I use sharpening services for things like my saw blades and planer and jointer blades. But not chisels or hand plane blades. For those of us who do bridge work, I think it is essential to have developed skills for sharpening - whatever the means may be as detailed by so many in this thread. Doing good bridge notching by hand requires deadly sharp edges to do it well, along with the proper "English" to manipulate the blade to pare away that hard maple. When I feel the edge starting to go away a bit while notching, I pull out the stones and quickly touch it up.. I repeat quickly because one thing that has not yet been discussed here is frequency of sharpening, and the best way to keep your tools at their very sharpest all the time. We have described the process of going through a progression of ever finer grits until we arrive at that mirror edge. That takes some time as we bring a new chisel from raw to ravishing. What has not been mentioned is that it is very little work to keep that edge in prime condition if we discipline ourselves to touch it up regularly. When you start feeling the edge go a bit dull, just walk over to your finest grit stone and make a few passes top and bottom and you're there again. That takes a couple of minutes max. In the process of notching a set of bridges, I might do that a couple of times. The job moves more quickly and the result is better. So why would I want to go to the trouble of sending out those chisels for a day or two, when I can have it back in two minutes, and sharper than I would ever get from the service? If one is going to aspire to be a true craftsman who uses hand chisels and planes to manipulate wood, part of the skill set required is the ability to sharpen these tools well. Indeed, it is very much a part of the aesthetic of being a hand craftsman. They are what make the truly fine work possible along with the other developed skills of the craftsman. Will Truitt From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Gene Nelson Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 1:43 PM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Of Chisels For all of the time that we spend sharpening, at least one person on the forum sees an economic advantage to using their local sharpening service. Anyone else try this? Thanks for the tip Isaac. Gene ----- Original Message ----- From: Terry Farrell <mailto:mfarrel2 at tampabay.rr.com> To: davidlovepianos at comcast.net ; pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 10:35 AM Subject: Re: [pianotech] Of Chisels The flat sides of the stone wheel. One side is a coarse grit and the other is a fine grit. After that the leather lap. Does a real good job. I fully realize there are less expensive ways to sharpen a chisel or whatever. But for those of us who for whatever reason do not have the natural skills to sharpen by hand, the Tormek unit really does provide a great avenue for keeping cutting tools very sharp. Terry Farrell On Oct 10, 2010, at 11:01 AM, David Love wrote: I'm curious about those who use the Tormek system, how do you go about flattening the back of the chisel? David Love www.davidlovepianos.com <http://www.davidlovepianos.com/> On Oct 10, 2010, at 10:16 PM, David Love wrote: The question was whether the Tormek system had a procedure for flattening the back of the chisel since after the Tormek investment it would make sense to try and avoid having to invest in quality stones as well. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101011/b4cc331a/attachment.htm>
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