DMT Diamond Wave Fine Sharpener

[Reinis Kanders]

Does anyone find them useful?
http://www.amazon.com/DMT-WAV-F-Diamond-Wave-Sharpener

I bought one to help with incannel gouge honing, but working area matching the gouge is miniscule. It is too late to return it, so I am wondering if anyone has had any success with them. Sharpener does come with a nice no slip mat that I use all the time

Thanks.

[george wilson]

Your link doesn't work.

[Tom Stenzel]

Another stab at a link:

http://www.amazon.com/DMT-WAV-F-Diam...Fine+Sharpener

I don't own one.

-Tom

[Mike Brady]

Hones like this one have a design that tends to abrade the center portion of the cutting edge at a greater rate than the margins. Think of a gouge and how the convex bevel meets the concave side. Carver Mary May recommends using a flat diamond stone and "side sharpening" the bevel, followed by stropping it to a polish. Very little other than removing the wire-edge and stropping is done on the concave side. The reason for this technique is to preserve the straight configuration of the cutting edge. The hone you picture above would do just the opposite since it has a radius that tends to contact the center portion of the gouge far more than its outer margins.

[Jerry Thompson]

Mine has sat on the shelf for a very long time.

[george wilson]

That design looks clever,but I think it would be impractical for honing a lot of objects. I'd rather have a separate pair of hones.

[David Ragan]

Does anyone find them useful?
http://www.amazon.com/DMT-WAV-F-Diamond-Wave-Sharpener


I bought one to help with incannel gouge honing, but working area matching the gouge is miniscule. It is too late to return it, so I am wondering if anyone has had any success with them. Sharpener does come with a nice no slip mat that I use all the time

Thanks.

I have one and have never used it; dont recall a mat being with it.

Mine has sat on the shelf for a very long time.

I Love that Avatar!


Have you not had a train of black Suburbans roll up in front of your house and Jack Bauer come after you?

Hones like this one have a design that tends to abrade the center portion of the cutting edge at a greater rate than the margins. Think of a gouge and how the convex bevel meets the concave side. Carver Mary May recommends using a flat diamond stone and "side sharpening" the bevel, followed by stropping it to a polish. Very little other than removing the wire-edge and stropping is done on the concave side. The reason for this technique is to preserve the straight configuration of the cutting edge. The hone you picture above would do just the opposite since it has a radius that tends to contact the center portion of the gouge far more than its outer margins.

I'm so glad you explained that. When I bought it, like so many other things, it looked cool, so I plopped down my $. Now, we are looking at another "first use tool day"

[Ken Shepard]

I have found mine to be useless.

[Jon Shank]

I wouldn't go so far as to say useless, but definitely very limited usefulness. The problem like the original poster commented on is that the magic spot where you hit just the right curve to match your gouge is about a hairs breadth. I use mine to knock the bur off the edge of my turning gouges, but that's about it. And for that matter it doesn't really match up at all on some of them. Well and the curve does make it a handy tool holder when I set a tool down next to the grinder, heh.

Jon

[ian maybury]

I've only done a bit of sharpening of in cannel gouges Reinis, but steered away from tapered and conical stones for the reason you say. (only a very short usable section on a given tool, plus it complicates the issue of keeping track of what's happening to the edge)

I've done a fair bit of looking at the issue, and suspect that a hardwood cylindrical dowel wrapped with self adhesive lapping film is one of the most flexible, adapatable and effective solutions for getting the job done. It goes down to very fine grits too. With stropping as a probable option for convenient/quickie re-sharpening - although i've not really used it much.

I seem to find that making up a hone somewhat smaller than the diameter of the required curve makes the job quite a bit easier. Too small and there's a risk of cutting a groove/channel, but equally it's necessary to be able to work selected sections of the edge since the task is normally to create a straight cutting edge. i.e. having squared/straightened the end of the tool by butting it up against a light grinder, the cutting edge then needs to end up placed at the outer corner of the resulting end face. Which (depending on the accuracy of grinding of the primary bevel) requires selectively working some parts of the edge more than others. It's also necessary to be able to selectively work the corners.

Grinding the bevel using a jig and a conical grinding stone is similar - i found myself needing to work sections of the edge selectively to create the edge as above, and so needed a stone of somewhat smaller diameter than the finished bevel.

Mentioned it before, but the Chris Pye Woodcarving vol 1 manual contains pretty comprehensive sharpening and set up information for carving tools. The bevel angles/geometry can make quite a difference to how they handle, so it's about more than just about getting the tool sharp.

One to watch out for. My chisels were from a well known German maker, and caused all sorts of difficulty. The steel is decent, but they were over polished (so the outer/cylindrical surface) was badly dubbed, plus the forging was inaccurate in all of the several examples i had. With the result that the blades were significantly thicker at one side than the other. Which required lopping off the last 1/2 in or so, flattening the outer cylinder properly (like polishing the back of a flat chisel - used waterstones) and then working the thick side quite a lot more to form a straight bevel. the shank (?) required relieving too to stop it catching. The pics show a polished back, and the re-ground bevel before finish honing:


re-ground in cannel gouge bevel close up 14-7-14.jpg in cannel gouge flattened back 14-7-14.jpg

[Reinis Kanders]

Thanks for the comments. Out-cannel or carving gouges definitely are easier on a flat plate, but that approach does not work for in-cannel where bevel is on the inside. I just end up using slipstone or a dowel, but was hoping that DMT product had some use.

Hones like this one have a design that tends to abrade the center portion of the cutting edge at a greater rate than the margins. Think of a gouge and how the convex bevel meets the concave side. Carver Mary May recommends using a flat diamond stone and "side sharpening" the bevel, followed by stropping it to a polish. Very little other than removing the wire-edge and stropping is done on the concave side. The reason for this technique is to preserve the straight configuration of the cutting edge. The hone you picture above would do just the opposite since it has a radius that tends to contact the center portion of the gouge far more than its outer margins.