There are many methods and many kinds of gubbins for shaping, sharpening and honing gouges and other complex sharp-edged tools. I’d like to hear recommendations, inclusive of advantages and drawbacks, for all of them.
Slip stones of various Arkansas stone grades or “reinforced” waterstone stuff seem popular, 1000/4000/8000 being the usual grades offered.
Single stones with multiple profiles also seem to be available, rather like the Flexcut slipstrop item but scaled up and made of that reinforced waterstone stuff.
Then there are DMT diamond-coated cones of 600 & 1200 grit having continuously variable-radius valleys and mounds.
I have a Sorby ProEdge flat-belt grinder with a gouge guide that’ll do reshaping and probably the sharpening of convex curves But I presume I need something to shape and sharpen concave profiles …. ?
I use leather-covered wooden strops covered in DMT diamond paste (1, 3 and 6 micron) for honing. I can easily make more with different convex and concave radii if the carving tools I acquire need them.
Any advice, especially that from experience, will be gratefully received. I don’t want to go down yet another rabbit hole of never-ending trials of various expensive sharpening gubbins! 🙂
Replies
Learn to use what you have, then you will know more about what you might need.
Done that, thenk yew.
When I bought a set of bowl, V- and veining chisels, I grabbed a piece of hardwood (think it was oak) and tried to cut a 4", straight groove, the full "depth" of each chisel, into it. I then used Q-tips and toothpicks to "paint" each groove with the green honing compound.
I then tried to remember to hone each chisel, at the end of every time I used them, backwards thru those grooves. I only used the chisels in basswood and cedar, so they never dulled to the point of needing to use stones on them (I'm sure I'da never been able to keep the same exact profile).
I never kept up on the carving (not my talent) but that worked for me, for a couple years anyway. Let us know what you end up doing.
The Flexcut honing thingmajig with multi-profiles plus a flat part seems a good model for full-sized carving tools if it were scaled up. I do have router cutters that would cut various radii profiles, both convex and concave, that would serve to guide the honing of both sides of curved bevels. V grooves could also be made, I'm sure.
I did try cutting grooves in a piece of limewood with gouges but I wasn't able to get them truly smooth once they became deep. Perhaps my gouges weren't sharp enough? Catch 22. :-)
I also have a Bevercraft wooden stick with a handle at one end that has a large shallow groove on both sides and two large radius edges. One side/edge can be clad with some micro-grit sharpening paper whilst the other side/edge comes with thin leather glued on it to take honing compound.
This seems to work quite well although tighter gouge sweeps need the gouge rotated as its drawn back and very large radius gouges need dragging back at an angle to increase the radius of the grooves/edges.
I could make Beavercraft-style boards with various radii and perhaps clad each with different grades of both micro-grit papers and honing compounds.
The green wood working knives (straight & hook) and gouges seem to come up well with use of the Beavercraft concave-convex sticks, although I've yet to see a need for true sharpening. Green wood is kind to edges and despite having made many, many items now I've only had to hone, not sharpen, except perhaps a couple of times where a knot has damaged an edge slightly.
Honing pastes are a bit of a nightmare as there are so many and their grits can be somewhat mysterious. I discovered a knife-sharpening website that recommenced the DMT 3-pack of diamond honing pastes (1, 3 and 6 microns). The knife users recommended this stuff as very long lasting, accurately graded and inexpensive for what one gets in terms of honings per $. And it is very quick and effective.
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I asked the original question because the vast majority of carvers one comes across on the web seem to use slip stones (usually Arkansas) to sharpen/hone inside bevels and flat stones (also often Arkansas) to sharpen/hone outside bevels. All this is done by eye and hand without any jigging.
My sharpening of cabinet making tool straight edges tells me I sharpen best with some form of jig. Hence the question about methods. Some sort of profiled sharpening medium or support seems like a good idea for me, even if it is just a slip stone with the right radius.
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die grinder or drill press (battery die grinder is great) for a silicon carbide triangle cone for incannel stuff. Grind shallow, hone slightly less shallow (I prefer an india and arkansas slip pair, but a dowel with anything on it would also work) and then buff the incannel tip on a buffer.
outcannel stuff, grind on anything - if heat is an issue, drip water on the wheel or belt of whatever is being used and watch for the excess water to boil or steam on a tool and dip. The beads of water at the tip of a tool will tell you a lot, even if they're tiny, then hone and buff.
The silicon carbide cone is less harsh on the grind than diamond and will leave a much more uniform surface. They should be fairly inexpensive for a 1/4" or 6mm grinder. My battery powered die grinder spins at 10k on the lowest speed - easier to use to grind the primary bevel than most other things and high speed lower pressure - less heat.
The wood carving instructor really likes the Worksharp 3000. I mentioned this and update on how often he regrinds in a different post. Thought it might be helpful to add here.
