sharpening techniques

[gritskringle]

I have purchased a basic chisel kit from woodcraft. What is the best sharpening techniques?

 

[Jonathon.C]

What exactly is your set up?? I mean do you have a grinder? Or do you have sharpening stones? If you have a grinder the most basic description of grinding is presenting the heel (the transition from the shaft of the tool to the bevel) of the tool to the stone and then rolling your tool up so that the whole bevel is lightly touching the stone. All you want is to barely grind down the tip to get a fresh edge on the tool... it doesn't take much! What kind of tool are you trying to sharpen: gouges, skew chisels, scrapers? A great little movie is Richard Raffan's Turning Wood! The first part has a great little section on sharpening the tools!!! So... what kind of tools did you get, what is your set up and what kind of steel are the tools? Answers to these questions might help me in giving you a better description!! I am not that great at sharpening anway so maybe someone more qualified might be able to help better! 😀 Well, good luck!!

Here are a couple websites that might get ya started.



http://www.woodturninglearn.net/articles/grinding_part_1.html

http://www.woodturninglearn.net/articles/grinding_part_2.html

http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=turning&file=articles_271.shtml

Jonathon.C

 

[MichaelMouse]

If you're satisfied with the tools as they cut, use their bevels as a guide and remove a bit of steel parallel to them to freshen the edge. Sandpaper on a stick, stones, or power, the technique is the same. Heel of bevel in contact with stone, elevate handle until edge touches. Best advice I even got was that you don't grind the edge, you grind to the edge. When you see the wire form inside the grind or hone, you're done.

If you're not satisfied with the tools as they cut, use some of the profiles you can find at http://www.woodcentral.com/newforum/grinds.shtml Only please, don't use the cutting technique in the top photo!

 

[john lucas]

I would recommend looking at the AAW video on sharpening. You can find it by clicking on the aaw emblem in the upper left corner. There isn't one method that works for everyone and every tool. This video shows you the basics of sharpening from 3 different view points and makes it easier to select the one that will work best for you.
I like sharpening by bowl gouges with the Wolverine jig but I have 2 that I sharpen by hand. The same is true with my spindle gouges. It does take practice sharpening by hand.
The best thing you can do is to get a grinder and use white, pink or blue wheels and balance them so there is as little vibration as possible. A smooth running stone requires less pressure with your hands and that makes it easier to control the grind.
And finally, practice, practice, practice. The best thing I ever did was to look at my tools as consumables. That is, items that are used up during the process of turning. What that did was let me sharpen more often which not only added to the enjoyment of turning but also taught me how to sharpen.

 

[dkulze]

Huge fan of the inexpensive grinder, white/pink/blue wheel (120 grit), and Wolverine jig with varigrind setup. This setup lets me sharpen anything I've got to pretty much any grind configuration, with the exception of my skew, which I hand sharpen on a wet stone. If you want to chuck the extra bucks, you can even get a skew attachment for this rig.

Lots of folks still hand sharpen or freehand on the grinder pretty much exclusively. If you're into sharpening as an art, by all means go this route. If you're into turning, and sharpening is something you do to make your tools work well, I'm more of a fan of the sharpening rigs. They take the guesswork and large amounts of practice and skill out of the equation and give you an extremely consistant grind with minimal tool wear.

Well worth the $150 investment.

Dietrich

 

[arbud]

The jig is up!

The woodturner's catalog sells a Tru-grind sharpening jig that comes w/instruction book and dvd. I paid $109.00 for mine. I didn't check the going price.