Woodturning 101 - Video 4 - Sharpening Your Woodturning Tools

[Music] one of the questions i get frequently asked from students is does my tool need sharpened nine times out of ten the answer is yes it needs sharpen and we need to sharpen quite frequently and oftentimes when you're having any kind of an issue getting a clean cut that's one of the first places you want to look at is is the tool sharpened and then is it sharpened properly let's talk about the equipment that i use to sharpen with let's start with the grinder i prefer an eight inch grinder over a six mainly because it's easier to source wheels and it has additional weight to it beyond that all i really care about is that my grinder runs my wheels smooth and vibration free if you've got a lot of vibration coming from your grinding system you that will translate into a poorly ground tool so what we've got here is an 8 inch grinder slow speed 1725 rpm as opposed to a high speed at 3400 rpm the wheels are more important than the grinder or the speed i'm going to move the guards out of the place and we'll keep them out of place while we're doing this demo on here also but the wheels that typically come on your grinder are dark gray in color those are really good for one thing as a wood turner in my shop and that's garbage can ballast the cheapest wheels that you'll typically find are white which are aluminium oxide those white wheels or they'll come in a ruby color they're a monocrystalline structure and so when they say that they're an 80 grit structure they're probably an 81 grit when you finish dressing them the wheel that we've got on this grinder is a norton 3x this is a ceramic aluminum wheel they run cooler cut better than the aluminum oxide wheels and far better than the carburundum wheels that come on your grinders so that's an upgrade on there and well worth a few extra dollars the next upgrade into cubic boron nitrate cbn wheels these are a bit more expensive but they give you roughly the life of five or six of your stone wheels so they in the long run they're far better and far more economical they run cooler again than the stone wheels even the premium stone wheels they run cooler and i can get them in much finer grits that means i can get much sharper edges when i'm doing small diameter work my spindle work i like a 180 or finer grit wheel when i'm doing large diameter work like roughing out large bowl blanks 12 inches and larger i'll drop back to a 80 or a 180 cbn wheel for that work i keep the ceramic aluminum wheels around because i i can get much coarser grits i run a 46 on one side of my grinder and that gives me a very coarse edge to rough shape a tool very very quickly the next thing we want to look at once we've got our grinder decided on wheels are jigs here we've got the one-way wolverine system it comes with a base unit for each side comes with a platform a v-arm and then you want to pick up the optional vera grinder accessory we'll explain how all of those work as we go through this demo when you're mounting a new wheel something that's important to talk about especially a stone wheel is these don't always run true and they can be broken transit so the first thing you want to do when you're talking about mounting a new wheel as i remove the plastic bushings there's a set of three for different size arbors i replace those with an with an r3x machined bushing that gives me a good purchase out here on the side and sets this so that it runs good and true a lot less vibration problems that way when we're talking about buying a wheel i want to look for this code right here this is 3x 80-k 3x is the manufacturer's designation for the wheel 80 is the grit the dash k tells me about how hard or how soft the wheel is we're dealing with tool steels as wood turners that are in the medium range of hardness of tool steel so we want a grinding wheel that's in the medium range of hardness so that it cuts properly it's an alphabetical scale goes from a to z a being the softest z being the hardest so when you buy inexpensive white wheels out of aluminium oxide they're typically very hard if they've got a coat on them it'll be an n or an m if there's no code it's usually because they're very very hard it's a lot easier to make a hard wheel than one that breaks down at a consistent rate or a frayable wheel and so that is the frayability is that k the next test we want to do once we've decided on the wheel but before we mount this on the grinder is a ring test take any tool that you've got and just give that just a little flick with your finger and you hear a little ring if it's a thud you have a cracked wheel do not mount a cracked wheel onto your grinder they ex they can explode as they wind up to speed so this is very important that anytime you put a stone wheel on the grinder that you ring test it cbn wheels don't have any problems with needing an extra hub or anything like that running true you're not going to crack a solid metal hub so you don't have it have to ring a cbn wheel they come out to be much safer in the long run along with running cooler if you bump your hand or your arm into a stone wheel they can cut you quite severely they grab you if you bump into the cbn wheels you're much less likely to get caught up in a cbn wheel the worst injuries i've seen in 15 years in the classroom all three of them have came from a grinder as people have stuck their hands in one of the key thing or touched them as they're running and two of those did literally reach out and grab the wheel to see if it was running don't use your fingers as brakes please as you can see with a cbn wheel i don't have an enlarged hub it's fit it is machined to fit my grinder so that causes a lot less problems with wobble this one is machined with a steel hub some are machined with aluminium hubs they both work fine steel is a better cooling agent or heat sink so you then aluminium tends to be and if you ever slip off of the tool off of the jig and catch and i'll