Sharpening Tools

You probably can freehand a fingernail grind or at least a very satisfactory facsimile with a bit of practice. However, I bought a Oneway Varigrind jig after freehanding and do like the repeatability I can get. I made the angle-iron looking support myself.

If you want to make a jig rather than buy one go to this site and click on the link to request plans by email. Lots of turners use his jig and if you look at the site which is in both English and French you'll find all sorts of real clever stuff you might want to make.

indicated your grinder has the wheels that came with it. If these arethe grey wheels you will be better off getting the white aluminum oxidewheels. They wear faster but give better results with less heating. Billh

For a six inch grinder, and being somewhat new to woodturning, I'd suggest the Woodcut Tru-Grind. It is small, very versatile and comes with good instructions (even a CD illustrating its use).

You can see it here:

purchase it either here: here: also through the Woodcut Web site. The Oneway Wolverine and Kelton Sharpening System are very similar and well suited to large grinders and large tools. I am very impressed with the new Kelton system, but don't think it is apt to be as good a match for our situation as the Tru-Grind. If in the future you decided to get a larger grinder and wanted the Oneway or Kelton Systems, you could use the Tru-Grind jig with either, and save yourself from having to purchase their gouge jigs.

All three are good, versatile, systems that each have followers believing they are the best.

Lyn

Tom Storey wrote:

Hi Lyn. I've had no experience with the Ellsworth jig, but it's certainly less expensive (and less versatile) than the others. Do you have any info/experience with it?

Tom For a quick and versatile jig take a look at my web page under sharpening. I am upgrading that page and should have some new info up in a few days. It is a bit slow as I am also video taping how to turn a small grinder into a sharpening system and as such have torn down the grinder and am making some new jigs. However, I have used the system on the site for years with good results.

Hello Owen,

I'm not Lyn, but I do have the Ellsworth Jig as well as the Woodcut Jig, the Wolverine system, and the Tormek. Some time back, I got an Ellsworth Signature gouge from Crown tools and didn't seem to be able to exactly match the grind with any of my jigs, so I purchased the Ellsworth Jig and made a block of wood to fit into my Wolverine slide to put the jig in the right position according to the instructions from the Woodcraft site. It does an excellent job on the 5/8" Ellsworth Signature Gouge or any gouge of that size. It is very easy to use. I should note that many people have problems using the Ellsworth Grind. It is a bit different, but I find it work great for hollowing bowls and does a fine job on the outside of bowls.

Fred Holder

Hi Owen, Yes, I've had an Ellsworth jig for a couple of years. It does a great job reproducing his grind on his gouge. As Fred so well described, it can be rather easily adapted to use with the Wolverine, doesn't even need adaption to be used with the new Kelton sharpening system, and can even be adapted for use with the Tormek.

It is, however, very limited in function. It not only is limited to only reproducing his swept back grind on a bowl gouge, but it only fits a 5/8 inch bowl gouge (and while it can be adapted for smaller ones, it is not easy to do so and maintain his geometry).

If those limitations are not bothersome, it works great, is well manufactured, and is relatively inexpensive.

I didn't recommend it to the original poster as it sounded like he was desirous of a more versatile system.

It is at least a few months away, but I am working towards a comparative review of most of the sharpening sytems, both grinders/sanders and jigging systems. It's not been such a simple project, both because of the range of set ups possible, and that it becomes a rather expensive undertaking when most of the options are included.

Lyn

Owen Lowe wrote:

Yes. That's "Robert Sorby".

Barry

Hello Fred What does this customized block of wood look like that you made for your Wolverine slide. I connected to your site but I could not find any info there. Thanks Edward

"Lyn J. Mangiameli" skrev i melding news:ZoCpc.2012$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...

Absolutely agree!

Bjarte

Thanks Lyn. I wasn't that familiar with Ellsworth's jig and had vague recollections about it being only useable with one size gouge - but that may not be a big deal if the OP doesn't currently have a bowl gouge and could buy the jig and gouge size to match.

Did you ever finish the sanding series? I recall two (?) installments but was thinking you were going to write about the brands of abrasives in the final article.

I use the Feltmate jig on my grinder for my main 1/2" bowl gouge with a fingernail grind. It is great to use a jig as you can take the minimum grind each time since you are not freehanding.

Derek

Ah, the sanding article, bane of my existance. I have two segments to go. One on accessories for power sanding (pads, extensions, etc.) that I just can't get very excited about, and the big study of the abrasive types that has been driving me nuts. It is much harder to objectively measure sand paper in a meaningful way that I expected. A typical objective measure is how much material they remove in a specified amount of time for a given pressure. That can be set up, but it really isn't all that meaninful to woodturners. Of greater interest IMO is whether they have uniform grain size and that they don't load, and that the sandpaper grains have good life and stick to the disk, and that the velcro backing sticks to the abrasive paper. These have not been such easy things to measure. I just start to get a sense that I have a technique and then I find that there is so much variability within a specific sandpaper brand, that no consistent measurements can be made. It is also very hard to isolate out all the variables. How does one establish at what temperarature delamination of the backing occurs, and how that meaningfully translates to actual practice. How does one measure just the heat sensitivity of the loops on the velcro backing in a meaningful way. I'm still working on it, but it may in the end result in an impressionistic than the objective quantitative comparisions I has hoped to make.

