Darwin Award - Hollow grinding with a gauge

[Prashun Patel]

This revelation is 5 years in the making. I'm more happy than I am embarrassed. On the OFF chance that someone else is similarly blind to the blatantly obvious, I'm sharing.

I have been moving towards free-hand sharpening and am pretty good at honing. It's the hollow grinding that stymied me. How do you accurately set the angle of the grinding platform? I have the Veritas platform and the angle jig, but every time I'd set it, the darn chisel wouldn't hit in the same location. The gauge doesn't account for the blade thickness . So, I stopped trying, and just set the angle to the middle of the chisel bevel and hoped for the best.

Until I read (thanks, Derek Cohen) that you have to set the angle by placing your gauge on top of the blade.

Of
Course.

I realize it's not perfect unless the gauge accounts for the curve of the wheel, but it's a lot closer than I was before....

[Jim Koepke]

Sometimes it is better to trust your eyes and instincts than it is to trust mechanical measuring devices.

jtk

[Jeff Ranck]

Repeatability is probably more important than actual fraction of a degree. I saw a video once where the guy set is angle by putting one of those digital angle gauges on the tool rest and setting it to some absolute angle relative to the horizon. As long as you set the angle the same way every time and are within a degree or two, for most applications you'll probably be ok. My blades don't care much if I use 30 or 31 degrees.

[Sean Hughto]

Fwiw, the Darwin awards are for people who do dangerous stupid stuff that ends up killing them ... Ridding the gene pool of their self proven stupidity before it might be passed to more offspring. i only mention it because the title made me think you had hurt yourself. I'm glad you're ok.