The Grinder that Makes Sharpening Machines Feel Accessible
Key Takeaways
- The Tormek T-4 Bushcraft Grinder is a great entry level sharpener for regular people who use their tools a lot;
- It’s compact, easy to move around and set up, and relatively easy to learn;
- It’s great for sharpening knives with mid-range steels, but harder to use with super steels;
- It’s a wheel system, so not ideal for scandi or convex edges.
Some tools feel like they were made with attention to the idiots who are likely to use them. The Tormek Bushcraft Grinder… almost feels like that.
But as a clumsy idiot (who has still somehow survived years of reviewing knives) there are a few things that felt like speedbumps to a smooth sharpening experience.
In spite of the awkwardness, though, I’ve managed to put some mean new edges on knives that I had put to the side for the day I got a sharpener with a little more oomph, and not it’s part of my weekly touch-up routine to at least run a couple knives over the honing wheel.
Be warned, this will mostly be a review about a fool’s journey in learning how to use a machine. Less foolish people have covered this, though. Namely, Cedric and Ana did a video on the original version of this grinder which I relied on heavily to make sure I set things up right. It’s definitely worth a watch. I’m here to give the other fools of the world hope.
Specifications
| Dimensions: | 9.4” W x 9.25” D x 10.25” H |
| Grinding Wheel: | 200 x 40 mm aluminum oxide |
| Honing Wheel: | 145 x 26 mm cowhide leather |
| Housing: | Zinc top w/ ABS plastic |
| Motor Performance: | 120 rpm / torque 8.4 Nm |
Also Comes With: Centering knife jig, Axe jig, Universal support arm, Stone grader, Anglemaster, Honing compound, and an Edge marker.
| What I Liked | What I Didn’t Like |
|---|---|
| It’s easy to set up and pack around | Working around a jig and the support arm is its own awkward art |
| The engine runs smoothly at a steady pace | Getting even sides is a matter of timing rather than counting |
| The self watering system removes a step from using a waterstone | It’s tricky to use the honing wheel with longer knives |
| The jigs allow for a lot of freedom of movement while still giving you steady angle guidance. | A wheel system locks you into a slight hollow grind |
So What’s It Good at Sharpening?
This grinder is at its best with small to mid-sized knives with tough steels in flat or hollow grinds. This is appropriate, it being the Bushcraft grinder, because this encompasses a lot of bushcraft and survival knives.
Quick Guide to Sharpening Performance by Steel (according to my personal testing)
| Great With | AEB-L 14C28N 12C27 |
| Good With: | M390 D2 |
| Okay With | CPM-20CV CPM-S45VN |
It comes with an aluminum oxide stone, which is a good middle ground between silicon carbide stone which is incredibly aggressive and brittle, and Arkansas stone, which is both slower-working and much, much more expensive.
I’ve had a great time sharpening AEB-L and Sandvik steels on this grinder. I can get away with a couple passes on either side of the blade unless I have a big notch to sharpen out. That works out well here, because those steels are what most of my favorite knives have anyway.
It’s a little trickier to sharpen D2 blades if they’ve been treated to a high hardness, but D2 is kind of a pain on any sharpening system. I will say I had an easier time sharpening the Cryo D2 on our Off Grid Alpha Dog than just about any other system I’ve tried with it. That stuff is stubborn as hell, but the Tormek does most of the work, so even though it took a while it didn’t feel as labor intensive.
It took me the better part of an hour to grind a small chip out of my now-beloved Kansept Tuckamore with CPM-20CV steel. That’s probably the kind of knife I should get a diamond stone for, but it did work, and the wheel is about the right size for the particular geometry of that blade.
Tormek does sell higher-grit stones that will put a mirror finish on your blade. Those stones are nowhere near cheap, but the option upgrade is there.
The Honing Wheel is a Star
The leather honing wheel has been the most used tool on this grinder by far, though. It’s more than enough for the majority of the soft-steel knives I tend to use daily, and I don’t have to fill the water tray or lay out towels to use it. I just walk up and turn on the Tormek. A couple passes later I have a smooth cutting knife again.
