Sharpening wheel directions, up or down
At the recent meeting of our wood turners “beginner” night, the expert (he was the president of the club – so i will use the term losely) said the best way to sharpen is with the wheel coming down so you see the sparks coming over the the top of the tool, knowing that the edge is getting sharp. OK i agree with the sparks stuff. he also said that it will form a burr, we all touched the upper edge of the scraper and said “ya burr”. Now my set up is backwards as my wheel goes away from me and would be opposite to the expert. I thought that a burr would be created on the upside of the tool with my setup as the steel is being ground off and it would leave the burr, which i am happy with it as it works. I queried the expert and found that a wall of silence followed, me thinks “Ah there is a differing of Opines here”, its like tails first. pins last in the war of the dovetails. So – wheels up or down, AND HOW DO you get a burr from downward stones??
isn’t this the greatest forum?
Replies
Crazy,
Don't you get a burr when you hone your chisels/plane irons? The tool and stone are moving past each other relatively speaking with the stone coming "down." (most of the pressure during honing is when pushing away from the body.)
The burr forms by deformation of the metal at the point of sharpening. It flows up, over the edge because it has no where else to go. It's either there or in the slurry.
R
Direction doesn't really matter much generally speaking. There's some times when one way might be more advatageous than another, but neither is "right" or "wrong". On a Tormek, the instructions tell you wheel coming at you for most things. Rationale on that machine is you get better leverage on flat things like chisels and plane irons and they grind faster. On U shaped turning gouges, they recommend wheel away, because the grind is slower and it gives the user more time not to mess up the curved cut. I wouldn't get a burr up your a** worrying about it. (Okay, only a little funny).
thanx and any pun is welcome,
not up the to the good stuff, but have this:
Two doctors were in a hospital hallway one day complaining about Nurse
Jenny. "She's incredibly dumb. She does everything absolutely backwards.",
said one doctor. "Just last week, I told her to give a patient 2 milligrams
of Percocet every 10 hours. She gave him 10 milligrams every 2 hours. He
nearly died on us!"
The second doctor said, "That's nothing. Earlier this week, I told her to
give a patient an enema every 24 hours. She tried to give him 24 enemas in
one hour! The guy nearly exploded!"
Suddenly, they hear a blood-curdling scream from down the hall, "Oh my
gosh!" said the first doctor, "I just realized I told Nurse Jenny to prick
Mr. Smith's boil!"
Ba dum bum!
The Tormek technique for sharpening scrapers specifically calls out having the wheel turn *away* from the tool in order to create the burr.
OK, so the real scraper sharpening approach is with other tools than a grinding wheel but none the less, I agree with you - the wheel turning away is going to create more of a burr than one turning towards you. I can get sparks to come over the edge on my dry wheel by grinding at too steep an angle, too.
One advantage of the wheel turning into the tool is that the tool is easier to keep in contact with the tool rest maintaining a constant angle. Turning away it tends to rise with the wheel.
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I had one young inexperienced chap come to me with a chisel that was blued tae hell for about 30 mm along its length. "How the hell did ya do that? " I exclaimed, "It's about fugged to death."
"Oh, did I do wrong," he replied.
"Well, maybe. Show me what you did," I said.
We walked over to the grinder, and he inserted the chisel bevel side away from him, pointy end downwards between the tool rest and the grinding wheel, which rotated from top to bottom, and reached for the start switch. I grabbed his wrist, and said, "Did you start the grinder last time?"
"Oh yes," he said blithely, "And I hung on tight too until it seemed ground about right."
"Bloody good job you did, " I said, "Come over here. I've got some screws that need to be sorted, and,--er--- you don't need to sharpen anything, except maybe your pencil." Then I threw the completely knackered chisel into the bucket. Slainte.Some stuff I've made.
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