Hello All ! I do a little turning now and again, the problem I have is the tools don’t stay sharp very long. Is it because they are made of cheep steel, or am I not sharping them properly. After I sharpen them which I think I do a good job. But as I say I after a short while I have to sharpen them again and then again.
Jack
Replies
Welcome to turning. You didn't say what type of wood or what brand of tools you but constant sharpening is part of turning. I'm grinding my tools all the time and they are made of pretty expensive steel.
Napie is correct, a lot depends on the wood being turned. I turn a lot of cherry ,maple, bubinga and walnut. The bubinga is much harder than maple and requires about 50% more sharpening. Walnut and cherry are by comparison soft.
In an eight hour day , I might stop to sharpen a gouge four times on easily worked wood. Possibly as many as eight yimes on bubinga or a mystery wood to me that I was told was ironwood.The harder woods take longer to turn, require more sharpening, but no or very minimal sanding. Of course the gouge is used intermittenly not eight hours straight. But the same thing goes for the skew,parting tool etc.
As far as your sharpening tecnique, if the tool cuts well at the start, then gradually seems to dull,might be the steel or just needs touching up. If the tool suddenly seems dull, it could be the grinding angle is too acute,the edge wears or breaks off prematurely.
mike
Jack,
When I first started turning, it got a litle frustrating to have to stop and sharpen the tools so frequently. Back then, I was using a hand held diamond or oil stone. Method was, shut off the lathe, find the stone and hand hone for a couple of minutes, repeat on a finer grit stone, use a round edge stone to take the wire edge off, then finally switch lathe back on and back to turning. In short, I was treating the chisels like they were bench chisels or plane irons.
It became much more effecient to learn to sharpen quickly on a bench grinder, even though I still have to sharpen just as often, sometimes every few minutes depending on the species of wood. Now, leaving the lathe running, I can step over to the bench grinder, switch it on, let it reach full speed, switch it off, and with one pass while the stone is coasting, put the sharp edge back on. 20 seconds and I'm back to turning. It just takes practise, but makes turning much more efficient and enjoyable.
Guess I should mention that after numerous repititions of this type grinding, you lose the correct bevel angle and have to spend a couple of minutes regrinding to the correct angle. Anyway, good luck with it. Gary
Thanks Gary you have been a big help, I will give it a try.
Jack
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