well Matthew we've seen a lot of tools
but we need something to sharpen them
with if you get something to sharpen
them with well there are a lot of ways
to do it one of my favorite is here
today store Mac so we'll go over and see
what they're doing today hey there
can you sharpen some of the tools I
thought I can be happy to now what we're
looking at here is a chisel that has
been sharpened on the tour Mac that's
got a beautiful edge on it but you guys
don't want to see how to sharpen a tool
that's already sharp right no point to
that you'd like to see something sharpen
the needs to be sharp so let's loan this
one to our next-door neighbor neighbor
is a nice guy but he's not much of a
woodworker and he'll take it and use it
to cut nails or chipped concrete open
paint cans drop it half a dozen times so
you know that got a screwdriver and
he'll still have to go over to this
place to get it that's messed up you'll
never be able to fix that well we sure
can't do any woodworking with it right
now that's for sure so we have to
completely recondition that tool reshape
it grind the necks out and get it back
to a useable edge we're going to start
that by taking our straightedge jig a
slide the chisel in here bring it up
against the indexed edge bring the
clamps down and lock it up now we're
going to slide on to the universal
support we're going to set the bevel
angle that we grind on the chisel by the
height of universe
we're going to measure that angle with
this guy this is called the angle master
and we can use this to set any angle
between 10 and 75 degrees for this
chisel when wanted at 25 put the pointer
25 and lock it and we're going to rest
it on two points in the circumference of
the stone bring it up to the tool adjust
it up or down until the back of the
chisel just matches the guy so far is
easy
there's your 25 degrees locking up and
we're ready to go the tour Mac uses a
220 grit aluminum oxide grindstone it's
turning at 90 rpm and it's running
through a water bath now between the low
speed and the water this is so cool you
can't even burn your fingers on it so
you can take the tempera I can't take
the temper out of the tool you can't
hurt the tool you can't hurt yourself a
lot of folks ask me about pressure or
how much pressure do I use when I'm
grinding the simple answer is it doesn't
matter you can put enough on there to
pick it up you can't make the tool hot
you can't stall it out you can't hurt
the tool the grindstone or the motor
other side of the coin though if you
have arthritis of your hands and you
can't bear down like that it really
doesn't matter you can get the tool just
a sharp with fingertip pressure just
going to take a little bit longer to do
it now in practice what I do is about
halfway between them but put a little
bit of pressure up on the back of the
handle little pressure down on the front
of the blade to work back and forth
we've been at this for I'm going to say
a couple of minutes let's take a look
and see where we are we can slide that
off take a look at just a couple of
spots where I don't quite have the
Knicks out yet slide that back on give
it just a couple more seconds and we'll
have a tool perfectly reshaped and it's
nice and square it is going to be
perfectly squared because we indexed it
in our gym
there we go just a couple of minutes and
we completely recondition that tool now
we've got a little wire edge on there
we're going to take care of that in a
minute but the next thing we need to do
is take every scratch that's in that
bevel we need to make every scratch
smaller and put all the scratches closer
together and what that usually means is
you've got to go to a different
grindstone or it means give up on the
grinder all together and start using
vege stuns sure with the tormek we're
going to take the same stone and change
the way that it cuts it's great feel the
surface the wheel just nice that's the
200 220 grit cut this piece is called
the stone grater I'm going to use this
smooth side of this and we're actually
going to polish the surface of the
grindstone
this is fracturing each crystal in the
surface of the stone we're going to
change the affected cutting action from
the 220 grit that we use to get the mix
out to a very fine cutting 1000 grit
then we're going to use to refine the
scratch pattern on the stone
takes about 30 seconds and if you feel
that after we use the grader you'll see
that it's a very very smooth yes big
difference in it huge now the beauty of
this is when we go back to work
everything is exactly the same same
grater same stone same jig it's got to
be the same angle you don't have to
reset recalibrate or realign anything
just slide it back on and go back to
work since everything is perfectly
calibrated this step is very quick 25 or
30 seconds - this is all you're going to
need to smooth out the scratches in the
bevel
and after that step you can see we have
a much more polished edge now at this
point it's a well ground chisel but it's
not quite ready to use feel on the back
right out at the edge building urge that
wire edge is exactly what we wanted the
grinder to do but if you leave that on
there and you start using the tool the
edge is going to break down very quickly
and your right bag to go to finish the
job you want to cut that right Ridge off
the back and we'd like to polish out the
bevel a bit more which used to mean we
were going to spend the rest of the day
with a set of bench things with a tormek
we're going to finish it up right on the
machine
faster and easier this set of the
grinder is a leather strop sort of like
the old fashioned barber shop strop
except now it's got a motor on it the
paste I put on there is a six thousand
grit aluminum oxide honing compound
we're going to use that to cut that wire
edge off the back and then we're going
to polish the belt
and then just to make sure we get it
work completely off we'll go back and
forth a couple of times from the flat
side to the bevel side
you can see we're developing a mirror
polish on both sides of the tool
about seven minutes ago I beat that with
a hatchet at about the time it would
take to watch the morning weather we
have put a perfect cutting edge on that
suit is just wonderful thank you so much
you're welcome Wow that is one sharp - I
could probably even scare my
mother-in-law off with this tip thank
you so much you're welcome thanks
Charles