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grinding/sharpening spoon knives and gouge-type blades?


dragon

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How do some of you handle grinding and sharpening on blades that aren't straight?  I'm currently doing them free-hand on a grinding wheel, but it's pretty easy to slip and get a very inconsistent bevel angle.  Are there any jigs or methods that help? Or should you just do as much of the grinding/sharpening as possible before putting in the bend?

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You need to dedicate a wheel to this type of work.  Normally you dress a wheel to eliminate rounded edges when working flat stock, in this case you need the opposite. Dress the corners off the wheel to a rounded shape with diamond tip or other commercial wheel dresser.

 

Look in some of the popular wood workers forums or catalogs for specialty wheels and jigs used for wood carvers and turners to dress chisels.

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  • 2 weeks later...

How do some of you handle grinding and sharpening on blades that aren't straight?  I'm currently doing them free-hand on a grinding wheel, but it's pretty easy to slip and get a very inconsistent bevel angle.  Are there any jigs or methods that help? Or should you just do as much of the grinding/sharpening as possible before putting in the bend?

 

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are you wanting to grind an internal or external bevel on the hooked blade?

 

 I make a lot of spoon carving hooks with an external bevel and they are fairly simple. First I use a small contact wheel on my belt grinder to flatten the inside surface off, before I made the wheel I used a Dremel with a sanding drum. Then to put the external bevel on I set the table up at an angle to the platen on my grinder and just run the blade along it, assuming the blade back is flat to the table I get good consistent bevels.

 

On internal bevels such as the Motugan style crooked knife (which I rarely make coz they are a pain in the rear and I don't think work very well anyway!), I find it easiest to grind the bevel most of the way before bending it into a hook (ie on a straight blade). That way I have the bulk of the steel out of the way and there is a guide angle to work from when I come to post heat treat grinding. After the heat teat I have used said dremel with sanding drums to finish off and a small grinding wheel in Dremel to grind off the bulk. Slow, tedious and not as good as I would like, but it does work. I expect the small contact wheels that I made for spoon hooks and gouges would work too, but I haven't made this style of blade in a long time.

 

The other option for internal bevels is to grind befoe bending as described, then after heat treat remove the decarb ith sanding drum on dremel, but do the bulk grinding from the outside on the flat 'back'. That would mean starting with a 4mm thick bar if you want a 3mm thick blade, but might be easier than trying to grind an internal bevel fully o risking thinning the edge too much before heat treat

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