explain that later the steel hubs are a little bit more durable that way we have the cubic boron nitrate abrasive here on the face of the wheel some have them on the sides that can be handy for some of your carbide cutters the cbn is only to be used with high speed steel or hardened tool steels never ever grind soft steel with your cubic boron nitrate wheels your jigs are made out of soft steel so don't let your jigs touch the your grinding wheels what happens is it buries the either buries the metal from that it's removed into the surface or it will actually lift the cbn abrasive right off of the wheel either way it does permanent damage and they can't be restored once you've done that other than that you'll get much much longer life out of your cbn wheels and they're a lot safer if you bump into them okay we're going to start with the first tool that we used in this series and that will be our spindle roughing gouge one handy tip for any of your tools is to take a marker and color off the bevel that way you know once you've ground off the ink you know you've got your jig set where you want to be now anybody that's seen the packaging for the wolverine sharpening jig has seen a picture of a spindle roughing gouge cradled in the v-arm just like that and picture is worth a thousand words that's obvious as to how that ought to be sharpened but there are some drawbacks there once i lock that in place you see there's some quite a bit of movement now that i've got it set there is no fine adjustment so if i'm not right on my bevel as i turn my wheel by hand and turn the opposite wheel by hand that way you don't run your thumb into a cutting edge when i look and i see how much ink has been removed then i know i need to adjust it i need to adjust this going in a little bit as i lock that arm there's movement again that little bit i moved that went clear to the other side i've got to come out just a little bit i can hear a difference in there that actually sounds like it's getting better and there i've got i'm grinding all the way down that bevel so that is matched up now i could turn that on and grind it now i've got all the weight of the tool plus my hands the aim pressure i'll be putting on there working against that grinding wheel its purpose in life is to make that steel shorter once the still gets shorter the wheel gets smaller i've got to reset this each and every time i've got to go through that same struggle so it's not the easiest way to set this up and as i come over to the side grind over to the side of the tool has a tendency to roll the edge over one of my beliefs in sharpening is your number one enemy in sharpening any turning tool is the handle of the tool and so if i can avoid using the handle to sharpen the tool i will now when i say avoid using the handle it's just this part i don't want to use the handle to sharpen the tool rather than using the v-arm we're going to move over and use the platform the platform's much easier to set up and can be set up rather than just using the marker and test on there i can get a set up tool for that the raptor setup jigs are very handy i'm going to use my 35 degree raptor i put it put the long edge down onto the platform and then i'm going to size the wheel to the two port two parts of the bird's mouth once that's set i lock everything up secure having the the long side and the two parts of the bird's mouth touching the wheel i've set the platform in exactly the same place each and every time while i may be just slightly off of 35 degrees exact i'm not so concerned that i'm exactly reading 35 on a protractor i'm more concerned that each and every time i put my tool onto the jig i'm at the same setting the wood doesn't really know if i'm at 35 or 36 and then as we do some of the other tools we'll use other raptors for setting those up there's a full series of raptors available now that i'm ready to turn the grinder on again i've removed the guards so that you can see what's going on here today you'd probably want to have those down between your eyes and the wheels metal shavings in your eye is not fun and the abrasive stones are even worse so always remember put on your personal protective equipment i'm going to have my safety glasses on as i sharpen this tool i mentioned my handle is my number one enemy so i don't hold on to the back of the handle i'm going to come up to the front of the handle bring my grinder up to speed my left thumb is going to hold the tool flat on the rest and my right hand controls it same thing as how i do sure as how i use the tool when i'm turning and i'm just going to bring that around and my right thumb comes into the tool into the flute of the tool and it finds that flat spot i do not want to roll that tool any further than where that flat spot is i don't want to soften that edge up my corners on mine are clipped back just a little bit to keep a nice clean cutting edge so that i can cut right up to the corners for instance in a pummel and if you look a single pass i removed all that ink from before much easier to set up using the raptor and get that repeatable than it is to use the v arm so on my spindle roughing gouge i want that edge ground square across i do not pull the wings back on this tool i'm not trying to get something that will take off big wide shavings this is more than aggressive enough if i need to and will still take a very fine delicate cut our next tool is our parting tool and i mentioned on my parting tool when i used it i've got two different bevels i've got a long bevel and a short bevel i don't worry about setting a platform up at all for this i just come up anchor find my bevel grind one surface got a little bit more to grind [Music] and do the next surface what i want to make sure of is that i've got the cutting edge running down this rib on both sides the long bevel is ground first and then the short bevel that way it puts a burr up on this top surface and i know when i pick the tool up which edge i