Where Using the Tormek Gets Tricky
Most of my issues in using the Tormek came from it being a machine and having more moving parts than I like to deal with, which is none. A few others are a consequence of the compact design.
Things that Make It Tricky
- The compact size can make it harder to touch up longer knives;
- The jigs, moving parts, and micro adjustments feel like a lot for someone used to a plain sharpening stone;
- You have to adjust to side to side rather than back and forth.
Maybe the trickiest comes in using the leather honing wheel. There’s about six inches between the honing wheel and the sharpening stone, so any knife that length or longer will butt up against the stone.
The solution is to just hold the knife at an angle, which, in the grand scheme, isn’t that big of an adjustment.
It felt like a harder adjustment for me to use the jigs, actually. Between the support arm, the jig, and the moving wheel, it feels like I’m reaching around too many different things.
On top of that I had to adjust from back and forth motions I was used to with static bench stones and stropping paddles to moving the knife side to side.
These are all issues to learning to be comfortable, though.
The Hollow Grind Issue
This isn’t ideal for sharpening scandi and convex grinds since this is a wheel system. Everything you sharpen will end up with a slight hollow grind (unless you’re cool enough to use the side of the wheel, but that’s not a technique I’m prepared to test out yet). This is the one thing that makes me pause at the “bushcraft grinder” designation since a lot of great outdoor knives have scandi or convex (or a combination of both).
The curve will be slight enough that you’ll still have basically the same primary grind, and depending on what factory your knife came out of, it’s likely it had a slight hollow grind anyway.
But it is definitely something to be aware of for grind purists. If you want to keep your knife a true scandi, a plain, flat sharpening stone is your best bet, and for a convex you’ll want some kind of belt grinder.
Set up and Angling
Things will get wet. Bring a towel.
Ideally, you’ll want a towel laid out to set the grinder on, and another one to dry your knife blade and the inevitable splashes from a motorized wheel spinning around in a tray of water.
Also, sometimes you forget that the wheel keeps going past the blade, and you scooch in closer so you can get a better look at what you’re doing, and all of the sudden your chest hits a moving, wet stone. No injuries from this happening yet, but plenty of wet shirts with a strip of 1000-grit finish on the front.
But the wetness and my stupidity aside, this is not at all complicated to set up. It’s mostly a matter of slipping the grinding wheel on, screwing a few things in, getting compound onto the honing wheel, and filling up the water tray.
Finding the Angle
Getting the angle right is a finicky business compared to just slapping a knife on a stone and wiggling it back and forth. But like all things with this grinder, it starts to feel intuitive once you get the hang of everything that needs to be tightened down.
If you want to be really precise, the angle-finder card that comes with the machine comes in handy, as does the marker. But between finding the angle, setting the card to the angle, adjusting the support arm and rechecking the angle of the knife while it’s on the jig is a finicky dance that I’m ill-adjusted to.
It has helped significantly in improving the evenness of my sharpening, though (I am, to put it kindly, a slap-dash jackass when left to eyeballing edge angles on a regular stone). So all the fuss in using the Tormek has significantly improved the edges on my older knives, but this is definitely something I have to tackle on a day that I’m feeling patient.
Bottom Line: Is the Tormek Bushcraft Grinder Right for You
If you’re a heavy user of bladed-tools who either never takes the time to sharpen things or keeps screwing up your grinds, this is probably worth having.
In the world of machine sharpeners, it’s a small investment both in space and money. You can use it in your kitchen if you really have to (I certainly did), and if you’re active enough that you’re having to clean up blade edges at least once every week or so, this could be the key to saving you time, and upgrading the performance of your tools.
It’s also worth noting that Tormek makes all kinds of jigs and pieces for different tools. It comes with a jig each for knives and axes, but Tormek makes them for scissors and woodworking tools as well. There is no shortage of upgrades and attachments to add to this thing.
So if you’re out there using your shit, and you like playing with machines, then there’s a good chance Tormek’s T-4 Bushcraft grinder is for you.
