Thread: Potential accessory for my TruGrind and CBN....

Evanisim,

Save your $$. If the tool is ground at the approximate "right" angle, after you have been turning a while you automatically adjust the tool angle to the piece to make it do what you want.

Your HDPE is all you need for repeating the grind. I have a pencil line on my lathe bed. I stick the bowl gouge in the TruGrind jig, put the jig against the edge of the bed, scoot the gouge out to the line, tighten, and grind. 45 to 60 seconds from turning, grind, to turning.

Turning is much like learning to drive a manual transmission vehicle. At first one thinks about feeding gas and easing out the clutch, watching the speedometer to see when to shift, off the gas, depress clutch, change gear, ease out clutch, increase gas, etc. After a few thousand miles, one gets in and drives.

With a bowl gouge, once you have decided how much fingernail grind you are comfortable with, adjusting the tool presentation to the timber by up and down and twist to give a nice slicing cut, and going to that same place each time, gets you to where you don't have to think about it.

If you grab a differently ground gouge, you will automatically move it to give a nice slicing cut. I have one 5/8 inch bowl gouge with just a little sweep back for the bottoms of deep vases. I don't think about how it is different from my other more fingernail grinds, just stick it down there and cut.

After 50 or 100 hours in front of the lathe, and sharpening the tools, it becomes automatic.

I have no experience with the grinding spacers, but I think you may find the HDPE too soft.I started off using a bit of hardwood as my distance reference but after a while I noticed that the tip of the tools was chewing it up.I now use a bit of aluminium which works fine.
Ted

IMHO I can see that these would be very useful for those that only turn irregularly or don't have other equipment to check the angles. If I didn't already have a Tormek and other background knowledge, I'd most likely buy them to complement my CBN wheel and Trugrind jig, heck I'm still considering buying them.