|
Back to Page 2
General Hand Maintenance of Gouges
I have found that the easiest way for a beginner and an experienced carver to sharpen gouges is to
get a small 6 x 6 inch piece of 5/8 or ½ inch MDF board. Take your gouge and using a straight edge run a channel or
grove down the MDF board. After an initial channel is made, then go over it repeatedly making it deeper in the MDF material.
Label the channel to correspond to the gouge that you made it with. Then rub the compound into the channel and draw
the gouge backwards through it… Thus, if you have 10 tools, you should have 10 channels to use. If you do this
with a new tool before the profile gets damaged, you will have the correct profile to maintain your tool like new.
Maintaining the Inner edge (Burr Removal)
If you want you can use a piece of tapered leather for V tools, or with rounded gouges, you can
get a variety of dowel wood pieces that fit the curvature of your gouges. Cut the dowels into 6 inch lengths or so and
rub compound on them and draw the inside edge to remove the inner burr. Note, for V tools you can make V sections in
5/8 inch thick MDF by tilting your saw table ½ the number of degrees of your final V, and running the MDF piece through 2
times , one on each side. Thus, for a 60 degree V, set the tilt on your saw blade, 30 degrees, and run MDF piece through
twice. Then, using a 6 inch length, you run the compound over the V and draw it over the inner edge of your V tool to
remover the burr. Last year, I was talking to Steve Schooler, a professional carver in Texas, he has Judged our Chip
0 Tex Show for several years. Steve told me that he once took a seminar with Harold Enlow. When talking about
the sharpening, Harold indicated he never worried about remove the inside burr. He said “After the first few cuts,
the wire burr falls off anyway!” Oh well, sometimes I do stroke the burr and sometimes I don’t. You
do what makes you feel most comfortable.
Reshaping of Blades
Power grinders and
wet stones can be used but you must be careful not to over heat the blade. It must be kept cool! Furthermore,
power remover so much so fast that you must be very careful when you use it. For the most part I reshape by hand, using
diamond surfaces.
Home
|
