Well, I could say 'The devil made me do it the first time. The second time I did it on my own', but for sure it is a curiosity thing. I got a 600 grit wheel from Ken Rizza, and noticed a significant change in fine finish cuts on all of my tools, with the possible exception of the skew chisel, which as you all know that for me, well, I am a bowl turner. I had Ken make me an 8 inch 1000 grit CBN wheel because I had to find out how it would work. It got here about an hour ago, but I had to take it out and play.... First, since I platform sharpen, this wheel is not one to shape tools, angles have to be pretty exact to repeat. Going from the 600 grit to the 1000 grit worked because the tools were already pretty close, and it ended up that the 1000 grit side was a hair more blunt than the 600 grit side, so some thing like 600 grit at 30, and 1000 grit at 30.5 or so degrees. If it was at 29.5 degrees, I would have had to adjust more. First was my skew chisels. One an Eli Avesera grind (convex), and the other more conventional with a bit of sweep to it. It did leave a tiny burr. I didn't hone it off, and went to cutting. I had one chunk of pear, and well, let's say butter. I cut from right to left, and left to right, but pear is as nice as madrone. Next test was a piece of highly figured hard maple that had given me fits with the skew as in a significant amount of tear out that I could only tame with 600 grit shear scraping. I was getting slightly different results going when I reversed right to left, and left to right, with one direction cutting clean. Feeling the burr, I touched it gently with a 600 grit CBN hone, and got opposite results, so it was the burr that was at fault. After a couple of times honing, there was no noticeable difference in either direction. I did take one 40/40 gouge and sharpen it for a cut across the end grain, which for gouges is always a difficult cut for me. Well, it looked more polished than the top of my bald head... Did a negative rake scraper and couldn't really see any difference, but didn't play with it a lot. Also did a regular scraper, and got a really nice finish from it as well.
By no means is this experiment any where near conclusion, but results appear to be promising, and I need another hundred or two hours of play time.... Now, if I can just find another myrtle plank that is hiding in the shop... Turned several platter forms from the first one...
robo hippy
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