power sharpening vs hand sharpening

[Mike Henderson]

I have the same setup at school, where the big advantages are (1) speed, and (2) I can show a student how to get an acceptable edge pretty quickly, and then HE can keep the chisels and lathe gouges sharp.

You should open your classes to women. The woodworking school I attend has a significant number of women students. It could double your class sizes.

Mike

[Tim Put]

I think you're reading in a bit too much there. I don't think "he" was meant as "he" as opposed to "she", only "he"-the-student as opposed to Dave-the-teacher, regardless of the actual gender of "he"-the-student.

[Mike Henderson]

I think you're reading in a bit too much there. I don't think "he" was meant as "he" as opposed to "she", only "he"-the-student as opposed to Dave-the-teacher, regardless of the actual gender of "he"-the-student.

Perhaps you're not reading enough into it. If someone wanted to indicate that they had students of both sexes, they would say something like one of the following and would not capitalize HE:

1. ...acceptable edge pretty quickly, and then they can keep the chisels and lathe gouges sharp.

2. ...acceptable edge pretty quickly, and then the student can keep the chisels and lathe gouges sharp

3. ...acceptable edge pretty quickly, and then S/HE can keep the chisels and lathe gouges sharp

Any of which is better than using just "he" and especially a capitalized "HE". In the past twenty to thirty years we have moved a bit past the excuse of using the masculine pronoun to encompass both genders.

Mike

[I'll just add a note about "political correctness". In general, it's people who are not part of the excluded class that cry "political correctness". What the people in the excluded class are asking for is recognition that they exist.]

[Dave Cav]

I was going to write a long diatribe on political correctness and the problems with our educational system, but the short answer is that I teach at a large public high school with a very mixed enrollment. My classes are open to all. I have over 100 students. Two are female, and one actually shows up on a regular basis. I try to make the best of what I have.

[George Sanders]

I have a wet grinder made by Prairie Tool co. It runs off a jackshaft for slow speed. They went out of business 2 years ago. I use it to get a chisel or plane blade reasonably squared up and an approximate angle that I want. Then I use a rolling jig on a piece of granite with sandpaper. A lot of the chisels and planes I find have really been abused and getting them back in usable condition would take too long without the wet grinder.

[David Keller NC]

"I've used a Tormek to put a nice hollow grind on some tools, but wide plane blades can come off very crooked (maybe I'm just too uncoordinated), so I don't borrow it any more (showed 'em, huh).

To those reading this considering a wet grinder, there's a very easy and quick method to getting your blade edge square to the stone on one of these:

Put the blade into the holder, and adjust the extension of the guide arm and/or the blade in the holder to get the correct grinding angle. Then, without starting the grinder, move the blade's bevel back and forth across the entire width of the stone. Take the holder off of the guide arm and look at the bevel - if there are scratches across the entire width of the bevel, and the width of the band of scratches is roughly the same width across the entire bevel, then you've got your edge square to teh stone. If not, use a small plane-adjusting hammer or something similar to tap the back of the blade in the holder to skew it slightly. Put the blade and holder back on the grinder, and repeat until you've got the blade square.

Generally, this takes about 20 seconds (and is a lot longer to read than it is to do).

[Verne Mattson]

I know a lot of folks don't particularly care for it, but I really like my Makita 9820 wet grinder. I've had great success sharpening my jointer and planer knives with it. Recently I bought the 60 grit stone for it and reground the bevel on an old chisel for practice. It works very fast - nearly as fast as my 6" grinder with a white wheel. I went from the 60 grit, changed to the 1000 grit for more of a polish, then finished on my Shapton stones, going to 8000 grit. I don't think I'd ever consider a plane iron or chisel edge finished just by grinding it on my Makita with the 1000 grit stone.

As much as I like my Makita, I wouldn't give up my high speed grinder because I sharpen my lawn mower blades with it...

Come to think of it, the Makita coupled with the grinder, coupled with water stones, you could sharpen anything you want around shop and around the house. But that's what works for me, and that's what I've accumulated over the years.

Good luck. There is never one right answer when it comes to sharpening, it seems.

[Bill Houghton]

To those reading this considering a wet grinder, there's a very easy and quick method to getting your blade edge square to the stone on one of these:

Put the blade into the holder, and adjust the extension of the guide arm and/or the blade in the holder to get the correct grinding angle. Then, without starting the grinder, move the blade's bevel back and forth across the entire width of the stone. Take the holder off of the guide arm and look at the bevel - if there are scratches across the entire width of the bevel, and the width of the band of scratches is roughly the same width across the entire bevel, then you've got your edge square to teh stone. If not, use a small plane-adjusting hammer or something similar to tap the back of the blade in the holder to skew it slightly. Put the blade and holder back on the grinder, and repeat until you've got the blade square.

Generally, this takes about 20 seconds (and is a lot longer to read than it is to do).

This assumes, of course, that the bevel is ground square to the blade to start with - checking that with a small square should be the first step for any new-to-owner blade.

[David Keller NC]

"This assumes, of course, that the bevel is ground square to the blade to start with - checking that with a small square should be the first step for any new-to-owner blade."

True enough. When I've an antique blade (that probably wasn't ground straight from the factory in the first place, and sure isn't straight after 3 generations of craftsmen have "touched it up"), I use a small square and a scratch awl to define a square line across the back of the blade as close as possible to the edge and still get a continuous line straight across. The "as close to the edge" bit is really important - it drastically decreases the work to grind a straight edge on a wet grinder.

Then, I set the holder at 90 degrees to the stone and grind back to the line. The 90 degree part makes the edge-truing go faster, and more importantly, leaves you with a small flat on the end of the blade. If the blade wasn't square, that flat will not be the same width all the way across the bevel.

That variation in width is very helpful - what one then does is grind (I usually do it free-hand) the bevel such that the 90 degree flat is brought to uniform thickness, and reduced in width to the point where it can just barely be seen under magnification.

At that point, I go to the whetstones - the hollow grind means that I can skip the 1000 and 4000 grit stones and go straight to the 8000. Not only does skipping the coarser stones save time, it also helps to preserve the bevel geometry I've so carefully prepared - in this particular case, the fewer passes you can make down the stone and still get the barest glint of highly polished metal all the way out to the edge, the better.