ian maybury
12-26-2011, 7:45 PM
Hi guys. Reading Jared's thread on sharpening brad point drills reminded me that despite searching at times I've never found cost effective equipment for sharpening Forstners, carbide tipped counter sinks, brad points, ordinary twist drills and the like.
I've done loads of hand sharpening of standard twist drills in the metal working context, but TBH it's not entirely satisfactory without a lot of practice and care as it's hard to control the angles precisely enough. There's a guy on YouTube pushing the hand sharpening of Forstners and brad points, but I suspect the same is true there only even more so as the grind is more complicated.
There is relatively low cost stuff out there for twist drills - Work Sharp have a product, but not that I've seen for other types.
Has anybody seen stuff offered at reasonable cost? There's obviously production kit about, but very expensive.
I'm thinking that it mightn't be too difficult to invent a DIY system - a set of some sort of abrasive tips (diamond?) in appropriate profiles in grades down to very fine, some sort of high speed drive mounted on a slide (there's lots of that sort of stuff sold for DIY CNC router system construction), and some sort of chucking system capable of being indexed through defined angles. ( you could at a push use a disc with holes drilled in it at defined angles - maybe even use a small lathe as a base)
Thoughts?
ian
Has anybody ever tried anything like this?
I've done loads of hand sharpening of standard twist drills in the metal working context, but TBH it's not entirely satisfactory without a lot of practice and care as it's hard to control the angles precisely enough. There's a guy on YouTube pushing the hand sharpening of Forstners and brad points, but I suspect the same is true there only even more so as the grind is more complicated.
There is relatively low cost stuff out there for twist drills - Work Sharp have a product, but not that I've seen for other types.
Has anybody seen stuff offered at reasonable cost? There's obviously production kit about, but very expensive.
I'm thinking that it mightn't be too difficult to invent a DIY system - a set of some sort of abrasive tips (diamond?) in appropriate profiles in grades down to very fine, some sort of high speed drive mounted on a slide (there's lots of that sort of stuff sold for DIY CNC router system construction), and some sort of chucking system capable of being indexed through defined angles. ( you could at a push use a disc with holes drilled in it at defined angles - maybe even use a small lathe as a base)
Thoughts?
ian
Has anybody ever tried anything like this?