible :P). Took me about 4 hours. I won't do this again in the near future haha.




BR Oliver

Not to forget Cliff, the Shapton worked really well. I lapped it after ca. 2 hours of grinding.

(Sorry for double post but I don't know how to edit due to the new forums design/software)

Do you have a before picture? It really should not take that long. How much force were you using (approximately) and how many passes were you doing (approximately) per second (or minute).

Puh for a before picture i have to search. Put a lot of force on the blade, approx. 15-20 pounds. Frequency was approx. 2-3 per sec. For 30 seconds, then 30 sec. Break. But it wasn't continously work, i broke up every 10 mins. Or so for a couple minutes

That is interesting. I have the same stone and I need to regrind a 10V blade, or will have to shortly.

Yes it took me a lot of time but I had to remove a lot of material. The Edge bevel was ~ 2mm wide. I guess your regrind with 10V will also take some time, how wide is the edge bevel (or how thick is the blade behind the edge?). Are you going to do the regrind with the 220grit Shapton stone?

BR Oliver

_centurio_ wrote:.. how wide is the edge bevel (or how thick is the blade behind the edge?).

Don't know, I don't have it yet :



Big Chris custom knives, 64 HRC (Peter's) 10V : http://www.bigchriscustomknives.com/

Are you going to do the regrind with the 220grit Shapton stone?

Possibly, I bought some new stones recently I am in the process of using them now, currently a Naniwa Superstone 400.

Oh nice knife! Edge bevel doesn't look too wide, but with a 400 grit Naniwa it will take quite some time won't it ?

Do you think the stone will load up due to the fact of grinding 10V?

BR Oliver

_centurio_ wrote:Oh nice knife! Edge bevel doesn't look too wide, but with a 400 grit Naniwa it will take quite some time won't it ;)?

It depends on how you do it, there is a really efficient way and a really not at all efficient way. What most people do is lay the knife on the stone on the primary and grind on that. It takes a long time as the pressure is really low, swarf is heavy and the stones simply won't cut well. A far more efficient way is to lay the knife on the stone at an angle inbetween the edge bevel and the primary grind bevel. Grind right into the transition point and as you grind it down keep tilting the angle back towards the primary. This sounds complicated maybe but it isn't at all. If you do it this way then in minutes you will have made a major impact on the ease of sharpening, edge holding and cutting ability. As you want you can keep blending it, but 90% of the performance you will ever get will be achieved in that first 5-10 minutes. I do regrinds like this all the time and most people spend more time sharpening a knife than the time it takes me to do a regrind. I do full zero's as well but they are mainly done to compare stones or when I am trying to create a specific geometry for evaluations.

Do you think the stone will load up due to the fact of grinding 10V?

It doesn't load I zero'ed a few Maxamet knives recently that didn't even have an apex.