My first experiences with sharpening turning gouges

[stevebot]

At the Hartville Hardware Tool Sale our freshly sharpened turning gouge was used by the Buckeye Turning Club to turn a well aged piece of maple.  The resulting finish was shiny and smooth to the touch without any sanding.

I got a chance to sharpen a gouge with the Ellsworth grind. Piece of cake once you know the formula - 6. 75, A. By way of contrast our gouge was 2, 65, A.

[mike40]

Good to hear that you got such good results Steve. I haven't sharpened any of my turning tools yet on my Tormek. I recently bought the turner's kit so I am looking forward to trying it out.

[Ken S]

Mike, it is well worth your time to get comfortable and enjoy the DVD included with the turner's kit. Be sure to watch both the sharpening and use sections.

Enjoy,

Ken

[Rob]

Just so happens I turned an Olive ash bowl today and 3 times I tickled the old 3/8" bowl gouge on the T......it does excel at that one function I must say.  It puts a fantastic edge on the tool and I leave it pre-set up for this one grind.  All I have to do is insert the gouge into the elliptical jig....I ram it up against a spacer I have set at 65mm to calibrate the protrusion setting and then while holding it, tighten the jig knob.  On to the usb it goes, in wheel away from you mode and literally 4 or 5 passes and its off again and I'm back on the lathe. I would estimate without having actually timed it at no more than 1 minute from start to finish, possibly even less.

The real speed trick is of course to have the usb preset and have a spacing jig to calibrate the P setting.  Because I'm using repeated measurements, the bevel is exactly matched every time so you only need to remove a tiny sliver of steel and it does the entire bevel.  If you had to set it up each time, subtle differences would lead to more grinding to leave the bevel single facet.  But this way is optimal, though luxury of course because obviously one doesn't normally have a Tormek dedicated to a single tool grind!!