want up and down up on top and which end i want on my tool rest the next tool we used was our there is not a raptor for the skew and the reason there's not is it's a much sharper angle and when you change the diameter of your wheels you lose control of which bevel angle or of the bevel angle that you've got because the radius changes so much at these sharper angles so we are going to use the platform and we'll use the marker bring that base in just a little bit find my anchor on my wrist find my bevel turn the opposite wheel by hand you don't want your thumb coming down into that cutting edge you can slice your finger to the bone with a dull turning tool as i look at that i'm cutting down most of that ink this has a slight curve on this tool so i don't expect to get all of the ink as i sharpen my skew my left hand acts as a fulcrum with my left thumb and i just rock that tool i do not bring that tool all the way down to where it's parallel to the wheel that'll round this edge over i don't want that i want to be just up to that skew angle so i stop right there that skew angle 10 to 12 degrees or so now it's also interesting to note with this skew and the way this grinder and this platform set up that as i swing this around right there i'm catching the corner of my platform and i'm in all the way tight this skew is still got an awful lot of life left in it one way makes a mini platform which will get me a lot closer and let me continue to use this skew for a lot more years the next tool we'll talk about is our skew that wasn't ground with a radius on the tip this is straight across to grind this tile skew i come up and i move across the face of the wheel without rocking the tool my left thumb holds the tool down onto the rest you don't want to go to all this trouble set the rest up have your hand back on the handle and lift that tool off the platform keep it anchored down flat on that platform the next tool that we used was our box scraper now my box scraper has got a clearance angle and then about an 80 degree nose angle the clearance angle is just ground at any angle sharper than the nose angle i'm going to hold the tool flat on the rest and stop just short of coming around parallel just like we did on the skew i want that on a radiused surface a radiused edge [Music] and then the clearance angle there i don't care what angle that is and i'll even grind that sideways in order to get material off even quicker i don't even bother to set up a jig while we're on the topic of scrapers that'll raise a little burr up over the top of this you can run your thumb over it and you can feel that burp run your thumb about 10 or 12 times on there and you'll feel that burr come right off of there birds are very short-lived animals so when you're using a scraper for a finished cut you want to work very quickly with that or sharpen quite often would be a better way of putting that every pass or two you typically want to raise your burr back up now this being a box scraper it should be said it's mostly going into end grain which is the hardest way to cut the wood and can be the most aggressive the harder and denser the wood the smaller the burr i want up here the softer the wood the bigger the burr so if i'm doing uh in a box out of an exotic wood i may even go in and take my fine grit a fine grit stone this one's 300 and hone that but i always remove that burr off the top first my bowl scrapers are the same thing i remove the burr now these i do sharpen at a 60 degree nose angle or less and i do have a 60 degree raptor so again the long point on the or the flat point on the raptor the two parts on the bird's beak for setting up the platform if i'm dealing in a softer hardwood like what we've got available oftentimes i'll go to my stone wheels to raise a bigger burr my box elders my soft maples my harder denser timbers i'll be over on my cbn's the next scraper let's talk about is our negative rake scrapers negative rake scrapers are going to be less aggressive than your traditional scrapers which i just showed you these are ground top and bottom however i use the same bevel angle for both surfaces i use the 35 degree angle on both of them i have friends that use a 33 degree angle why they've got a gauge that checks 33 degree a 33 degree angle i've got a gauge that sets a 35. this is the top of the tool this one's shaped for a small the end of a goblet or a scoop [Music] and i'm going to come in and sharpen the top first and then turn the tool over [Music] and sharpen the bottom [Music] now as quick as the bevel wore off of the traditional scraper it wears off of a negative rake three to four times faster so if your your best cut is only going to last for maybe 10 seconds with a negative rake scraper you've got maybe 30 seconds with a traditional scraper our next tools are going to be our bowl and spindle gouges so to set up for those i'm going to remove the platform set it to the side take my v arm and trade places i'm going to set my v arm with my 50 degree raptor using my bowl gouge now the reason i use a 50 on my bowl gouge is it cuts everything that i needed to cut it can cut from the inside on the inside of a bowl it can cut from the rim to the bottom on the outside of the bowl can cut from the bottom to the rim and it can do it with the tail stock in place for most of the cuts so to me i find it one of the most versatile angles for all the cuts that i need i also find it one of the most durable angles and with our when you're turning bowls you see a lot of surface wood or a lot of surface area coming past your cutting edge so i want a good durable cutting edge so i'm going to drop the claw of the raptor into the pocket and then mar match the two parts of the bird's mouth up to the wheel securely lock the jig i'm going to take my v-arm and my bowl gouge i'm going to bring my tool and put it into the the very grind like this i've got the leg towards the rear i've got two different raptor protrusion jigs here the two