Hey all,
After a long long dry spell I am finally getting some turning time in again. My twins are now 4 years old and well they have finally crossed the line into being somewhat self-sufficient. In that they play with toys and each other rather than needing their mom and I 24x7.
I tried to sharpen my tools and well I find that my hard won skills and setups are now gone and/or out of tune. At the Utah symposium a few years ago I saw CBN wheels demonstrated and they looked great. So after taking a relatively sharp skew and using it and then trying to put an edge on it and turning it into a butter knife I am once again trying to crack this nut.
To that end I am looking to upgrade my Woodcraft slow speed grinder with a set of CBN wheels. I have scoured the creek and found a number of references to several different wheel types. Some have radiused edges, some have wider widths, some come from stores/major vendors and others from people with experu\ience way beyond mine, etc...
Like everyone else I have poured money into this particular vortex and I would really like to spend just a touch more and try to just be done with the whole sharpening problem. I spent money on balancers and bought sticky dots to try to and shim wheels etc... I thought I had this dialed in but as I said above I am dulling tools on the grinder rather than on the wood and that is just sad... Getting something that runs truer and is much much closer to balanced would I think finally get me where I want to be with sharpening my tools.
But as with everything else there are ioptions with different wheel geometries and brands does any of it reall matter?
I have seen tons of posts about how awesome CBN is, so I am not looking to be convinced. Rather I am interested in recommendations on the common options and why they are being recommended. I saw Robo Hippy's post about trying 3 different brands and seeing no real difference in how they cut. So how about how true they ran and how about the radiused edge versus not with just the wide flat edge? And how about the CBN down the side of the wheel?
And I suppose how about grits? I was thinking about 2 wheels. An 80 for shaping and scrapers and something higher for putting a really nice edge on a skew and other tools for finishing cuts.
I would love any advice my fellow creekers might like to share.
Thanks,
Joshua