Sharpening gear for a beginner?

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I'm just getting into carving - I don't know if I'll ever be a real carver, but I've found gouges started using a few gouges to to work on shaped things where I might have used rasps in the past, and found them invaluable. I just have a couple of gouges, but am looking at picking up a couple incannel gouges, and eventually getting a a v tool and a few more gouges and working my way through some of the things in Peter Follansbees DVD, which I've just started watching.

I'm fairly good at free hand sharpening, get the concepts, and feel comfortable moving forward sharpening things, but feel like I could use some more tool-specific equipment for keeping profiled tools in shape. I've been using wet dry and micro finishing papers in combination with strops to sharpen profiled tools where my flat waterstones aren't going to cut it. I'm not particularly fond of using papers for sharpening, but I can make it work.

There seems to be a lot of options for different slips and such, and I'm looking for recommendations as to where to stop. It seemed like oil-stone slips would be a good place to start, but even that leaves a lot of choices. I'd prefer not to spend a whole lot (obviously) but also don't want to get something just because it's cheap and find myself with something in the bottom of a drawer that I never use because I bought something better after dealing with a poor solution - if that was going to be the case, I'd just continue with paper.

Any suggestions as to where to start? It'd also be nice to be able to use the same gear to be able to sharpen basic molding plane profiles, but that's less of an issue right now - if the best solution for carving type tools isn't also the best solution for molding planes, the gouges would come first.

I'd prefer starting with a few things and then adding to it over a large initial cost outlay, but maybe that's not the best way to go?

[terry mccammon]

I am a beginner too. I have always used a so called loose cotton buffing wheel with the green compound for all my knives. When I started carving vs. Boy Scout Knife Whittling, I tried it on my gouges and such and it worked fine. The trick is to keep the cutting surface tangent to the wheel. I have the wheel turning away from me, and sharpen on the top of the wheel. Obviously would not work for reshaping, but for "sharpening" an already correctly shaped tool it is great and fast. I have a wheel mounted near where I work, flip on the power, apply a tiny bit of compound and a few seconds of application of the tool and off we go. Takes longer to run up the wheel to speed and apply the compound than it takes to do the sharpening. BTW the other trick is to use a VERY small amount of compound.

The virtue of this method is that it is quick, clean and cheap.



Hope it helps.

[randall rosenthal]

terry...thats pretty much what i do. one trick is once you get the tool as sharp as you want....keep it there. if i use a tool for 10 minutes it gets a few seconds on the wheel. i also finnish with a few seconds on the side of the wheel to remove all the compound and the micro burr.

[jamie shard]

This is probably obvious, but as a beginner, I found this Chris Pye video very helpful: http://www.amazon.com/Rob-Cosman-Woo...2872710&sr=8-1

It helps you get the chisel with the right geometery... I also use a buffing wheel (and strops) for keeping tools sharp. But oilstones and oilstone slips is how I got new tools from purchased condition to set up for sharpening condition.

[Marvin Hasenak]

I use a homemade version the "Scary Sharp Sharpening System". Start with a piece of flat glass, and sandpaper, 600 up through 2000 grit, then a leather strop. Once it is sharp, all I have to do is strop it occasionally. You can find a lot of information on the Woodcarving Illustrated forum.

[randall rosenthal]

marvin...thats how i do flat edges but for curves i use the wheel.

[Bob Easton]

My early sharpening approach used the "Scary Sharp" sandpaper method. It works, but goes through sandpaper quickly. It seemed I was constantly scraping sandpaper off of glass and applying new. As background, that early work was plane irons. After starting carving, sandpaper worked well for knives and chisels, less well for gouges.

I considered other methods. Rejected the very fashionable water stones because I don't want to be constantly flattening them anymore than I liked changing sandpaper. I settled on Arkansas stones. Good Arkansas stones are quickly disappearing and have become quite expensive in recent years. However, they work well and don't wear like water stones. I bought an 8" by 2" by 1/2" Natural Soft stone for moderately coarse honing and the same size Translucent stone for very fine honing. A set of slips, 4 soft and 4 translucent, are useful for the inner channels of gouges. For really coarse work, I have a very old India stone (marked $1.29) and a hand cranked wheel with some unidentified pink stone. I follow the stone work with green compound on leather strops. This collection works so well that I see it lasting the rest of my woodworking years.

FWIW, the stones were from "Tools for Working Wood" with part numbers MS-TAST100, MS-TAST200, and MS-CTS.500.

[Mike Pounders]

Here is what I mostly use. It is a home-made version of a Burke sharpening system and works great for re-shaping, sharpening and honing. The pulleys reduce the speed down to about 300rpm. Different grits of sandpaper are used on two of the wheels for rough shaping. 200-400-600 grits work fine and can still be a little too agressive until you get used to it. I have leather on the third wheel and then a cloth buff. It works great for knives and gouges. I may eventually add a turned wooden cylinder with grooves shaped to fit my smallest tools, but this works just fine for me. Really, I think you can get good results with just about any method, once you practiced it enough to figure out how it works!

[Marvin Hasenak]

Really, I think you can get good results with just about any method, once you practiced it enough to figure out how it works!

I have to agree that just about any method will work, if you practice using that method.

That is one awesome sharpening system. I have one set up using an old Shiatsu massage machine, the motor runs about 300 RPM, I just need tp practoce more with it and get the confidence in it that I have with the Scary Sharp System.

[Ted Pitera]

I agree that Mike has a really excellent sharpening bench set up.

If you are just starting carving and have a set of gouges with outside bevels you don't even really need slipstones. Just learn to sharpen on your regular stones. When you have a good edge established maintaining it is simple if you can hold on to the tools.

Get to carving. It's a lot of fun and truly rewarding.

Excelsior,
Ted