Sharpening chisels, jigs and waterstones.

[edstreet]

This is one of my sub hobbies. I have been collecting stones for some time now and to be honest it does not take that much equipment to sharpen, nor is it a black art or something mysterious.

I was going thru my tools this week and found a skew chisel that I have and decided to put a superb edge on it. No particular reason as I don't really use this chisel much, or did not but now I will probably use it more often.

This chisel is 1/2" wide, made from M2 Tool steel, FYI.

Here we have pre-work nastiness.

This is the other side during use of Kongo-do (it's a super coarse Japanese water stone).

This is the setup I used. It is a Lee Valley veritas MKII jig. This bad boy is fantastic when it comes to this very subject.

This is the skew registration jig. Note the 2 angle markings. This is showing 18 degree slant and 25 degree angle. The other 2 adjustments is the rotation of the chisel point and the roller in the back.

This is the side view showing good front to back on the stone placement. If there is any high spots they will show up very quickly. This stone is Kongo-Do.

This was the state of things after a few passes on the Kongo-Do stone.

Here we have some good banding and most certainly showing the direction of motion. This is left and right shot.

Finally after going thru Binsui, Kaisei, Chunagura and Komanagura I arrived at a good pseudo mirror polish, but to show up for the camera good I have some light staining of the metal to show the grain. We also see some ripples that I left in the back.

Finally the side view.

Some of you may have already caught it but let me point it out. In the above photo the left side has some serious problems with it. It will take a good section off the tip to fully work the problem out and it is not worth it at this point.

 

[ghostrider]

I agree that there isn't much needed to sharpen turning tools. I like to sharpen things, and have often times had my skew or spindle gouge sharp enough to pop hairs off my arm. I've also gotten my hawkish sharp enough to whittle hairs. So while I'm not a master at sharpening, I'm also not a complete newb.

Every system is going to have learning curve. I've gotten to the point where I just use a cheap, Harbor Freight diamond hone for the skew and gouge touch ups (either that or a piece of 320 Grit sandpaper laid flat on a piece of solid surface). With the high grinds on these tools, learning to follow the bevel isn't all that hard with patience. Last time I turned wood, I ran my cheap Chinese skew (doesn't even say HSS on it) over the diamond, and it got the wood so smooth that had my turning skills been better, it wouldn't even need sharpening (Smooth finish, but wavy turn).

 

[edstreet]

This was a typo in the original post.

Mostly I use the stone on my bench grinder but since I am waiting on parts for my lathe I was bored.

 

[ghostrider]

The bevels of my turning tools don't look near that nice, mainly because I see no reason to put the time in when a few swipes will do the trick. They may be ugly, but they cut well.

Nice work.

Wish I had the money for some decent hones. I've been sharpening my straight razors on 1500 and 2000 grit wet/dry for the lower grits, then using a two sided barbers hone before the 12K Chinese.

 

[edstreet]

Awase, Aoto, 'blue mountain' and Kitayama works quite well for sharpening knives.