On Thursday night this past week I attended a Sharpening class at Lee Valley Tools. They have great classes from time to time, and I like to take new ones to learn different skills. This sharpening class however was the second time that I have taken the same class. The first time I took the class, I had gouges, but I did not have a lathe or a sharpening system which quite limited me at the time. Also, I had no context for most of what Jesse said that night and didn’t really apply it right away. Thursday night was a whole new kettle of fish. After using a sharpening system, and turning for a year, and still struggling with sharp tools, I decided to give this class another go. Jesse Antonation was, once again, the instructor and he presented in much the same way, but this time I understood the terminology. I am also no longer afraid to muck up my gouges (I have mucked them up plenty in the last year) and so I was able to actually apply what Jesse was saying then and there. I took my three most used gouges and they have never been looking as good as they do now.
One of the problems that I was having was repeatability. I use a belt sander to sharpen my gouges and that has an advantage over the bench grinder in that you can set the angle and always grind at the same angle. What I have been doing is eyeballing the angle of the bed to the gouge and I keep missing the mark by a degree or two which changes the grind angle. Jesse uses a little protractor that I happen to own and in fact it has been in my workshop since I started. I dug it out and in the time that I struggled to sharpen one gouge, I was able to set each angle and grind ALL of my gouges. They have never looked better. My next goal is to set the bed on my sander with Lock-tite and build some jigs that are set to the different angles of my gouges.
To Everything, Turn...Turn...Turn 