Sharpening chisels help

I dont use mine very often and over the years they have been sharpened rather badly. Used mainly for rough woodwork. Anyhow I have decided to spend some time and get all my planes and chisels sharpened and with the correct angles. Today using a honing guide it took me about 3 hours to get the primary bevel angle ground doing it by hand on 180 grit on a glass sheet. As I have a few blades to be done is there a way to speed up the intitial part of the sharpening before progressing to finer grits with the honing guide which I dont mind spending a bit of time on. Tools to hand would be: Angle grinder / belt sander / bench grinder

I suspect something between the belt sander and the bench grinder but how to get the correct angle as I dont have a jig for any of these.

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ss
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Sharpening by hand is a slow process especially getting the 25deg. sharpeni ng angle. We had a 16" horizontal oil fed grinder for that purpose but when it could not be economically repaired we resorted to using one of the now popular water cooled models typified by the Tormek type of systems.

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Surprisingly we found it quite good though fiddly to set up. The leather ho ning wheel we did not like preferring to hand hone the final 35deg. angle o n an India stone. The Tormek models can work out quite expensive especially if you go for loads of different jigs. I have seen similar models cheaper but cannot say how effective they are having only experienced the Tormek sy stem.

Richard

Reply to
Tricky Dicky

As I wont be doing this to often due to usage I cant really justify an expense although some of those tools look good, hopefully I can think of a jig that will get the bulk of the correction angles done quickly and then finish on the hand honing guide.

Reply to
ss

Yup a honing jig with rollers and the belt sander will get you there fast. Do it in short bursts to save overheating the steel. Having a bowl of water close by to dip it in from time to time helps.

In the end I went for the WorkSharp system - not quite as pricey as the Tormek and in some ways a bit more versatile for doing hand tools (although probably not as good for machine planer knives)

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(there are videos on youtube that show various ways of building them into a box to have a large flat surface flush with the wheel surface - that makes using external honing jigs much easier)

Reply to
John Rumm

Practice makes perfect, do as the professionals have done for centuries, wheel first then stone, by hand and eye (they managed)

Reply to
F Murtz

Any of those 3 could do the grinding. Belt sander and especially angle grin der run too fast, with those go easy & let it cool off a lot, you don't wan t to overheat the steel or it goes soft. Never use water with an AG grit di sc, dampness can make them explode.

If you have trouble with the angle, why not print the right angle on paper so you've got something to keep an eye on & compare.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

John have you had any problems overheating the plane blades and chisels with no water or oil cooling and how long do the disks last?

Richard

Reply to
Tricky Dicky

Yes but I have had these chisels for about 40 years and only ever sharpened (attempted) about 4 or 5 times due to low usage so I will never get enough practice. There isnt a hope in hell of me doing them by hand / eye and doing a decent job. If only.

Reply to
ss

I think my best bet is to make some sort of wooden jig and use on the belt sander at slowest speed with a bucket of water handy for cooling.

Reply to
ss

grinder run too fast, with those go easy & let it cool off a lot, you don't want to overheat the steel or it goes soft. Never use water with an AG gri t disc, dampness can make them explode.

per so you've got something to keep an eye on & compare.

sounds good, with wet & dry

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Or pop down to Toolstation and get a new set :-)

Reply to
Stuart Noble

I take it this was in response to my worksharp comments?

Short answer, "no" no overheating problems... the disc speed is relatively low.

When doing narrower chisels etc they are sharpened whilst held against a heatsink anyway. You also tend to do it in short bursts anyway, as you sharpen the bevel against the underside of the disc, and so remove it often to inspect how its going. Then there is a delay as you flip or swap discs. (plus you are handling the thing close to the pointy end, so its easy to get a feel for the heat being generated).

As to abrasive life - hard to say, I am still on my first set that came with the machine. The supplied ones are decent quality Norton discs. The also supply a lump of crepe abrasive cleaner. (keep in mind that I am not a very heavy hand tool user - I have 4 or five chisels, and a couple of planes that get regular use - but typically for final finishing and touching up rather than doing the grunt work of flattening rough boards etc.

I expect if you were sharpening wood turning tools several times a session, then you might get through them faster. Having said that, the system they use for sharpening curved surfaces really is a revelation, as you look though the abrasive to see the surface you are sharpening in real time, and it does not require extra jigs to get a decent result.

Reply to
John Rumm

I've got a little device driven by an electric drill which has a small grind-stone (2, actually - coarse and fine) and a magnetic holder to hold the chisel at the right angle. Only cost a few quid, but I can't remember where I got it. [I looked on-line so as to be able to point you to a URL, but to no avail].

It only does one angle, but is quite fast. At school, I was taught to sharpen chisels with two angles - with a steeper angle near the tip - but current perceived wisdom seems to suggest that this is unnecessary.

Reply to
Roger Mills

It gets some of the bulk out the way, sometimes useful, and makes resharpening quicker. As I've found one can break a lot of 'rules' when grinding and still come out good.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

I do any "rough" preparation on the slow, wet stone of my bench grinder, and do the final cleanup with one of these

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Purists would say you get the best edge with a japanese water stone rather than a "western" oil-stone.

Main danger with belt sander / high speed bench grinder / angle grinder is that if you overheat the edge you will ruin the temper and would then have to go through the full harden / temper sequence. Or grind off a lot of material.

Reply to
newshound

Yes - very easy to avoid though. The ability of an AG to throw a tool violently also demands attention.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

I tend to use a mix of Tormek and Japanese stone, but lots of people use "scary sharp" (google is your friend) and a simple jig to set the angles.

Reply to
no_spam

The idea being its much quicker to resharpen the micro bevel than the whole thing.

Reply to
John Rumm

Fair enough - but that probably applies more to hand sharpening than to using a powered device of some sort.

Reply to
Roger Mills

I ended up using the belt sander and made a simple jig out of a couple of pieces of scrap wood. It took about 5 minutes to grind the 25° angle stopping a few times when the metal heated up, and then a few minutes using the honing guide on wet & dry paper on a sheet of glass.

The guide straddles the belt sander with a cut out to allow room for the belt with a wedge at the correct angle for the chisel.

Best they have been for years. I will make some improvements to the jig when I have nothing else to do (living in hope)

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ss

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