Sandpaper sharpening, or stropping, or finely honing of HAND tools
makes sense. They travel very slowly with minimal force behind the
blade. Your arms are the force. The rate of travel is like 1 foot
for 3 seconds with a handplane. Even slower with a chisel. So they
have to be razor sharp to cut. Mirror polish.

Machine cutting tools do not have to be that sharp for a couple
reasons. One is they have 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 3 horsepower electric
motors turning either the cutting tool or the workpiece. Lathe turns
the workpiece while a planer, jointer, tablesaw, shaper turns the
cutting tool and you feed the workpiece into it. These electric
motors have more power than you do. So they don't need razor sharp
cutting tools. Have you ever touched your table saw blade's teeth?
The teeth are not razor sharp yet a table saw will easily cut through
wood very cleanly. And the other reason is speed. The cutting tool
or workpiece is turning at 1000, 2000, 3000, or more rpm. At these
speeds the wood can literally be ground away smooth.

Most turners will sharpen their turning tools with either/or a 60 and
120 grit grinding wheel. 6 or 8 inch diameter. Friable wheel to cut
cooler. Use the 60 grit for shaping the tool. Use the 120 for
resharpening.



On Oct 3, 9:33*pm, "Vic Baron" wrote:
Last time I tried to use a lathe was over 40 years ago. Decided to get back
into it so I bought a little mini lathe from Rockler . I still had the tools
from years ago.

My puzzlement - as a woodworker I use the scary sharp method to keep my wood
chisels razor sharp. *Reading various articles on lathe tool sharpening, I
get the impression that you just do a coarse grind and have at the wood. So
no honing or stropping etc? My grinder stone is 150 grit - now for a wood
chisel this would be awful.

What am I missing here?

Vic

--
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don't