This is great.
I would love to see more people challenged to aim for perfection at the
cutting edge.
I have recently returned from Australia where I demonstrated tool shaping
and sharpening methods and challenged the club members to aim for a quality
egde when sharpening.
If it isnt happening at the tool sharpening center then it will never happen
at the lathe. Go Paul
"Paul Kierstead" wrote in message
news
So, my journey down learning-to-turn is still fun. Sharpening has been
kinda ... variable would be kind. I was having some odd catches with the
spindle gouge (haven't tried bowls yet) and a close examination of the
edge proved to show it a disaster. I decided that free-hand sharpening
was a lovely goal but I need to learn one thing at a time. Alas, money
is short, beside I have resolved to quit buying gadgets and Sorby's
comes in at C$115 or so. Off to search for jig plans. Ah, still one of
my favorite newbie resources, Mr. Feltmate has a page on his jig:

http://www.aroundthewoods.com/sharp.shtml

Now, I will admit that "plans" is used loosely here, but still, it look
so simple compared to some others I found, and highly functional. So I
built one:

Basic station:
http://homepage.mac.com/paulkierstead/tmp/station.jpg

Anchored using 1/4-20 inserts in the table top, off-set holder to work
around issues with this grinder wheel.

I first put it to use on a roughing gouge; results:
http://homepage.mac.com/paulkierstea...ughing_tip.jpg

Worked pretty well; *Very* even grind. Mind you, the roughing gouge was
not in that hard of shape. Still, impressively easy to use.

Next up was to do a spindle gouge, a much more complex grind. First of,
gotta make a holder:

http://homepage.mac.com/paulkierstead/tmp/holder.jpg

And then the results:
http://homepage.mac.com/paulkierstea...pindle_tip.jpg

Marvy stuff; ok, totally awesome result.

Some lessons learned:
- Those white fine grit wheels really suck for removing a lot of HSS
steel. I wore a groove in it in record time. Grinding out the spindle
gouge required re-truing the wheel 3 times, and I am not talking about
being picky here; we are talking major tracks in the wheel. One of these
days I have to get a real grinder with a hard coarse wheel on one side.

- you don't need intricate plans. this was one of my most ad-hoc things
I have done and has been a hard lesson for me: Just do it!

- Home-made jigs do not have to be second class; this works amazingly
well.

- If I can smack this togather out of some shop scraps, anyone can!

PK