and a half inch sets my clearance angle on my tool and my two inch sets my primary angle i only have to use the two and a half inch when i want to do the clearance most often i come right to the two inch i can then place the vara grind in the pocket one of the things you want to be aware of is that this stays back if you've got a tool with a heavy handle especially some of the modular handles that wants to push you out of that pocket so keep it back into that pocket i keep my right hand right up on the tool and the vera grind my left hand comes underneath and supports one of the most dangerous things that you can do is to have your hand over the top of this what makes it dangerous is if you fall off of the wheel your hand then can get caught into the wheel so support it from underneath you're going to do one wing keep that moving all the time do the second wing and then blend the nose of the tool to the two wings practice that motion a few times with the grinder off so that you know your hands are in a nice safe position before you bring the grinder up to speed do one wing come off the wheel do the second wing [Music] and then blend the tip of the tool to the wing i like to take and look at this surface here and i want to see a nice smooth arc coming up over the the tool and down through there if i've got a low spot somewhere in in this area or a straight edge either of those conditions could be a problem here's a drawing of showing the little hook jaw or the hook that the tool can get in there now that can be caused from a couple of things one is flute design but often times it's it's caused from just spending too much time on that the side of that tool right at that tip and that brings that curve around and not and not blending that nose so you want to watch for that that you don't generate that condition a good properly sharpened tool will look much like this a nice curve across the top i've got my primary bevel here my clearance bevel here and you can see about where the center line or the bottom of the flute is traveling through there nice curve on that top that's important i don't want that getting straight or concave in there i want a nice curve across the top curved edges slice cleaner than straight edges all right the control arm here on our vera grind is set just under this second notch and that's an important setting what this setting does is it changes the angle that i've got here on the the wing if i move this leg forward what it does is it changes my wing angle and it makes it really really straight and that really straight sided wing can be very dangerous 3 8 ball gouge on the bottom is ground with the control leg forward and you can see that the wing is much longer and sharper coming up through coming up to the cutting edge than the gouge on top i don't want that long thin sharp edge on my gouges this long thin edge is used by some turners for a sheer scrape but it's not good when i go to do a push cut i want the versatility of a tool that will do both and so i bring that control leg up to that second notch as we set this control leg i want to have just just under that second notch and there's just enough room i can grab that with a fingernail or see a little daylight going through there with this control leg set at the second notch i get the side reinforcement that i want on my cutting edge gives me a more durable edge and is less prone to catches than one where the control leg is thrown forward the next tool let's talk about is our spindle gouge my spindle gouge goes back into the vara grind and uses the two inch protrusion just like the bowl gouge i'm going to set my two inch protrusion i'm going to use my 45 degree raptor to set my v arm claw in the pocket then the two parts of the bird's mouth against the wheel you come into the pocket of my v arm my left hand underneath my right hand over the top just like on my bowl gouge i'm going to sharpen my left wing then come off to the stone do my right wing and then blend the tip two together now i want that left hand underneath for support i'm not afraid of the sparks coming by there as you watch there won't be any real sparks i'm more concerned about dropping this jig off the fa the tool off the face and this jig and the tool hitting into my wheel that can do significant damage to your wheel it can bend your jig it can even bugger up your grinder i've seen act the shaft's been on some of the grinder motors but if your hands over the top of that you can replace all this equipment for less than you can go to the emergency room so keep your hands protected we'll bring the grinder up to speed [Music] one wing then the other wing and blame the tip to the two wings now you notice when i did that with the grinder off i said start with the left then go to the right with the grinder on i went right to left it doesn't matter if you go right to left or left or right but do them in separate motions don't try and do it all in one sweep you won't get the shape that you want again i want to look for that curve across the top and across the back my 3 8 gouge is sharpened just like my half inch gouge in my spindle gouges and so is my 3 8 bowl gouge sharpened just like my half inch bowl gouge the one bowl gadge we haven't talked about is our traditional ground bowl gouge on our traditional or our bottoming gouge i don't use a platform you could if that's that's your choice i'm not going to set up the platform i just use my left hand resting on the jig clamp to set this now the reason i don't use the vera grind to grind this either is the vera grind will pull the wings back this tool is ground with the wing straight across just like your spindle roughing gouge every bowl that i do is a little bit different i want this bevel angle to be as sharp as i can and cut from the rim to the base of the bowl without hitting the rim if i'm too sharp here i'm going to hit the rim if i'm too blunt then i have to push across the face so it's a happy compromise but i