Talked to the woodcarving instructor this evening. Apparently I misunderstood him. He does indeed regrind from time to time due the dubbing over that occurs over time. I asked him how often he regrinds. He said once in a blue moon. When I asked a bit more, maybe every three years. He really likes the Workshop 3000 and has a round bar adjusted on it to give him the 15 degree angle and to make it easy to rotate from side to side. This addresses the other post you made today. Hope this all helps
The WorkSharp system is one I mentioned in a few recent posts and it is the same one Alexander Grabovetskiy uses. IMO it is pretty foolproof. Just to clarify, the round bar itself does not establish the angle; it is the combination of (a) the round guide bar height above the abrasive disc and (b) the amount that you extend the tool out beyond the guide bar that establishes the angle. If you buy the $34 Tormek accessory I mentioned previously that works with the round guide bar, it (a) locks in the extension of the tool beyond the guide bar and (b) cradles it so that you can easily roll the tool while the disc is spinning. This is what makes the system nearly foolproof. More info about this system is available on the previous post.
The Worksharp system in question seems to unavailable in Europe and the UK, for what reason I don't know as they sell other stuff of the knife sharpening kind.
I'm hoping that Joe's instructor's approach can be made to work in my own workshop - after commissioning and sharpening with a Sorby ProEdge belt grinder. This has a platform on which various tool holding/guiding gubbins can be mounted, the whole being settable at various angles between 0 and 90 degrees to the belt. The belts it uses go from 60 grit ot 3000 grit, so the bevel and even the edge can be brought to a near-perfect state with only the final edge preparation with a hone of some sort being needed.
I'm hoping that I can then also, like Joe's instructor, manage to keep the edges and bevels pristine with only honing, even if the honing is sometimes near sharpening - including more aggressive grits or stones now and then in a hand-honing arrangement, if the fine grit honing isn't sufficient at some point. Hence my original question.
At present I'm inclining to shaped wooden honing channels and rounded-over protuberances/beads of various radii, coated with thin leather to hold honing compounds of various grades. But I could be persuaded down the Arkansas slip stone or grooved waterstone direction if anyone knows of a significant advantage.
Machine honing is also of interest, so I'm considering Mr Weaver's post. I already have some MDF discs made on the drill press and used in a horizontal drill to hone knives. 3/4" wide 6" diameter MDF discs, the various profiles edges loaded with DMT diamond honing paste, will bring a slightly dull spoon carving knife back to wicked-sharp in a few seconds. But it's sometimes difficult to control the angle that a blade is hand-held to the wheel. A moment's inattention can end up dulling the edge instead of making it keen once more.
Is there anything that isn't actually available worldwide? I have purchased items from the UK, even before eBay, and they were delivered promptly to the US. There must be an online source for a new or used WorkSharp 3000 (either eBay or Amazon) that will ship to the UK.
It's true that anything can be bought globally but many country-to-country sales don't benefit from any prior agreements to smooth the process. I've found buying from the US possible but the drawbacks are the added costs and risks.
Costs include 20% Value Added Tax (a sales tax) various customs charges (they vary with the type of goods - essentially they're tariffs) and, worst of the lot for making you tetchy, an ever-increasing charge from the carrier (on top of the pre-posting fees quoted, which themselves can be very large) for "processing the collection of VAT and Customs duties".
As well as charging often inordinate amounts for the postage (and 2X inordinate if you want the stuff insured) the US postal service seems to be highly unreliable, varying in unreliability with the particular carriers involved. Things have disappeared; the attempt to collect the insurance pay-out is labyrinthine.
Sadly, since Brexit, it can be just as bad trying to buy from Europe. It was easy when we were in the EU but now there's all the above but also a refusal of many companies to sell to the UK from Europe at all, as the bureaucracy is just too much and costly for them - not worth the effort if the supplier is small and the UK market even smaller.
It looks like all this is going to get worse, as various trade wars take-off following the new popularity of tariffs instigated by you-know-who. :-(
I can certainly vouch for the ineptitude of the US Postal Service, we routinely get mail for others delivered to our house, perhaps 2-3 times a month. Our local post office has a Google review of less than 2.0 out of 5.0. They offer the explanation that they can't hire enough people, and they aren't always open during their posted hours, they take 1.5 hours lunches during which time they are lights out and the lobby doors are locked, they often close early, etc. and are quite rude and flippant in general. This is a suburb of nearly 20,000 next to a city of 300,000 so it's not like we live in the boondocks. A Christmas gift shipped to me in late November didn't arrive from the shipper (only 150 miles away) in time for Christmas - the package did travel over a thousand miles, however, back and forth around the country for some reason, according to the online tracking. I'll be glad if they do privatize the USPS so that it is held accountable, like a real business is by it's shareholders.
I think you need an American friend that can “loan” you a worksharp.
I grind freehand, and you'll probably want to do the same with the pro edge. i can think of some situations where there could be issues, though I have belt grinders and maybe the pro edge grinds away.
