In the past, I had done some metal working on a nice little mill
drill, and, at the time, I bought some carbide insert end mills.
Well, these little things cut beautifully though the length of my
project.

Now (some time later), I am without that little miller, but working on
another project, and it has ocurred to me, primarily from the number
of times that I have made my drill bits all colors of blue, that I
have not been giving feed rate and tool sharpness their correct due.
I am no longer cutting on carbide blades, usually HSS or some kind of
cobalt coating. I am cutting too fast, too hard and after the first
usage, on a dull edge.

My question regards sharpening a scraping cutter in specific, but I
think it can be extended to drill bits in general (I hope).

I have a bench grinder with a course and fine wheel, and I can form
the tool correctly on the course wheel, and touch it up on the fine.
However, the postings I have read indicate that for the final "razor
sharpness" state, I should be honing on an arkansas stone. When I
look at the blade after the fine wheel, I can certainly see the
abrasion marks. The good news is that running my finger tip over the
blade, it feels sharp.

So, I try to hone it up a bit on various of a bunch of "Mold and Die
Maker Polishing Stones" that I have. This assortment ranges in grit
from 240ish to about 400, and there are several types available. The
trouble is, after my "honing", my blade feels significantly duller.
By means of process, I pass the blade over the stationary stone some
number of times (50, 100, or so) exerting good down force, and not
moving side to side too fast (from what I can tell from the piece of
crap machining book I have, this is OK). I seem to get nicer "cuts"
from the blade after the grinder than after the honing (and I still
hesitate to call these gouging-marking-scarring-things real cuts, and
of course the cuts have all the ridges that are visible in the tool,
but the cuts are shiny are generally well-formed).

The end result of my cutting is what you think it might be, scarred
and scratched. Can anybody serve up some advice? Basically, what I
want to know, is can I get there from here - or am I lacking some
basic tools, like the arkansas stone? ...or maybe its just a lack of
experince... I know this group is quite good, and as an aside, it is
pretty cool to read posts from the mid-90s. Of course almost all of
the web-sites referenced are dead links. Good advice is timeless, and
I'm hopin' to get me some. Thanks in advance from one of the only
metal working hobbyists in ever-colder Barcelona, Spain. --ss