Sharpening Wood Lathe Tools

Making useful and beautiful articles out of wood is called wood carving. The most popular products of wood carving are wooden toys, wood cutlery and household decorative pieces. Small pieces of wooden furniture like stools and pet tables can also be whittled. In order to give the desired shape and size to these items, a sharp wood lathe tool is required. A wood lathe tool needs to be sharpened every now and then. Some tools need to be sharpened from both the sides while some have only one sharp side. Services are available for sharpening wood lathe tools, but it would be just wonderful if this simple work could be done at home. Though sharpening wood lathe tools is quite time-consuming, it is interesting to do. Knowledge of the various steps and techniques involved is very important. Read on to get a brief idea of both.

• Search for a good tool grinder. A 3500 RPM grinder is known to be the best. Purchase one and set it up at a suitable place.
• Put 25 pounds of sand into the grinder. The sand acts as a shock absorber. It is needed to keep the grinder stable while working. Generally, grinders are provided with doors to keep the sand bags. In case the grinder is without doors, keep containers of sand around the legs for stabilization.
• The tool grinder comes with a wheel. This wheel can always be replaced with one that you feel will work better with the wood lathe tools. According to experienced wood lathe suppliers, aluminum soft bond wheel made up of 60 bit aluminum oxide is best. You can easily get wood lathe tool grinder wheels from wood lathe suppliers.
• The grinder wheel needs to be cleaned and rounded frequently. This is necessary for good sharpening. There are tools specially designed for rounding and cleaning the grinder wheel. Rounding of the grinder wheel is best done with a diamond dresser. For cleaning, a star dresser is considered to be the best. Therefore, purchase these tools.
• Put on the grinder. Sparge some water on the wheel. This minimizes sparking.
• To sharpen a dull blade, set a gouge tool at a 4- degree angle against the grinder wheel. While working, you need to keep moving the gouge tool up and down, with a little pressure.
• Tool grinders can sharpen spindle gouges as well. The procedure is the same as above, but the spindle gouge is placed at 70-degrees across the grinder wheel.
• A Bowel grinder is also placed at 70-degree angle, while an oland tool is set at 45-degree angle against the grinder wheel. This is also followed by the same process of moving the wheel up and down.

There are a number of delicate tools that cannot be sharpened with machines. They need to be sharpened by hand. Skews, scrapers and parting tools are some examples. To carry out sharpening by hand, you need to purchase a sanding stone of 1000 grit. Hold the stone in one hand and the tool at a 45-degree angle in the other hand. Apply light pressure and scrape the tool back and forth on the sanding stone.

Wood lathe tool sharpening, if done regularly, would help you to carry out wood working even more effectively and efficiently. Sharpening, if done at home, has an added advantage of being cost-effective. Having a wood lathe sharpening grinder at home would help you to take care of your wood lathe tools on a regular basis so you can work on your wood-carving projects whenever you wish.