A light bulb moment on 40/40 freehand grinding

[John Whitley]

A personal light bulb moment 💡 I'll share from Stu's new video on sharpening. Around the 14:40 mark he demonstrates a slightly different breakdown to 40/40 gouge grinding than I've seen before. In particular, I've found that I've sometimes over-rotated a 40/40 gouge during sharpening, screwing up the wing angle. I "know" better, but it still happens from time to time.

Stu's teaching approach uses one-directional motions starting from the wing to the gouge tip. For me this is the "lightning bolt": I realized that my struggle with over-rotation is directly related to two-directional sharpening, with motion back towards the wing from the center. It's really easy to screw this up and go just a little too far. And next time, maybe I go a little farther trying to get the (already slightly incorrect) wing fully sharp, and so on. With enough sharpening experience, that's not going to be a problem, but Stu's method should help avoid this entirely. It's a lot easier to maintain correct flute presentation once at the setup for each side. Even better the gouge isn't yet in contact with the wheel at this point so there's no "rush" in getting it right.

(Related, see the recent thread Stuart Batty has released a number of new videos)

 

[john lucas]

I call my 40/40 grind a 40 45. I prefer longer wings than Stewart so I swing the handle further than he does. Mine actually may be closer to a 40/50 grind

 

[Brian Gustin]

Or do a 35-40-50 grind? (I'm thinking of Raffan's asymmetric grind.. I actually tried making my own grind of that type once and it did work quite well used similar to how Raffan does... I just couldnt get comfortable with it and went back to my Ellsworth grind)