to hone or not to hone

[TB Roye]

My Delta Lathe is arriving tomorrow, getting a little excited. Knowing I will want to play with it after setting it up I went to Woodcraft and used a gift card and 10% off cupon and purchased a 3 piece Pen turnig HSS set. On the website catalogue is says they need to be honed before use. Found a site on the web that says it is not necessary to hone. Question do I need to just to practice? I will take them back if necessary to get them honed. Right now I have no way of shapening them or honing them. Any advice would be appriciated. All the other stuff for turning pens in on various wish lists so I will have to wait for couple of week to see what all I get. I am going to practice/play with scraps of wood I have around, oak, poplar, brazilian cherry.

What is good book to get for bigenrs? Have to go out by Woodcraft later today so I can stop and get one.

Tom

[scmhogg]

Tom,

If they don't "need" honing, they will certainly benefit from it. Honing can be done easily with leather strops. Make a flat one by gluing a strip of leather on a board. For the curved chisels, make a groove the same radius as the gouge and line it with leather. Use a fine rouge stick to charge the leather.

Draw the tool towards you, away from the edge.

Steve

[TB Roye]

Some where around here is my dad's old razor strap. Some reason I kept, felt it a few times and not with a razor. I was in pretty good shape last time I saw, it is wrapped in plastic so might not have dried out. Will find it and use it.

Tom

[gerti]

You will need sharpening supplies soon, most likely a slow-speed or variable speed grinder. Turning chisels do have to be sharpened frequently, depending on wood and technique between every few minutes and every few hours. However most turners seem to agree that the edge coming from the grinder is good enough and honing is a waste of time.

That being said there are quite a few turners that use a diamond hone to touch up the edge frequently, thus reducing trips to the grinder. That works well because the grinder leaves a slight concave, which makes it easy (little material) to touch it up quite a few times until the concave is gone.

The state tools come from the manufacturer varies, some are ready to use and others need sharpening first.

[Uncle Cracker]

E.T hone foam... E.T. hone foam...

[TB Roye]

Well so much for free 2nd day shipping. Was supposed to be here by 5pm. todlay According to DHL Website it didn't leave Wilmington Ohio until 1:36pm I assume Eastern Time this afternoon. At least I did have to pay for it. Will now go on Amazon and cancel their Prime shipping service.

Tom

[Russianwolf]

I know, I know.... Sometime I sound like a PSI commercial, but

for sharpening I got this

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/lcm6.html

again, it may not be the best, but it works. Since most of my turnings are small I have it on the lathe all the time (watch your hands when you get close to the headstock though, I scorched a nuckle one day). I have a course grit one one side and the fine grit on the other. I've now found that I can just use the fine grit. It takes a bit of practice, but in essence it's the same as the worksharp system that's selling for $200+, you just dion't have the guide. oh, and no concave edges.

[Anna]

Knowing I will want to play with it after setting it up I went to Woodcraft and used a gift card and 10% off cupon and purchased a 3 piece Pen turnig HSS set. On the website catalogue is says they need to be honed before use. Found a site on the web that says it is not necessary to hone. Question do I need to just to practice?

There's a huge difference between a sharp chisel and one that is not. But it doesn't have to be super sharp to work. I used my chisels out of the box and made a bunch of pens before it occurred to me that I probably needed to sharpen them (that was when I was still scared of the high speed grinder). So for practice, you can probably get away with using the chisels new.

You will get to a point, however, when it will seem like it's getting to be more work to use them.

Some types of wood are evidently easier to turn than others. I'd tell you which ones they are, but I'm practically illiterate when it comes to wood types (I bought a bag of miscellaneous pen blanks from WoodCraft for $12, and it contained more than 50 pieces, all unidentifiable as far as I was concerned). I know there's a reddish wood that was cutting like butter, even with my then-unsharpened chisels. I think it was padauk, but it could be bloodwood.

[TB Roye]

We cut down some dead and dying pine/fir trees of some type today at church. I grabed a bunch a limbs and brances that were fairly straight and 10" or less in diameter. They are not all dried out a few still have some moisture in them. These will be my prictice pieces. Went by Woodcraft last night and picked up a set of HSS Pen Turning tools and 2 DVD's on turning. I will now wait and see what I get for my Birthday and will buy more of what I need later this month. I will probably go with the PSI grinder and sharpening system and get their Basic Starter set to bigin with. Lathe should be here tomorrow morning so will get the yard work done first thing and have there rest of the weekend to play.

Tom

[gsmittle]

E.T hone foam... E.T. hone foam...

You must be my evil twin. I was thinking the same thing!

g.

[TB Roye]

Where can I buy some E.T. Hone Foam. I looked and looked and no website. Is this a special concoction that woodturners use? I willput a basket on my bicycle and go looking this morning

Tom

[Ken Massingale]

You must be my evil twin. I was thinking the same thing!

g.

Cracker's twin???? Now, that's a dubious honor!

Kidding UC

[Sawduster]

Truly honing turning tools is, IMO, an exercise in futility. Within seconds of the metal hitting the wood the edge will have sufficiently deteriorated such that the honing was wasted. As a rule, honing an edge only removes the very small imperfections in the edge, thus prolonging the edge on a cutting tool. Honing does not make the edge itself smaller, and thus sharper, than what is obtained from a fairly course grit of sharpening media. The speed of the work piece spinning and contacting the newly sharpened edge immediately takes a big hunk of that edge out.

I use a benchtop belt sander with a 100 grit belt for sharpening my turning tools. I'm more comfortable with that than a grinder. It only takes a few seconds and most times I don't even turn the lathe off. Just renew the edge and back to work. I've tried refining that edge on stones etc and find no increased longevity of the edge, at least none sufficient to the extra time it takes to refine the edge further.