Thread: Star's Sharpening Journey.

Intreresting subject keep it going, old dogs can always learn new tricks. I sharpe my chip carving knives with a Ceramic stone and finish off with a leather strop. they are good enough when I can shave the back of my hand with them.Maybe not a good yardstick but it works for me.brian.

Good plan, Star. I'll add my experiences, if you want me to. While other people have other habits to sharpen carving tools, my efforts work for me.

One of the key things a carver needs is a "try" stick. I don't know of any better way to learn if my tools are sharp enough for what I want to carve in Western Red Cedar. When I think I've finished honing an edge, I test it in the WRC "try" stick. Simple as that.
I don't carve fingers so I don't test with my fingers, arbitrary and subjective at best.

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

Good plan, Star. I'll add my experiences, if you want me to. While other people have other habits to sharpen carving tools, my efforts work for me.

One of the key things a carver needs is a "try" stick. I don't know of any better way to learn if my tools are sharp enough for what I want to carve in Western Red Cedar. When I think I've finished honing an edge, I test it in the WRC "try" stick. Simple as that.
I don't carve fingers so I don't test with my fingers, arbitrary and subjective at best.

Great.

I am going to need a lot of help with the technical stuff, my experience is mainly about "What can go wrong, and the steps I go through to try to overcome them."

Star

Boy this is going to be great, maybe we all will learn heaps.
Thanks Star and one and all. Will have to take the laptop to the shed.

Regards
Terry

Hi Star,

In my experience, sharp and the techniques for achieving it are like religion and politics... extremely subjective and laced with emotional baggage. Everybody has their own way of doing it and many are convinced that there is no better way then the one they know. So be it.

Those that are willing to admit that there might be something still to learn will be willing to glean from whatever source they come across, regardless of how unlikely it may appear to them. The rest will continue to live quite happily in ignorance, convinced of their own infallability.

Either way is ok... this carving gig is a very personal thing for most of us and there is room to be excentric.

Don't ever be ashamed of what you know works mate. If someone disagrees with you, have an honest look at what they are suggesting and take on board anything that you think will work for you... and throw the rest away without qualm.

As for myself...I KNOW I don't know it all so I'll be very interested to hear what gems of acquired knowledge have you have discovered, that I can learn from.

Good on ya for being willing to put it out there!

I have to eat supper (bison tacos). Need to ponder this for 30 minutes. Lots of stock photographs of sharpening stuff. If I am to lead off, nobody buck me for being dogmatic. I'll give you starting places to move away from, OK?
Star, you explain how these things unfolded for you, we have talked about these things before. The rest of you "lurkers," ask all the questions you want = for every question asked, propably 10 people would like to know the answer.
Whittling: you in here?

G'day RV,

I'll be in and out during the day. Unfortunately I can't donate the whole day to it. I ran a beginner whittling workshop yesterday and I have to go clean up the mayhem, re-hone all the school knives after yesterday's workout, and get into the shed to satify some walking stick orders before I have some irrate clients on my hands! I'll pop in from time to time to see how things are going. Looking forward to learning some new tips and tricks.

I spent a year or so turning with tools which I 'thought' were sharp. Got shown a different way then expanded further. Suffice to say I was stunned and began to enjoy Woodturning again. Looking forward to reading more.

At the moment, I use a felt wheel on a bench grinder, but feel sure that I could do better if I knew how.

Terry

Whittling = good, mate. Glad you are on board. Get on with your home work and we will succeed!

Here's the deal:
You need to understand what the bevel angle needs to be for the job that you expect the edge, the tool, to do. The argument is that you need to have enough steel behind the edge to support it in the job. If it's too skinny and crumples = what now?
Here are some starting tool angles:
Wood carving and chip carving knives = 12 degrees
Common wood carving gouges = 20 degrees
Really top quality (Porsche) kitchen knives = 20 degrees
Carpenters/woodworking planes and chisels = 30 degrees
My knot-buster chisels and bone cleavers = 40 degrees
Lathe turning gouges ( the physical load is enormous) as much as 60 degrees.

I have 8 butcher's knives and 4 boning knives in my kitchen, 20 degrees is just fine.

Homework: get some good-sized sheets of paper and draw all those angles.
I gave you the total, included, bevel angle so a wood carving knife is 6 degrees per side.
Time to look for some pictures.

This mundane heading thread of mine looks like it is going to be a lot more interesting now that Robson and Whittling are here to help with the technical stuff.

Both of these guys know part of my journey and have both been extremly supportive. I'll let them talk the technical stuff while I will try to relate how a beginner waded through all this.

Now, you have to remember I could not sharpen, and none of my woodworking friends were really any better but a few thought they could. So, learning to sharpen practically became a fetish. I must have read every article Google could think off, every video. I researched all the various sharpening stones.

Ice Bear waterstones
Spyderco ceramic
Diamond Stones.
Oil stones.
Leather honing
etc

and then even Scary Sharp.

Now, everybody has their champion, which might also depend on your pockets.

Now, I knew no woodcarvers when I started, their still thin on the ground around here, so I had to teach myself. I could never sharpen a knife so really had to start from scratch. The more research I did the more confused I became and a more sane person would have moved on to something else.

But I was determined not to let this beat me. So here is what I did and I believe it helped me greatly. Mind you this wasn't over a long weekend. Being raw has its problems because you sometimes accept the words of people who you think should really know but infact we realize down the track that they do not.

