Ron McKinley
09-11-2011, 4:43 PM
Soon after buying the Pro Edge I realized that it had a major inconvenience: you had to remove the table in order to sharpen a gouge using their fingernail jig. Then you had to reinstall the table to sharpen scrapers or skews.
I wrote Sorby that if they made the boss (the piece that lets you mount the fingernail jig) longer, users wouldn’t have to remove the table. They wrote back that they had sold over 10,000 of them and nobody had ever complained. So, I made a prototype of a longer boss out of wood and got the measurements I needed and intended to have a metal one made. That was 4 and half years ago! Well, I finally got one made. It’s made of aluminum instead of steel like the original and it’s the same diameter. However, the holes for mounting the fingernail jig is 3 3/8” from the boss mounting holes, whereas the original is only 1 ¼” apart. Now I can lower the table to the 15 degree setting and mount the fingernail jig and sharpen without removing the table. Note that I’m still sharpening on the platen. The fingernail jig has enough adjustment built in to set the tool for whatever angle you want………Ron
207382207383
I wrote Sorby that if they made the boss (the piece that lets you mount the fingernail jig) longer, users wouldn’t have to remove the table. They wrote back that they had sold over 10,000 of them and nobody had ever complained. So, I made a prototype of a longer boss out of wood and got the measurements I needed and intended to have a metal one made. That was 4 and half years ago! Well, I finally got one made. It’s made of aluminum instead of steel like the original and it’s the same diameter. However, the holes for mounting the fingernail jig is 3 3/8” from the boss mounting holes, whereas the original is only 1 ¼” apart. Now I can lower the table to the 15 degree setting and mount the fingernail jig and sharpen without removing the table. Note that I’m still sharpening on the platen. The fingernail jig has enough adjustment built in to set the tool for whatever angle you want………Ron
207382207383