Shopsmith Forums

Hi,

Of late several people have been asking about sharpening and which is better etc etc. I'll try to keep my personal feelings out of this post and try to stick to just the facts. I'm sure I'll miss some points so feel free to add in or correct me if I've miss spoke. Prices are taken from the 2008 Fathers Day catalog, feel free to adjust as you find sales.

555193 Sharpening Guide Package

Base price $104.66, for this you get the 555204 Sharpening guide, 12" sanding disk, sandpaper (150 grit) and manual. Replacement sandpaper comes in either 100 or 150 grit and you should always use that same alum oxide sandpaper. The velcro disk/paper should not be used.

The guide is the basic item and it and the other parts can be purchased as piece parts. So if you happen to have a spare sanding disk it might be more cost effective to just buy the guide and paper, of if you had the paper and disk then just getting the guide might be the best deal. Sales might also make a difference as to the best deal.

In normal operation disk sander setup the guide is used on the main table or the extenstion table depending on what you are trying to do. The extension table needs to have holes drilled for the mounting or a suitable clamp on base can be made and used. Certain operations such as sharpening parting tools, skews, gouges and roundnose chisels are done on the extension table side (disk mounted on upper auxilliary spindle). Bench chisels and other things are done from the main table and disk mounted on the main output.

The use of the 150 grit sandpaper is a grinding operation and that is not the same as a honing operation. For scraping tools this maybe all that is required but for cutting tools you will need to follow up with deburring and honing. Options like bench stones, slips and or other power tools like buffing wheels are most often used for this.

When doing bench chisels there are some restrictions as to how short they can be and still work. (I did not find this information in the manual but if I recall it is about 4").

It should also be pointed out that the guide can be used without the sanding disk. It will also work with belt sander and the strip sander.

A few "issues" that might be of interest to those thinking of buying this item:

If you have the lathe setup and you are turning and require a tool be resharpened it maybe necessary to reposition the headstock to do the operation. During some lathe operations this might not be desireable.

Sanding disks are limited to fine being 150 grit, something to think about.

Heat builds up very quickly in the tool so being watchful of that can be an issue for some.

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The 555812 Strip Sander Chisel Sharpening Attachment.

The first thing to point out is that this is an attachment to the strip sander so one big part of the cost of this would be that of the strip sander. If you have one then that would be a big advantage cost wise, if not then keep in mind the investment of $269.49 to start with.

The attachment runs $104.58 and includes the necessary platen and upper drum guard and a set of 5 progress grit sandpaper belts.

For use the table and platen must be exchanged on the strip sander and the cover must be modifed with the upper drum guard. As designed the direction of the belt now must run opposited the way it did as the basic strip sander (more on this later).

The belts run from 150 to 600 grit and again are A/O. You have the option of a different belt set which has the addition of both 60 and 80 grits. The belts are used to produce an ever finer edge. They can go back to say 150 grit to remove a small chip on the chisel edge then work back to the finer belts or you can start at say 320 or 400 to just touch up the edge.

The use of belts to 600 grit replaces the need for honing in most cases but you will still need to deburr cutting edges in most cases.

You can slow the shopsmith down and have a slow running belt to reduce heat build up, perhaps a bit more forgiving then other methods.

The design is for bench and lathe tools and while it has an angle setting it is also easy to "match" angles or to make minor changes to angles as you see fit.

Issues:

Rotation requires the strip sander to be mount on the main output. Again if you are doing lathe work this will cause problems.

If you have only one strip sander you may have to deal with the swap over to sharpener and back again more then you would like.

Sharp corners on upper drum guard need to be fixed before use.

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Please note I have left off various "fixes" that can be added, feel free to post them or links if you wish, and I will add some of what I have learned in using both of these system at another time.

Ed

Ed,
Thanks for the post. It looks to me that, if you are a serious turner, neither of these tools would be a viable option. Simply because you would have to tear down your lathe set-up to use either one of them. I don't know of too many turners willing to do this as there are too many other options available. As for bench chisels, plane irons and maybe planer/jointer blades these would probably work fine.
Don't get me wrong. I am not knocking SS tools. I am just looking at this from a practical point of view

Ed...

Thanks for a comprehensive comparison. Should answer many of the recent questions.

