HSS blueing

[Stephen Hibbs]

I have a benjamin's Best bowl gouge, and I have always had trouble keeping it sharp, and it seems it blunts too easily. Though that may be that my concept of blunt is too general. Anywho, I sharpened it for too long yesterday and the steel at the tip blued, which is something I hear is bad, but only with carbon steel. Does it matter that it blued, and is that supposed to happen to HSS?

[Michael Stadulis]

But your tool may be improperly tempered so perhaps you'll need to grind away some metal to get to the properly treated section.

[Jonathon Spafford]

Nope... you should be fine if you have HSS... most people agree that a little blue won't hurt the steel! If you are an AAW member you should have a recieved a sharpening video earlier this year in which they adress this subject!

[Stephen Mushinski]

There has been talk that some of those tools were not tempered at all. Right from the factory they were bad. Take a file a lightly drag it across the gouge. If it cuts then take the gouge back and get a new one. HSS will damage a file before the file should cut. Another method is a spark test but that is a bit harder to tell the difference. If you wish to try look at the sparks of a known HSS tool and see if the Benjamin's sparks are the same colour.