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Thread: Restoring Badly Pitted Inside Curve of Gouges

  1. #1

    Restoring Badly Pitted Inside Curve of Gouges

    Hello,

    I know that often times pitting on old gouges can simply be ignored (once the edge is OK) or remedied with an inside bevel which brings the cutting edge below the pitting.

    But is there any way to remove the pitting completely, and bring the inside sweep / cannel of a gouge back to fresh steel?

    Would files be effective ? Or a cone shaped dremel type grinding attachment?


    Any advice appreciated. Thanks, Paul

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Essex, MD
    Posts
    421
    Hi Paul,
    Files shouldn't work since the steel should be hardened - that said, some gouges may have been produced with not-so-hard steel, but I don't think you'd get good results even if you could file it.

    For hardened steel, you need to grind/ abrade it with media that's harder than the steel. You haven't said how deep the pits are - you'll have to remove all the steel to the level of the bottom of the pit, right? So depending on how deep they are, that may leave you with a much more flexible blade or one prone to snapping - or there may be plenty of steel left, it just depends. Most of my old carving gouges are solid tool steel, but a couple of the larger ones (actually "bench" gouges) are laminated - you wouldn't want to grind all the tool steel off if yours are laminated.

    A grinding stone will work IF you can find one that's the right diameter. That would be a pretty lucky find. More likely, you'll have to get a piece of hardwood dowel that fits and wrap it with sandpaper of ascending grits (once again, the roughness of the lowest grit depends on the depth of the scratches).

    The best way I've found is to attach a 4-6 inch piece of the dowel to the edge of a 4-6 inch long piece of 1x4 and put sandpaper over it, then clamp it in a vise on top of my workbench. Oh, the dowel has to be custom-sanded to exactly match the sweep of the gouge. Then I use both hands to draw the gouge back and forth along the sandpaper jig. The vise holds the sandpaper. It seems to work well, but I tend to avoid buying gouges and chisels with pits in the cutting surface these days because grinding/ sanding is a PITA. Sorry, I don't have pictures because it's been a while - I can rig one up if you're not able to see what I'm describing.

    Good luck,
    Karl

  3. #3
    Search for a place that sells rubberized abrasives like the Cratex brand. Sometimes local industrial suppliers carry them. They come in different grits so you can start with coarse and work to fine. There are many points, cone and cylindrical shapes that can be reshaped/resized by spinning them against sandpaper.

  4. #4
    To get a perfect match to the inside take a dowel or peice of wood that is as wide as the gouge and carve with the gouge upside down so you get a surface that matches the inside. Then put sandpaper around that shape. The risk of having a standard round dowel is that unless you have a close match you need to be careful about grinding all the inside evenly or you will change the shape.

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