I suppose I'm nit-picking here, but wouldn't this technically shorten
the funtional lifespan of the chisel's back(maybe not in your
lifetime), thus the chisel itself? And I sometimes(well, often) use the
back to orient my stroke. Besides, once the back is polished, you
hardly need to touch it again. You can probably save more time in your
sharpening by hollow grinding the bevels, then only lapping and
polishing the very tip and heel of the bevel, instead of the whole
thing. I think. Tom
wrote:
I figure most folks here have seen how them thar' high-falootin
Japanese chisels have a concave bottom so that, when lapping the
bottom, the only material you have to remove is on the perimeter... not
in the middle. (If not, here's a pic:
http://www.benchworks.com.au/images/...isel%20Set.JPG)

Supposing that I wanted to have this nice feature on my existing,
non-stratospherically-priced chisels, does anybody know any relatively
easy way to achieve this? Perhaps with a conical grinding stone mounted
in a drill-press?

Alternatively, does anybody have any tricks for automating the laping
process? I've lapped a few of my chisels but, with the larger ones like
the 1.25"... that's a lot of material to remove. It sure would be nice
if there was some contraption that I could clamp my chisel and stone to
and it would just grind them against each other for an hour while I
went to get a sandwich. Anybody seen something like this, or shall I
design one myself?

- Joe