Sources of info on honing turning tools by hand?

[Steve Voigt]

This is about turning, but I think it's more appropriate here than in the turning forum.

When I search the Intertubes for info on honing turning tools, all I can find is powered stuff. I'm not averse to roughing on my dry grinder, but I don't want cbn wheels, tormeks, wolvervines, or any of that stuff. I hone my turning tools by hand, but I'm pretty mediocre at it. Does anyone know of sources, historical or otherwise, that might help with this?

Reading turning forums and blogs, one gets the impression that it can't be done without hollow grinding and power. But somehow they must have managed in the 18th C. without that stuff. If you know of any good sources on this, fire away. Thanks!

[Jim Koepke]

Steve,

Try searching on sharpening carving tools.

Roy Underhill has had Mary May on his program.

Chris Pye has also included sharpening instruction in the book of his in my library. It is out on loan for now.

Try his web site:

http://www.chrispye-woodcarving.com/home

jtk

[Matthew N. Masail]

Power grinding might be due to all the super high speed steels and stuff now being used for turning tools. Another thought is that old craftsman might have used foot\hand cranked sandstone wheels or something of that nature.


If using older tools or modern ones made from carbon steel, maybe stuff for carving tools? I Donnu I have no experience with turning tools, But I'm interested to see the responses!

[Prashun Patel]

Why can't it be done by hand? All you need is the right slip stone. They make lots of curved stones specifically for this purpose. The nice thing about the power + CBN is that it's fast, and adapts to any profile.

Curious why you're not drinking the CBN/grinder/Varigrind Kool aid.

[ian maybury]

I don't know if it's true, but the near absence of information on honing turning tools could suggest that it is. So far as i know the turning guys generally don't hone their tools - not beyond 180 grit or so anyway. I've certainly seen that said by some of the turning supplies people. Maybe there's specialised stuff that does get the treatment.

Only guessing, but it could easily be that in normal turning that the tool doesn't actually touch the finished surface - basically because the wood shears at a point some distance ahead of the tip of the tool. This happens when machining metals at times.....

[Warren Mickley]

I have honed my turning tools since learning to turn in 1978. They need to be honed to do turning in the 17th-18th century style. I will write more later.

[Steve Voigt]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Jim--thanks, I will check out carving stuff. I'm even more inexperienced with that than I am with turning, and there are certainly some similarities.

Matthew--all my turning tools are high carbon steel, so no worries there.

Prashun--good question. A few reasons: I'm an unreconstructed Luddite; turning is a tertiary pursuit, so I don't want to spend a bunch of money on gadgets; I hate gadgets anyway; my main interest is always learning how things were done before machines.

Warren--I look forward to hearing more.

[Warren Mickley]

Here are some 18th century illustrations.
Plumier L'Art de Tourner, 1703
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Here is Hulot, L'Art du tourneur, 1775
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These grinding wheels are large enough that there is very little hollow. I don't use a grinding wheel, just coarse bench stones and then hones and strop, everything full flat bevel.The shape of a coving gouge especially is rather critical for clean turning.

I think I have seen old sources where the turner propped the tool against the lathe, held it steady with left hand and abraded with stone in his right hand. I don't think a hollow grind is desirable because the bevel rides on the work and needs to be polished to leave a smooth surface.

[Warren Mickley]

Here is a plate from Diderot in the turning section showing various sharpening methods. The one at the top left is a large sandstone on a heavy stand with a water trough, maybe waist high.
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[Steve Voigt]

Warren, thanks for those images.
I had to look up "coving gouge," I guess it's an older term for spindle gouge? The spindle gouge is actually what prompted this thread. I am sharpening it with a flat bevel and getting good results, but I have no real method. I have just been trying different things; bringing the slipstone to the gouge, or bringing the gouge to the bench stone, sometimes side to side, sometimes back and forth. I wish I could find some period references that described how it was done way back when.
Warren, I take it you are bringing the gouge to the stone. is it possible to describe your technique, specifically for the coving gouge? And is the fingernail shape different from what is normally seen on new tools?
Thanks!

[Warren Mickley]

The spindle gouges I use are an older style; I don't know if they are available today. Years ago the cheaper spindle gouges, Sears, Buck Brothers, were rather shallow and looked like a flat bar had just been pressed into a rounded form and had uniform thickness across the curve. And today spindle gouges are usually made from round bar stock so the outside profile is a large arc of a circle.

My gouges are a little different. The flute is roughly a 90 degree arc of a circle. The outside is kind of elliptical, a little flatter on the bottom with the curve tightening at the edges and curving inward slightly at the top (a bit more than a half ellipse). The profile is thicker at the bottom, gradually thinning toward the edges. It is not a consistent thickness like the Sears tools, but compared to the round stock gouges, the tapering in thickness is not as extreme.

If you lay the tool on the bench and look at it from above, the edge is a fingernail profile. Mine are slightly elliptical with the tighter curve at the tip. However, you don't want a real sharp curve a the tip and then hardly any curve at the sides, more of a gentle curve for the whole profile. It might be easier to control the profile on my tools than bar stock tools.

I sharpen back and forth on the coarse stone, slowly rolling the tool the get the entire edge. I control the profile by giving more or less attention to the different areas. The back and forth motion allows more muscle into the cut so it is faster. I use the same motion on the finer stones. This tends to leave very fine facets on the bevel. You can remove these facets by rolling the tool side to side on the fine stone, but it is not necessary.

If you can cut straight down end grain with a 1/4 gouge on a pole lathe, and leave a flawless polished surface without any fuss, the condition of your gouge probably has something to do with it.