Only thing I would like to add is that the disk system can be adapted to square sheets of sandpaper. Spray fix the sheet to the disk and trim of the corners that extend beyond the rim of the disk. Then, use a white marker while spinning the disk at the slowest speed and mark a circle inside the square. There will be areas of exposed disk along the edges of the square. When using a disk fitted with a square sheet, all you have to do is to be sure you keep the edge of the tool inside the circle. Using square sheets allows you to go to finer grits. I have 3 disks in my set, fitted with 150, 220 and 320 grits. Only the 150 paper is a round disk.

I seem to remember that a few months ago there was a posting of a system someone and his BIL had rigged up to keep the sharpening jig at the same distance from the disk at all times, thereby allowing the headstock to be slid back and forth as the turning required. There were pictures with the posting...maybe someone can find them and post the link.

edflorence wrote:Ed...

Thanks for a comprehensive comparison. Should answer many of the recent questions.

Only thing I would like to add is that the disk system can be adapted to square sheets of sandpaper. Spray fix the sheet to the disk and trim of the corners that extend beyond the rim of the disk. Then, use a white marker while spinning the disk at the slowest speed and mark a circle inside the square. There will be areas of exposed disk along the edges of the square. When using a disk fitted with a square sheet, all you have to do is to be sure you keep the edge of the tool inside the circle. Using square sheets allows you to go to finer grits. I have 3 disks in my set, fitted with 150, 220 and 320 grits. Only the 150 paper is a round disk.

I seem to remember that a few months ago there was a posting of a system someone and his BIL had rigged up to keep the sharpening jig at the same distance from the disk at all times, thereby allowing the headstock to be slid back and forth as the turning required. There were pictures with the posting...maybe someone can find them and post the link.

I think this might be an update to the thread you reference.

http://www.shopsmith.net/forums/showthr ... 190&page=2

I've attempted to leave out personal preferences in the first post but in this post I'm going to add some of my personal experiences and methods. I'm not saying that my ways are best or this is the only way to do it... I'm just saying these are somethings I've found out about and use.

I think a brief history might be worth while, this history being mine dealing with all this general subject. I grew up having limited shop resources, some oil stones, files and grinding wheels for drills. If I wanted to go to my uncles he had a large foot powered water wheel that he sometimes for got to drain... but that is another issue. Things started to change when my Mom got into cutting and polishing rocks. As it turned out the idea of polishing stones is very much like sharpening. You had grinding wheels, under dripping water, steel disks that you put scurries of oxide powers on and polishing felt wheels with "polish" sticks. That taught me a lot about how all this works.

When I started to put together my "shop" the options were hand grinding stones, you cranked with one hand and did everything else with your other hand. This version of a "shop" was a box or two of tools over in the corner of the apartment.

As we moved up in the world we rented a house complete with basement. After being without major power tools for some years I started to add this as money allowed. Over a period of time I purchased the "greatest and best" of the various sharpening systems... 10" water wheel, flat spinning water wheels, various had to have stones according to the experts of the time. I will say that almost all of that stuff is gone...

I think it may have been around 1976 I took a class on this new transmission stuff called fiber optics. When the fiber is cut it needs to be polished and this interested me. Without going in to a lot of details the process was done using "sandpaper" and a sheet of optically flat glass. I took a short class on "prep" to learn how to make connections and of course how to polish the fiber.

From this a couple of other woodworkers and I started playing with the sandpaper on glass idea for sharpening tool edges. It did not take long to find this was a great system and well ever since this I have been doing it this way. I'm not going to go into this anymore then to say I find sandpaper works well for sharpening.

I purchased the sharpening guide some years ago... I think it may have come out back in the mid/late 1980's?? I built a plywood piece to fit on the extension table and clamped it in place. I later got a disk which I used just for sharpening. I would say this is a must have part to make this work at all. The limit of only 150 grit made this only a part of the process. Now this is the point as to what sharp is and means, that varies from purpose to purpose and person to person. I never found 150 grit edges to be "sharp" for chisels. As such I needed to hand touch them up to a more mirror finish then most often polish them with either cloth or felt and even leather. To that end I purchased a 1"x30" sander belt sander/polisher. I got a leather belt and went that route. You can get really sharp edges that way... way more then what is required to trim some hair on your arm... This is a workable solution but as was mentioned else where the use of this can make lathe operations suffer.