want the tool as sharp as i possibly can without hitting the edge i'm probably somewhere around a 50 degree on my on the bevel angle and that would be a good place to start with if you want to set up a platform to sharpen this i bring my grinder up to speed i use my hand as a rest and then i come in find the the bevel on the tool bring it up to where i cut my get my cutting edge and then sweep the tool around and then it's got a rather long sharp clearance angle the advantage of that long clearance angle is it's got material out of the way it makes it very easy for me to lift or drop the handle and change the bevel angle on that short bevel that i've got also on that finish cut i'd want that short bevel so that i have less compressed fiber and i have fewer compression rings in the bowl that i would need to sand out later one of the things we need to consider is dressing our wheels you can see on this wheel it's starting to get a little color a little black color that's steel that just came off of tools earlier you may also get a pit if your sharpening tool and you feel a bounce because you've got a pit or a low spot these have got hard and soft spots in them uh occasionally and so you'll get a little bit of a bounce when you're getting anytime you're getting the bounce you need to come in and dress the the will now there's a couple of types of dressers out there the old star wheels these will abrade the wheel and do a very good job of getting you back to the coarsest grip possible on your grinder but they will not shape the to their will the diamond impregnated diamond dressers are by far the best way to do this there are some that are diamond plated rather than diamond impregnated i'd spend a few extra dollars get a diamond impregnated one this goes down probably close to a quarter of an inch it's got diamond impregnated into the dresser most of us will never wear one of these out you will however wear out two or three of those diamond plated ones i'll bring the grinder up to speed i've got my jig my platform set up it's nice and secure i don't care about the angle i'm going to set the angle with my diamond dresser and just having it come in close see it doesn't take a lot of pressure to get that to work i'm starting to get dust now i'm sweeping back and forth and i'm trying to put a slight dome on my wheel i like that little bit of dome then when i work in the center of the wheel and i wear it down to a flat spot i can work the edges once i started doing that rather than truing the wheel off flat i started doubling the life of my stone wheels if you want a dead flat wheel i'll show you how to do that come in with your dresser lock in i can use the end of my platform as a rest just secure and then pressure down and come across and back few passes like that and take care of that really quick you can start to see the dust kicking up here this is very harmful dust wear your personal protection you really don't want this to get down into your lungs this is an abrasive so it's not like the wood fibers which are bad this is worse now that i've got my stone dressed up this is one of the examples on why i keep a coarse stone i'm going to take this bowl gouge and the wings getting rather long on it for me and the wing angle is wrong so i want to reset this in order to do that i'm going to put it's called profile the gouge so i'm going to take with the flute and point the flute towards the wheel and i rock the tool in order to get the curve that i want i've got metal where i've dulled that up you can see the reflection i'm going to hand grind some of that surface away you could go ahead and set your jig up once i've got the bulk of that out of the way i'm going to go ahead and stop my wheel it's a bowl gouge 50 degree 8 raptor set the claw in set it up my vera grind two inches bring my grinder back up to speed [Applause] and i profile the tool i no longer can see a reflection on the cutting edge if you can see a reflection on your cutting edge you don't have a cutting edge a good cutting edge will not reflect light i've got clearance angles still here on this that doesn't bother me that's ready to go to the finer grit wheel and then go to the piece i'm turning in order to dress my cbn wheels and these do load up occasionally it doesn't have to be dressed as often as my stone wheels do and absolutely under no circumstances take your diamond wheel dresser or your star wheel dresser to your cbn wheels either of those two options will ruin your cbn wheel use a soft cbn dresser and that just slides across the front a couple of passes is all it takes it does wear your dresser down but it also what that does is it cleans out between the grit particles it cleans out the wheel and allows you to cut better all the way across so once you you're practicing frequently you'll find that the most difficult tool to sharpen will be your bowl gouge practice it with the grinder off get your hand positioned right and then practice it with the grinder on once you're comfortable with this you'll be comfortable sharpening everything so now we've learned to sharpen our tools practice this frequently the sharper your tools the cleaner your cut the less sandpaper you'll buy it's much cheaper to sharpen the tool than it is to buy the sandpaper to tear out or to clean up torn out grain so i'll go to the grinder and make another cut if that's what it takes just to avoid a little sanding practices frequently and you'll notice with the setup of the jigs the raptors the wolverines and the combination of everything it doesn't take me long at all to change from one setting to the next and get consistency out of the system and therefore i that also helps me cut cleaner because i'm used to the way my tools cut and the sharp edges on them you

Channel: Craft Supplies USA

Views: 147,050

Keywords: craft supplies usa, woodturners catalog, woodturning

Id: lLvh-MR6Jqs

Length: 43min 2sec (2582 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021