Because I was into making some of my woodworking tools a friend gave me an old HSS circular saw blade and said I could use it to make some carving knifes. Now, this guy was an old pattern maker and he said if he did not have a tool to do a job then he would go and make it.

So, I cut and shaped then ground the bevel close to what I thought was right then went to work on the honing. Yer great. I had made two knives of HSS and it was slow work.

The waterstones I had were 1000 grit and 6000 grit and the 1000 was doing it hard. I had just bought them , and I was going to use them wasn"t I . A week or so passes and I decide to suffer the humility of putting the waterstones back in the draw and attempting the ' Scary Sharp " method.

I know why he called it that, plain old W & D doesnt sound to posh at a Sharpening Convention when they talk Tormek's etc.

So, finding some suitable granite, Shush ! Aldi were having a sale on one in their kitchen Section .

Starting with 150 grit and working through all the grades up to 2500 really made a difference and taught me a valuable lesson that HSS is bloody hard and do not let pride get in the way if I have to use something that is more suited to the job then the waterstones. Now, you have to remember, these knifes I made myself, so I had to put the bevel on.

The good thing is once you get close you do not have to do the hard yards like I did , the waterstones and honing is all that is required. Now, I was close, but was close good enough, I did not know, and seeing the video guys putting their knife through basswood like butter didn't do much for my confidence. But timber selection is another story, and not for here,now.

To cut a long story short, because I did not have any carving friends I had know one to refer to. So after making some inquiries in the States about how sharp is sharp decided to buy a carving knife that was sharpened by one of the guns.

He knew that I only wanted it as a reference so he sent me some American basswood that he uses as well.

getting that knife was the best thing I could have done. I now knew 'How sharp is Sharp " To me it was no use sharpening, unless I had a reference knife right next to me. Shaving sharp, looking for light on the edge as some do is ok but I needed to see, feel. but not taste, how sharp is sharp.

The next part of the story is why the knife got blunter with the more sharpenings I gave it. ( This is a beginner's story, isn't it. ) Fortunately I have Robson and Whittling in the background to get me out of this confession of a newbie sharpener.

Pete

Sharpening edges is a process with several steps. Where you start and where you stop depends partly on the condition of the edge and partly on what you expect that edge to do.
This is about sharpening wood carving tools. This is how I do it. For one reason or another, I've needed to use every step in the entire process. NOT every one of them all the time.
1. At the coarse end are simple files which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. All the way from sexy little chainsaw files to honkin' big things for fixing axes and shovels.
For use, rub chalk into the file (baby powder, pastry flour, etc) This keeps the metal particles from jamming in the grooves and making the file bump/not cut smoothly.
I clean all of my files with a cheap, brass-bristle BBQ brush.
2. (not shown) Motorized abrasives. Grinders that run at different speeds, stationary belt sanders, stationary disk sanders and so forth. High speed (3500rpm) grinders are OK, just don't ram the tool into the stone and cook the temper out of the steel. Slowly. Same with the sanders. Take it easy. Example to come.
3. Oil stones come in a variety of grit sizes and shapes, the round one is an axe stone. I use ordinary automotive motor oil. It is non-drying and functions to carry away the swarf of metal particles and smashed abrasive particles. I dab up the slop with paper towel, add more oil, smear around and dab that up to clear off the stone.
Notice the 3-sided "cages." I clamp those to the bench. The finger of the clamp is in close proximity to the stone so nothing jumps around.
4. Water stones, like oil stones but very fine grit sizes and the water does the same job as the oil. I don't store my stones in water, they get gummy. It's a 1K/4K combination stone. See the cage it sits in. The slip stones are effectively useless to me. I rub them on the big stone to clean it and flatten it. For wood carving tools the stone does NOT have to be optically flat. 6K is a waste of money.
5. My leather strop with chromium oxide honing compound. Just happens to be green. Same reason that artist's chrome green paint looks green. It is a superfine abrasive particle. The bar is sort of waxy stuff, smells nice. That piece will last me 300 years. Friction is the key! The faster you streak the bar on the leather, the more melts off. Load the surface completely.
6. In use, metal comes off the tool and blackens the strop. I use that little file, the edge of it, as a comb to gently scrape off the crud so I can recharge the stop.
For the inside curves of gouges, they get no more than 2 passes with that heavy piece of leather. I fold it, scrub it on the honing bar a a smooth outward motion.

How do I judge when I need to sharpen a wood carving tool?

When I am doing hand work with a smallish gouge (eg a 9/8) or a knife, I notice that it just seems to take more physical effort to make a cut or spall off a chip than it did before.
In Westerm Red Cedar, this takes 30 minutes or less of fairly constant use.

Much harder to judge when I'm swinging a mallet. I notice that the attack angle has to be higher to get the gouge to "bite." 30 minutes and I'd use the 4K waterstone, just to be sure, before honing. The worst case is when I see a fine white streak in the same relative position in every gouge stroke. Looks like a pin scratch. It means that I have hit something HARD. DANG!
Rule #1 Never carve in dirty wood. Clean it up first and NOT with carving tools.
Rule#2 Never carve back into something that you have sanded. You're just asking for big trouble. Sand papers wear out and a lot of those particles actually stick in the wood.
Rule #3 No matter how big a temptation, remember Rules 1 & 2.