Typically the shallow grind is parallel to the edge vs. the length or very close, and then honing or buffing beyond that - unless the carving tool itself needs a specific bevel to ride or register in a cut.
the bevel of a pair of slips (the trans is very expensive, so it could be anything else if you're in england - like a hard find slate) is just nice to do targeted work on the edge, and sped up by using the india slip instead of just the fine ones. I buff the result - it makes a more durable edge, but the work prior needs to be shallower to make up for it.
occasionally I will do the grinding on a long medium crystolon stone in an IM-313, it doesn't make too much difference in time, especially on bigger gouges where you can take a slash at the primary bevel and look and so on - as in working wth pressure. On the smaller tools where it's easy to hone off the profile, one has to go slower, but those can also be maintained on the primary with a fine india stone since they're not big.
I guess it helps a little bit to be able to do the same thing several ways so you're focusing on the result and not necessarily the equipment or "method". Method alone is kind of flying blind.
It is a worry that the ProEdge belt sander will grind at a small carving chisel rather too rapidly. It has but one speed - although the method for holding the tool to the belt generally allows the human holder of the tool to easily vary pressure and presentation; to easily take the bevel being ground away from the belt in an instant. It's a bit like free hand grinding but with a bit of help to avoid a wobble to an inappropriate presentation.
As the grits get finer, too much heat is the real danger, as you'll know. A 3000 grit Trizact belt can blue an edge or corner instantly if one is careless and doesn't restrict the touch with plenty of dipping in the water pot between touches.
At one point it was possible to buy a leather honing belt for the ProEdge, as well as a very fine diamond-coated belt. One only needed to take out a small second mortgage to pay for them. :-) I admit I also found it puzzling to imagine how a honing belt could work when the direction of the belt goes against the edge not away from it.
There are various slips of various materials available in the UK, even translucent Arkansas. Some of the Arkansas ones are suspiciously inexpensive. I might buy a Belgian stone example just to see how it does. I note the useful ability to use such a slip stone to target just a small section of the edge that's still showing reflected light and therefore not yet properly formed.
100% agree on fine grit. I've ground quite a few tools from forging or from shaped stock. trizact belts and other fine things of the like at a high rate of feet per minute may be at the top of what can blue a tool. I don't know anything about the pro edge, but I spare my stuff the rod zero percent of the time and if grinding fine, I run a drip. the drip keeps the belt just wet enough to prevent the burn from occurring too easily, but it could probably be defeated. Too, on more coarse belts, the drip can end up sitting between the grit.
as far as grinding goes, the grind never has a need to get to the end of the tool, and as long as that's the case, if the pro edge were capable of grinding things in a second but leaving 1/10th of the original final edge thickness or honed bevel, it still wouldn't speed up your consumption. Eliminating edge damage kind of like the same critical issue with a straight razor and a strop will go a long way. The mention above about a teacher who buffs and grinds once in blue moon exemplifies that. buffing does nothing of a flat angle on anything, but if the steel is kept away from it, the buff makes the tip of the tool stronger due to the shape and the grind prevents it from getting so thick as to be or feel dull.
the belgians can be a little slow and fragile, but I have experience with them only in razor hones. that being mostly the cream colored but some natural combinations from the seam line where blue and cream meet. The blue would be OK, but it will need honing compound or a buff to finish an edge to true sharpness. If the arks are cheap in slips and the slips aren't tiny, I would be suspicious, too. norton's multiform is exceptionally useful, but it has bloated in price from $40 or whatever it may have been when I got mine to double that. I guess food probably has too, though. Great stone for exactly what it does - it refines almost sharp, and leaves things some sharper and ready for burr removal - best done with a buff or fine compound at that point, though the edge will be good enough for use.
If you don't need the sharp corner of the multiform, the two radius rounded edge slips are probably half as much, and fine ceramic rods from china probably deserve some considerations - they will load a little and become finer quickly. The sharp cornered stuff can be done with a hardwood form and compound.
https://toolsforworkingwood.com/store/item/NO-ARK-HB8
Yikes, the world of norton bench stones has gone crazy. I have purchased and used a lot of bench stones and would be switching to non buyer on some of the norton stuff I've seen lately in the bench stones at 1/3rd of the price listed here. However, a "not quite as fine as the best" slip is not any less useful - fineness exceeding stones is always available for pennies in compounds.
by the way, a round diamond disc with a couple stacked together on a drill arbor also works fine for this if it's freehand. I think you want touch on the grind and to confirm the profile visually vs. hoping a rest will not get in the way. Not necessarily immediately, but eventually if not.
The diamond discs are one or two sided, and inexpensive on aliexpress - $10 or so in 8 inch size. At 500-600 rpm, they do not lose their diamonds to spark or high speed like a wheel can (thus the large number of CBN grinding wheels).