It's a common enough question, people want to know how to sharpen their gauge, I'm going to show you the method that I use that has worked for me throughout my working life, I use regular flat stones I've got a couple gouges here, doesn't matter which size a gouge big one small one they all use the same technique same method so I'm going to put fluid this just auto glass cleaner on here just to lubricate the stone to make sure that particles have grit, the steel, the grit from the diamonds float off and what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you two methods one is just the role method where we take the gauge on to the plate here this is the coarse medium and superfine so I've got 250 600 and 1200 here so I go on here and I just literally roll the gouge along its bevel so I'm working on the bevel as well as the cutting edge and I work back and forth along here so I start here, roll and come to the out cut there, back roll back so you can see I'm rolling in both directions and then the operation speeds up because you can go quite fast with this then you flip to this next stone you work the hole of the bevel, now most gauges the bevel is going to be slightly convex sometimes it's dead flat this depends on the curve but I want to get right to this cutting-edge so I start up here roll it around 30 degrees and then I dropped my hands here so I'm lower down here so this cutting-edge is not catching so I am catching the whole bevel This his maintenance mode same on this one so I start at my 30 and then drop now that bevel can change it depends on what you're carving carving gouges are very different than regular chisels so here I've got most of the bevel I'm happy with what I have got I've got a slight burr on the inside of here and I'm going to go from here to a strop, now you can use the flat strop, you don't need a hollow but you can create a hollow if you want to take a gouge out here out here and then work along here and create a gouge to hollow in there but on this width of a gouge I can go on here so I charge this with buffing compound just like this this is an abrasive suspended in wax and I pull this and I roll to catch the whole of the bevel and I might do this 30 40 times to get the whole of the bevel polished out, work from one side to the other like this now you'll notice that the inside of this gauge is highly polished out this just happens to be this maker, here is another one it's not wholly polished up but it's still very very smooth just not shiny right here you may be able to see a very crisp right line right behind the cutting edge, I'll show you how we get that in a minute but we still have a burr on this inside edge here we're polishing the bevel here so we're getting this so keep going until you feel like you've got an equal shine across the whole of the bevel that means you've got an equal surface cutting along the bevel too, polish out and then we get to the inside the burr is still on the inside, you can use what we call slips and what's slips do yeah, there's a slip this is a slips down and this just rubs on the inside but if you don't have a slip which most of you won't have just take a piece of wood like this drop a piece of leather on to hear polish it I mean coat it with the abrasive like this and then grip the two in the vise and I just happen to have a piece of leather off cut that I can use and so you'll find a piece of a coach or anything that will work and then pull this up so that it stretches the leather onto the surface cinch it tight, make sure you've got abrasive over the whole of the surface and then press it drop it right into here and that's removing the burr, it's also polishing that inside edge so now I have a gouge that's fully sharpened let's see what we've got that's how I would do I would use a broom handle or anything that's round and you can also make a hollow around whatever you want so here and see fastest way I know of how to carve a spoon hollow, this can go across the grain with it and that's how I would sharpen out a gouge, large, small it's all pretty much the same so that works well I've got a strop hold it here just a piece of wood I can wrap this on here and you can do many sizes the radius doesn't have to be the exact same size here's a narrower radius you can go even small once you get to this size you may want to go with a broom handle if that works so here's a broom-handle that fits the radii just fine so you could wrap it around a broom handle a rolling pin anything you want that work another method that I used extensively I probably use this more than maybe the side method of rolling here I might do a figure-of-eight this works very well for me I practice it for a long time and it goes very quickly and this is where we start with the corner of the the gouge on the stone here and we move across here and we're rolling it like this into this figure of eight and this is called a figure-of-eight sharpening and as you practice this you can gain speed you can see the bubble show the figure of eight and work the whole bevel so we start at this higher point here and then drop drop drop now you might want a long slender one which means you have to take a lot of steel off this heel once you get the rhythm going it works so well go to the next one so start like this, work across you don't have to go as much on that second level and the third level either you just keep going, this is taking out the abrasive levels to a polished level here and that's it and I have a burr across the whole of the inside of here I'm going to polish out as I did before on there now let me do this one with the hollow in here then you can see that one as well now obviously the hollow is hard to get the leather down into but you don't have to get the leather down into it, just pull it tight like that and then drop your bevel in here work it around that hollow when you're polishing out the bevel again it's coming nicely you can flip over leather onto this side into the vise full it so it pinches and pull it up if it will pull like this and again you've got your level your bevel is polished now we're on the inside and we just basically removing the burr from this inside that works perfectly, that may transfer as it did in this case no burr on the inside transferred it to the outside you may want to go back to the strop but usually with gauges as soon as you start to create a scallop that burr will break off here very fast effective of course there are many actions with challenges that using carving that may not be as easy as this one but that's basically my spoon carve and that's how i would sharpen it goes one of those two methods works great
