sharpening gouges with horiz. wet stone
seeemore
| Posted in Turning and Carving on
Just getting into turning. I have a delta sharpeing machine witha 200 grit vertical stone, and an 800 grit horizontal wet stone. Has anyone made a gouge jig for a horizontal stone, or is there one commercially available, so that I don’t have to buy a new grinder . Does anyone grind gouges freehand ? Alan
Replies
Alan,
I dont have any alternative to freehand. I think It took about 2 months of regular (not prolific) turning before I was happy with my grinding. Probably a bit of a waste of HSS. I have since been given a hint that a couple of lengths of reinforcing steel as practice lengths are a good way to get the feel at less cost to the tools.
A simple protractor lets you check the grind angle periodically. The trick is to practice coordinating your hands so that the wrists rotate the tool around its long axis at the same time the hands controll the sweep. If you start with a roughing Gouge the only sweep is Traversing across the wheel to avoid hollowing the stone. You can then Graduate to a spindle gouge with a fingernail grind.
Attached shows what I mean if explanation not sufficient.
PS Disclaimer: I am someone who likes hand sharpeneing and has very little invested in 'stuff' to do it. If it doesnt work, I go and do it again.
Dave
dave, many thanks for your helpful thoughts. Especially the one about practicing on scrap steel. I have a bunch of sharpening jigs...the Veritas, etc, and it seems I always come back to hand held methods(i.e. taking the training wheels off). I'm embarrassed to admit that I sometimes regrind my chisels on a 1" belt sander. The compound motions necessary for gouges sounds challenging, but do-able. Maybe my former manual skills as an eye surgeon will finally be useful. Thanks again. Alan
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