The Zen of hand Sharpening

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Haynie

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After my belt/disk sander caught fire I found myself faced with a choice hand sharpen, buy a new sander, or go beg sander time at the shop next door.

Skew and Chisels got hand sharpened but I never could figure out how to sharpen the gouges so I begged sander time next door. Buying a new sander was out of the question.

I finally got the sander fixed. Strange thing is there are times when I prefer to hand sharpen. If I am in a hurry or during turning I will use the sander but if I am just starting or in between projects, or when I finish turning I like to sit at the surface plate with wet sand paper and sharpen my straight edged tools. It slows me down :snail:. I would like to do this with my gouges too, but can't figure out a consistent way of doing it.

Does anyone know of a way to sharpen gouges this way, that is consistent? I screwed up the angle on one and had to grind it back into shape which was a pain, then clean it on the sander.

I am not going to spend money on a sharpening machine. I just don't believe in single task items like that. The sander serves a lot of purposes. I like hand sharpening and am looking for a way to hand sharpen my gouges.
 
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I do agree with the zen aspect of hand sharpening. It is often a good excuse to get away from a troublesome project and slow down.

There are 2 methods that I know of for handling the gouge when hand sharpening.

Method 1: us a side to side motion with the edge of the gouge against your sharpener and rotate the gouge as you go. This is the most common method and there are several examples if you Google "hand sharpen gouges" or search you tube for "how to sharpen a gouge chisel by hand" there are some decent videos.

Method 2: Use a rolling action while pushing the gouge into the sharpener.This takes quite a bit of practice, but once you have the action down it becomes a muscle memory thing. I prefer method 2.

Either method takes practice and you must be more aware of positioning of the gouge on the stone to make sure the stone wears evenly. Especially if you use method 2 it is actually pretty easy to wear a groove into a soft water stone and make it useless for anything but gouges.

You will also need a slipstone or small round diamond file to "flatten" the edge against the back of the gouge (remove the wire edge or burr) do this by dragging the slip across the edge while holding it flat against the back of the gouge.

The finer the stones and the more you polish the edge, the sharper it will be. I don't generally polish my lathe chisels though as they lose their edge so fast do the speed of the lathe. Bench chisels, carving tools, and plane irons are usually polished though. Once you have the edges done correctly, it doesn't take long to get them honed.

Scrapers are a bit different, use method 1 for the initial honing and if you prefer a burr on your scraper, you need to drag the edge on the stone to raise the burr at the edge.

It just takes practice to maintain the bevel when sharpening.
 
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Kind of hard to do fingernail grinds by hand, I have seen two turners that can do a good job of it, Richard Raffan, and Johannes Michelson, me I use a varigrind. I'm not into wrecking my Thompson bowl Gouges, some of the flatter nose grinds maybe, but my deep V's Ain't No freaking way I'm going to try a fingernail grind by hand. At least on a good tool.
 
I took a class from Kirk DeHeer at CSUSA, who has written articles and produced a video on sharpening turning tools. At the time, I had a grinding wheel, but no type of grinding jig. I asked if he could show me how to sharpen by hand and he said that he could, but he recommended against it. I asked him why and he told me the following story:

One day, Dale Nish was giving a beginning turning class and called me over. He told me that I was going to be giving a demonstration on the Wolverine Jig to the class in about an hour. I explained to him that I had always sharpened by hand and that I'd never used a jig. He said, "Well, you've got about an hour to learn." I set up the jig and played around with it, gave the demonstration, then walked back over to the shop and bought one for myself. In that short time, I realized that the amount of steel that I would save by having a simple, repeatable grinding jig would allow my tools to last much longer than they were by hand sharpening them. Not having to buy new tools so often justified the cost of the jig.

Just some food for thought.
 
My skews are flat ground, so I definitely sharpen them by hand. Usually even keep a piece of 1000 grit around with a piece of corian to touch them up with. I do notice one side of the edge getting duller as it seems to be the one I use more. I'll probably eventually put them on the belt sander, but then I also use that to sharpen my knives. Took me about 30 minutes to get the Chinese skew from dull to hair popping sharp the first time. The Sorby skew came pretty close, so it just needed stropping with jewelers rouge.

I usually sharpen the gouge on the belt sander. I did try a rush job on it once by hand and it came out good enough to pop hairs, but I find the belt sander better for that.
 
I should have added in my previous post.

When sharpening the gouge free hand, I rode the bevel, which is fairly easy since it's so wide, and rolled it. I went back and forth, progressing in grits.

Still much easier on the belt sander with grits progressing up to 1000. Lee Valley sells higher grit belts for my belt sander.
 
Lot of people freehand sharpen turning tools on their belt sanders. Like anything else takes practice. I started out sharpening on a belt sander never felt tools sharp enough and never consistent.

Recommend look at sharpening jigs (commercial or homemade) and make something to fit your belt sander. Will save you lots of frustration and wasted steel.

Felt same after getting my bench grinder. So made a jig which worked well. Of course ended up with Wolverine system gave me consistency sharpening all my tools. These days use both Wolverine and freehand sharpen my tools
 
Mark, find a Big Lot and see if they have their grinders again I paid $29 for mine and uf you are not in a position to buy the grinding whell then go very gentle on the regular stones and then keep a bowl of water near by to cool your tools with. There certain tools that are not made to be worked with by hands and then again it will take lots of practice. Sometimes it's not worse reinventing the wheel.
 
cmccarter said:
I have a WS-3000 and can sharpen my skews but not my gouges if you find a way let me know.
Click to expand...

Gouges are pretty easy with the 3000 and the slotted discs.. you can
watch the surface through the spinning disc. You look through the top and
hold the gouge underneath, bevel side up. You can easily see the surface
if you have a light close-by
 
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