Sometime back I started sharpening by hand (touch up mostly). As a result worksharp started seeing less and less use. Then one day I needed to reset bevel of my plane blade. Worksharp did not come to rescue. So I decided to make a platform. While looking for plans to make platform I landed up on Derek's page on sharpening.
Ok, I will cut the BS. Except sharpening by hand, everything else is justification for new tool purchase. Wife bought me a slow speed grinder and I got a deal on CBN wheel. To offset the cost I sold off the worksharp.
Today I used the setup for first time and I am impressed. Did not want to risk a good chisel or plane blade so tried sharpening a old Narex chisel. I keep this chisel at ~20°.
Here's the setup:
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I started off with white rikon 60 grit wheel. Back of my head I wanted to avoid testing on CBN wheel. Here's chisel right off 60 grit:
IMG_20200714_203451.jpg
In first attempt bevel did not come out square and a corner got blued. After some fiddling realized that chisel is wider near handle. A little blue tape fixed the alignment. I reground the bevel at correct angle and past the blue corner. This time kept dipping chisel in water.
Confident with testing I moved to CBN wheel and here's the result:
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This all took under 10 minutes. Next I moved to stones. I kept count of back and forth motion.
DMT fine: 20 (took some effort to balance the chisel)
DMT extra fine: 20
5k shapton: 25
12k shapton: 25
12k shapton: 5 (on the back to remove burr)
On green compound: 5 (back and front)
Here's the result:
IMG_20200714_204935.jpg
This all took under 2 minutes. DMT fine, I think, was not needed.
Did paper test and it worked beautifully. May be it's in my head but I think it's sharper than I used to have before. Tried on pine end grain and it worked nicely.
Well it's safe to say that it's as sharp or better than what I used to have before. Key being, it took considerably less effort to a reach there and will work for plane blades as well.
Now the bad parts (not that many):
- Setting angle is a pain. It not accurate. Matching angle across two wheels is even more difficult. Don't really care much about it though, as grinding is pretty fast and minor inaccuracy does not affect me.
- LV tool rests are good but not as solid as I would have liked. They move a touch when pressed.
- On the side of white wheel, wheel cover gets in the way of tool rest when setting lower angles. This is probably to do with where tool rest is mounted.
Grinder itself has very minor vibration. Screw balanced on it's top falls in 2-3 minutes. My 6" DeWalt grinder on the other hand walks off the bench before screw can be balanced.
Overall, happy with the setup.