[ian maybury]

To ask a question Warren. Does honing the tool make much difference to the finish, or are there specific tools or other situations where it's necessary?

[Prashun Patel]

AHA, Steve. Then I have a solution for you:

Find yourself a manually powered grinding wheel and use a Varigrind on it.

[Steve Voigt]

Warren, thank you for the detailed description--very helpful. My lathe tools are the cheap ones you describe--Craftsman (Sears), probably made in the 1950s. I'll keep an eye out for the other kind.

I've been avoiding the back-and-forth sharpening b/c it is perpendicular to my normal method of honing plane irons, chisels, etc., but you're right that it allows much faster metal removal. I'll give it a go.

[Warren Mickley]

To ask a question Warren. Does honing the tool make much difference to the finish, or are there specific tools or other situations where it's necessary?

In general I sharpen to get a clean and crisp finish. A rough grindstone finish on the tool will be visible on the work as well. There are times when a very sharp tool is helpful in making a certain cut, but I don't know if that could be done with a rough tool. As I mentioned earlier, we rub the polished bevel on the work; it is not going to ride smoothly if rough ground.

I have seen gouges sharpened with various mechanical jigs, but none have been in a configuration I could use.

Steve, I think the shallowness of the Sears gouges is a problem, harder to learn on. An experienced guy can usually get away with tools that are not optimum.

[ian maybury]

Thanks Warren. It's an interesting issue - one that i know little about. Turners seeem often to finish with abrasives, pads and the like? Skimming the topic last night somebody said another reason for only grinding is that many modern turning tools are in tough steels that don't hone well. Also that the fineness of finish at the edge is also a factor in tool life, and that it's not so big a deal with these same tough steels.

Against that it's hard not to be influenced by the fact that a finely finished edge makes such a difference to the quality of surface with a hand plane...

[Ray Selinger]

I wondered the same thing. FWIW machinists hone HSS lathe bits and sometimes even carbide ones. I upgraded my lathe to a General 26020 recently, and the box of tools were 60grit ground rough. The lathe came out of a cabinet shop.Since I'm of the grab the first tool you can find and use it class, I used them after a trip to 1x42 belt sander, the one LV sells. But I'm not much of a turner.

[Jon Shank]

I use a powered grinder for shaping the bevel and getting back to a sharp edge. I do use the wolverine jig, it is just easy to get a nice predictable shape in a hurry. And then I just use that established shape to guide my freehand honing. During roughing I just go back to the lathe with that, and then hone in between trips to the grinder. I probably get half a dozen or so quick hones before I've damaged the edge enough to need to regrind it, bark and heavy cuts are hard on the edge after all. And yes, while my tools aren't high end super steels, they are HSS and take a long time to shape or do serious material removal by hand. After you have the shape you want the regrinding is really a matter of seconds and very little metal off the tool unless you get a big chip out of it (hit a hidden rock in a root ball a while back, that took a couple minutes to grind out, ouch).

For finishing I'll grind if it's needed but I mostly just hone more and finer grit if the edge isn't actually damaged or blunted too badly. I use a couple different things for the honing, my main bevel honing is done on a granite surface plate with sandpaper stuck down to it. Since your working a pretty small area a standard sheet of sandpaper actually last a good long time, I just move to a new spot on the sheet if I've dulled or cut an area. I hold the tool at an angle so that the bevel, or since it is hollow ground, the heel and edge are in contact and roll the tool while pulling across the paper, so sort of the same side to side that Warren mentioned if I understood him correctly. It takes a little practice to get a feel for it, but no harder than free handing anything else really, just need to build up a little muscle memory. I'd have to look, but I think I'm honing at about 320 or 400, with a normal fine wheel on the grinder, 120 I think, it smooths the edge pretty quick, not a lot of time at all. And then I take a couple quick swipes inside the flute with a slipstone to clean off any burr that formed. If I'm having real problems with tear out or just plain getting a clean cut on a particular wood, I'll lay a finer piece of sandpaper on top of the 320-400 and hone to a finer grit and a smoother edge, somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800. I hone the skews etc on there too, scrapers not as much, I get a better burr off the grinder.

For quick touch ups at the lathe, I've got a couple of the teardrop shaped slipstones. I just use the flat on the side of the stone for a quick hone and then run the appropriate round edge through the flute. Same side to side as on the surface plate, but a combination of moving the tool and stone. I think those are about a 200 grit, or there abouts anyway. They are handy for using the flat on scrapers and skews too. I've got a couple of the credit card sized diamond plates that I use for the flat edge tools sometimes too, but I've never really cared for the feel of them, just a personal thing, probably a waste of money but they were cheap at the time. I've also got one of the DMT wave diamond plates, which is a cool idea but in practice, rarely seems to have the right size/shape to match the flutes on the gouges. Probably better on carving tools, not so great for turning tools, but it was a gift, so it is what it is.

I've tried honing on a strop, just leather on wood with a little compound on it, but just didn't see enough difference to bother, maybe I have to revisit that. I've also gone the power route on that with a clothe buffing wheel on the grinder, didn't care for it and rounded over some edges in a hurry. I know some folks do that all the time with better results, but I gave up on it for the time being anyway. The honing in between grinding really saves a ton of time when I don't need an extra fine edge, but that's about what it comes down to. For the finish cuts, honing to more of a polish does get you a much smoother, cleaner cut, alot less sanding. But yeah, I pretty much always have to do some sanding to finish up.

Well that went longer than anticipated. Hopefully something in it's helpful.

Jon

[Steve Voigt]

Thanks for the info, Jon.

Per Warren's discussion of different types of tools, I stumbled across these:
https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/item/IT-CSPOLE.XX