When shopsmith came along with the attachment to the strip sander I pictured this as a worth while upgrade. Not only could I got to 600 grit but from other sources I could go to 1200. Past experience told me 1200 is a good place to go to and with the addition of a leather belt we are back in a really sharp place. If I had not owned a strip sander I might have been tempted to go for the whole boat but as it was the attachment was all I needed.

Again depending on what operations you are doing this can make lathe use more difficult.

In my case I own two shopsmiths so I can mount the sharpeners on the second machine which allows the shopsmith with the lathe operation to stay setup and I still have a way to keep the chisels sharp.

Other options might be a power stand/power station/crafter station. The stip sander I have even used with a hand crank and touch up some tools while my wife was upstairs sleeping... this is to say very little power is required so even a 1/4HP hand made belt drive stand would be very simple to do. Most of us could put together a stand in no time at all and a lot of us most likely have a spare motor sitting about... a couple of pulleys and a belt and away you go.

So a few more things for you to think about.

Ed

Here's my two cents ($0.02). The shopsmith shapening guide, in my opinion, cannot do the job of finish sharpening. However it is a great tool for shaping the tool and at the same time leave an edge ready for finish sharpening. It is really a grinding tool attachment.

A conscientious woodworker would not grind a bench chisel or plane blade using sandpaper and then use it for fine slicing/planing without first honing/stropping it. My belief is lathe tools should be treated similarly. I am aware Rick Davis says the sandpaper is ample for lathe tools, however there are many disagreements to this. Once shaped, the lathe tool (all tools in my shop) are stropped using a round leather strop mounted in the chuck. When noticing a lack of sharpness the tool can be re-stropped many times to a fine sharpness without re-grinding. Also, stopping can be done on the assessory spindle, without moving a lathe set-up.

When ground, any steel tool will show, under magnification, numerous ridges and valleys. Every one of these valleys is actually a dull spot that will cause ripping of wood fibers rather than slicing. When any tool is fully stropped, all scratches (valleys) are gone and a noticeable difference in sharpness - therefor slicing, occurs.

Incidentally, I need to mention (again) I use the SS 4" belt sander along with my sharpening guide, and to me this is a lot easier than the sanding disk.

BTW - The recent issue of Popular Woodworking has a humorous and informative page titled "Sharpeners Anonymous". It's a good read!

Chuck- Could we get a picture of your round leather strop, please? And where do you get it? And how do you use it? I've never stropped anything before, so I'm not familiar with the process.

Thanks!

Gary

Dusty-

That is the set-up I was remembering. Thanks for finding it and posting the link. I had forgotten the key to the system, which is mounting the paper onthe back of the disk.

I agree with other postings on this thread that honing is needed after grinding. Just where grinding turns into honing, though is the question. I take my planes and chisels to at least 600 grit using the "scary sharp" method, mounting sandpaper to a dead flat piece of granite and then hone with leather strops. Turning tools so far I have not sharpened beyond 320 grit; gouges get a few swipes on the inside with a slipstone after grinding. Not saying this is the best or even the "right" way, just what I have come to accept. After reading this thread I may try taking the lathe gouges to a sharper edge. I am a little leery though that since gouge work is pretty hard on an edge that if the edge is too fine it won't last very long.

Interesting thread.

I, also, have to agree with Chuck. If you want to have a sharp tool, you have to hone it!

There are numerous ways, and methods to accomplish the mission. I have the lathe tool guide, and the Strip Sander. I use the strip sander with a leather belt, and a honing compound applied to it.

I also use water stones for many of my tools, especially the flat blades, and follow up with a piece of flat leather attached to wood, with the honing compound applied.

As stated by Chuck, when a tool starts to dull, a few quick laps on the leather renews the edge, and allows you to complete what you are doing.

A while back, I did a review of the CD Sharpening Woodworking Tools by Leonard Lee. He showcases the water stones, and a strip sander (not SS). He also shows one how to take, for example, a turning gouge, and a piece of scrap wood (Yes! another use of scrap wood), and create the concave shape of the tool. Once created, you apply the honing compound to the wood, and can now hone that difficult angle. Many wood carvers use this method because of the shape of their carving tools.

I used to think that sharpening was a big pain. I learned that once you have a sharp tool, it is far easier and faster to maintain that edge if you don't let it get too dull.

To sum up, it really depends on what you are doing, the mood that you are in, and the item that needs sharpening. This is the reason that I use all three methods/combination, although I favor the water stones for most items.

FlashbacPT
John:)