Thread: Honing a skew

Hi Rsser

Speaking as a relative newby on a tight budget who is still struggling to master the art of sharpening that sounds very good advice. Very similar approach to what is shown near the end of this demonstration. It's a pretty big file (259MB) but lots of stuff I've found helpful.

cheers
WH

As posted elsewhere, I have a concern about cash-strapped woodies shelling out over a grand for a Tormek and jigs when there may be alternatives. I don't believe that you need a wet grinder for HSS tools, but jigs and a honing system are close to essential. I'm working on two options for putting jigs in front of powered honing discs.

I agree Ern, with some lateral thinking the whole process should well inside the budget of nearly all woodies.

Most jigs and hones can be DIY made with a little help from knowledgeable others. In days gone by honing was achieved with leather wrapped around a mandrel and coated or impregnated with a fine compound.
As for jigs, well we have some of the hardest wood around and it will do just fine for jig making.

*

Would agree with a lot of what Ern has said. The skew chisel is probably the easiest woodturning tool to hone and hardly justifies buying a Tormek for it although a Tormek would make honing gouges easier than honing them freehand.

I would also say that I have not seen any jig that does a good job of grinding the skew with consistent bevels on each side or even aligned with the skew's edge. The method outline by Ern is the method that I have returned to after trying various jigs. It is economical and gives consistent results.

When the snow melts I'll tackle the power honing array on the lathe arbour. Three leather clad MDF wheel rims with 3 grades of diamond paste; Tormek BGM mounted on a tool post; lathe running in reverse.

The hand honing method has been something of proof of concept: that you can get from 80g scratches off the grind wheel to something like a 6000-8000g polish in three steps.

I've been reading through a lot of the sharpening threads that you have been contributing to in recent time Ern and I think something to note may be the use of good waterstones like the ones you have that will cut effectively and leave a good finish, although the cost of said stones is a pebble in a desert in comparison to a Tormek (and you don't have to pay for electricity to run a waterstone ).

Very sound advice Ern, thanks for sharing (and adding to the sharpening threads I might add). All helping to make me decide which stones etc I hope to purchase one day in the not too distant future.

Thanks.

Yes, which waterstone is a perennial

I was wondering whether this issue would arise here.

The value of a honed edge has been advocated only fairly recently among woodturners on a wide scale (though if you go back through the decades you find the occasional argument for it in a book or mag) with the modern means being a wetgrinder and leather honing wheel.

Anyway for the benefit of those interested, the two stones on the pic are Shapton Glass stones (1k & 4k). I wouldn't buy these again.

I've had better results with a Bester 1k and Sigma 8k (all ratings are JIS).

At 8k you're getting a polish that will reflect your face. Just as well the bevels are narrow ;-}

Honing is for hobby turners.....

Don't overlook the fact that Tormek added a honing wheel to their design for a reason. But getting from 200g (c. 70 micron) scratches off the whetstone down to the 1-3 microns of their honing paste is optimistic. Fine for taking the wire edge off.

Yes, you can regrade the wheel for every sharpening - but the time and expense ... ?

My "power hone" is a 10" dia MDF disc 19mm thick mounted on my lathe. I dress it with buffing compund and it gives me a razor sharp edge on any tool in seconds. I now need to build a jig to accurately position things like skew chisels so only the very edge is bieng honed at the correct angle, but even doing it roughly by hand gives noticable results.

Sounds good CT. Post a pic?

Hi Ern

I've been posting this for years and years .... No one appears to notice. I wonder why? Anyway ...

I freehand hone skews (and other lathe chisels) on the disk sander of my beltsander combo machine...



Since the chisels are HSS and are not affected by the level of heat produced by this process, you can use highish grits without fear of affecting the temper of the steel.

At 1400 rpm, a disk of 240 grit will leave a very fine finish. Generally this is sharp enough for most shaping work. I use an 80 grit for very rough grinding.

If you want the finest finish, one that you can shave with, then I use a leather disk as a powered strop. Ths is a strop with a different as it is flat, not round. To make this I contact glued chamois leather (from an auto shop) to a velcro-backed sanding disk. To this I add green rouge (.5 micron). In about 3 seconds you will have a mirror shine. Just hold the face of the chisel flat on the disk. It is easier than you think - just make sure that you are holding the edge away from the spinning disk!

Regards from Perth

Derek

I do mostly the same thing. Grind to produce a bevel then I use the EZ-Lap diamond hones to get the edge. I take the medium hone and lay it on the bevel. Then work it back and forth until there is a full burr on the other side. Then I go to the other bevel. It goes really fast after you establish the first burr. Once the edge is established it's pretty easy to keep it there using the fine or ultra fine hone. In a worse case I go back to the medium. I rarely have to go back to the grinder.

I like the idea of honing for details...but I'd go the quickest way....I just buff the tip, with honing compound on buffing wheel. Something of late that I find works well too, is to have a little bottle of oil at the lathe (something cheap like sunflower oil thinned with turps is what I use), that you dip the very tip of the tool into just before use occationally.....and the oil frees up the chips further (more control) and runs down onto the tool rest freeing up movement of the tool on the rest.....also, stops me having to bother remembering to oil those tools that I don't use much and tend to rust.

Lot of good tips; thanks guys.

There's an earlier thread on power honing here

Derek, why alternatives to dry and wet grind wheels haven't taken on is an interesting question of info dissemination and opinion leadership in Australian woodturning. Certainly Darlow has been an advocate of sanding discs and belts for bevel shaping and of honing with a stone. But I think the real barrier is the lack of ready jigging systems for anything other than wheels. Not many turners can do a swept back grind on a gouge freehand.

Another barrier is the divisions in the forum structure here, with relevant material appearing in sub-forums that turners may see little reason to browse (eg. carving, sharpening, handtools, woodwork).

As always there's an important distinction to be made between shaping the bevel and refining (honing) the edge. I confess to fudging that in this thread, as the first stone after hollow dry grinding is actually forming two new co-planar bevels. It also starts refining the edge.