Hi Folks,

I bought Jon's system years ago and added a fixture (which Jon now can
provide) to use the Packard gouge holder to sharpen bowl gouges. I sharpen
2 bowl gouges and a parting tool with a custom shape in around two minutes
Resharpening just a bowl gouge for finish cutting takes 20 seconds or so,
which includes inserting the gouge into the Packard holder with a stop jig
to ensure the identical extension from the jig each time I sharpen.

I really started to be able to focus on turning the shapes I wanted once I
had Jon's system and it has made me much more productive.

George


"Owen Davies" wrote in message
...
Among other things, Ecnerwal wrote:

A large number of woodturners at a New Hampshire symposium a few years
back were having a grand old cheap time with belt sanders mounted so the
belts ran up and AlZn belts.

That was Jon Siegel's influence. Take a look at his site,
http://www.bigtreetools.com/ , for a picture of the unit he makes. The
advantage is that it offers fixed positions for the tool handle, so that
hardly any metal is removed in each sharpening. Jon says it takes him 10
seconds to sharpen, say, a roughing gouge and get back to work, with so
little loss of metal that he gets something like 1000 sharpenings per inch
of tool. I've seen him do it. The time is certainly close enough to right,
and I believe the number of sharpenings as well. I'd be using a similar
device now, but shortly after that visit to his shop, I stopped turning
for a while and am only getting back to it now. ASAP.

Owen Davies