Lyn

Owen Lowe wrote:

Lyn,

Mike Mahoney has given this advice many time. Use sand paper like it is free. I follow this advice and generally do not try to milk every last bit of sanding power out of a piece of sand paper or a sanding disk. Heat checks are too nasty to risk on a few cents worth of paper.

With that as my criteria, I don't care so much about long life. I do care about grit sizes, grit consistency and loading. Also, I don't have much of an ego on this - I generally start with 80 grit. To sand for minutes with a

120 or 180 is silly when several seconds with 80 gets you off to a great, quick start to your sanding routine.

Well, Joe, you are the best judge, but I sometimes find starting with the finer grades preferable because it takes a lot of effort to clean up after something like 80, or even 100 on some woods.

That said, and without waiting for anyone else, I feel confident in saying that the longest-lasting are resin-on-resin papers. Where wood is to be moved and the least time wasted in changes, such as in surfacing, it's the choice all through woodworking. The grit sticks through heat and cool, and you can even clean (unload) it several times and have sand on the face. CraftSupplies USA carries resin-on-resin (red) in both velcro and power lock types. Only difficulty is that it's not available in open-coat varieties, so the finer stuff can heat a surface if you don't take care. For me, care means sanding with a flexible shaft, using my toolrest for support of the handpiece, and barely touching the surface. Saves paper, checks, and case-hardening, and is less likely, since I'm not pressing, to dish into soft areas, face grain, or round the edges of bark-up stuff.

I feel confident in agreeing with the rest of the woodworking community that stearated and open coat papers load and thereby heat, less than resin on resin, and stearated, open coat paper least of all. Sanding with lubricants is super-stearating. The trade-off is in the rate of removal against load and final surface. I consider all the empirical data has been weighed by the passage of time and sorted in the marketplace on the above.

Another tradeoff is between flexibility and grit retention. The adhesives available are not as flexible as the backing to which they are attached, and do not hold well if you're flexing a lot, which, once again, is something I can control somewhat by not engaging in full-contact sanding, rather letting the work come to my supported disk.

I guess I'm a lot less concerned about mesh tolerance than you. Most folks I've found who have the scratch in smooth syndrome have done one of two things - burnished (case-hardened) the surface with heat before sanding the last grade's scratches out, or they didn't wipe between grits, and are still kicking loose chunks of the last around with the current. If you sand one grade beyond adequate, especially with the grain, you've got that one well covered.

Having never been short on opinions, I would have to say this about flexibility. It is extrememly important in power sanding and woodturning because a simple catch or unrulely natural edge will kink it and remove the abrasive from the backing. Try this simple test, take a low to middle grit, 120 or 180 and fold it and roll it between your fingers. Does it flake off of the backing or allow you to crease and tear the paper?

The mesh is not as important as long as you know the grit system they use. If they use the "P" system (or any other) fine, you have your baseline.

Steve Worcester

But much less if you do supported sanding.

What do you mean by "supported sanding"?

Most folks press the sandpaper into the piece itself because they're using something like a drill motor or their fingers. This causes excess heat, "following," where the paper glosses over hard and dives into softer areas, and as others have noted, can turn the edges on an interrupted-edge turning, even if you don't bark your knuckles.

What you do to avoid this when cutting is to support the tool first, then bring it lightly to the piece, something you can continue if you rest your sander as you rest a tool, before it ever contacts the piece. My setup is shown at

and ff.Couple of things it does for you besides save on disks - allows you to makethe initial grit passes mostly across the gouge ridges by sanding at 10-2 or7-5 o'clock to smooth quickly, then transition to the 2-4 or 8-10 o'clockpositions when finishing the grade to get more along or against thedirection of rotation - allows you to use the center of your discs on convexsurfaces.

While it works best on stiff backings like power-loc, you can also use it with Velcro backs. The business of grabbing an edge and crimping the paper can be well avoided as well. Support the handpiece, move the disk into the interrupted area with the point of contact before nine o'clock, so you slide, don't pinch, on the leading edge.

With a flex shaft under 50 bucks and a fractional horsepower motor usually somewhere under someone's bench, it's cheap, easy, and can even be used with the lathe stopped for final touch-ups.

If you clikc on his link in the message, it shows a sanding "apparatus" with a powerlick(?) disk hanging off the toolrest. Steve Worcester