Semi OT - Carving tools - Sharpening

Hello All, Just got back from visiting the wife's family in China and brought back some carving tools - gouges of various sweeps and a few straight and skew chisels. My idea is to dabble a bit in carving bowls. Plan is to turn the outside of the bowl, do a bit of carving, and then turn the inside. Questions are about the sharpening the gouges. I've snooped about a bit on the Internet and found a couple of ideas. One involves getting a good piece of wood, taking the gouge you wish to sharpen and cutting a groove in the wood. The inside of the groove is then filled with some sharpening compound. To sharpen, merely put the gouge in the groove and rib. The secind idea is to get a piece of PVS of approximately the right ID (or OD for gouges sharpened on the inside of the flute(?), atach sandpaper of an appropriate grit, and sharpen away! The PVC could be formed to the correct radius with hot water. Any other ideas or links to instructive pages would be appreceiated. Thanks

Reply to
Kevin
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I use the hard felt wheel and the green stuff from Lee Valley as a strop for mine. Slips handle the inside, since you rarely do anything but renew the hone.

White pine and compound will work, or if you have some old leather power belt pieces, as I do, use them in place of the wood.

Reply to
George

Hello Kevin,

Congrats on getting your new carving gouges. I'm a professional woodturner and I carve quite a bit on some of my work. If you are looking for an inexpensive option for honing, consider making an MDF stacked cylinder mounted onto a steel rod. Glue the sections together and make it about 10" -

12" long, securing the cylinder with a bolt.

You can then mount the rod into a Jacobs chuck in your spindle and secure the other end in a recess in a live centre (the kind that lets you change the end points). Then simply turn on the lathe with the (glued) stacked laminate mounted and turn recesses to match your carving tools profile (V's, shallow scoops, deep scoops etc.).

Load the cut areas with honing compound and using a slow speed, simply hone the edge when needed. Works like a charm and it's cheap to boot! This is also really good for unusual shapes that profiled leather wheels won't work with, or special tools that you may make. Take care and all the best to you and yours!

Reply to
Steve Russell

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