Grinder recommendations - complete novice needs advice!

[TEP]

Hi Chas.

I may have jumped the gun with my comment, but I was at my club meet last night, and was asked to help sharpen some of the guys chisels.

Let's face it if you have sharp tools your over half way there already when learning to do woodwork of any kind.

 

[Alf]

As a known hand-grinder lunatic, I'd have to say I wouldn't fancy sharpening turning tools on one and don't. I agree with Paul that I think you'd need some very specific jigs to manage it and I think it'd be a lot more restrictive. Plus you'd need to budget for a better wheel so you'd be soon tapping at the door of a cheap double-ended one anyway. fwiw I have an older Axminster basic 6" model with the original 19mm wide white wheel on one end (with a gouge jig) and a 25mm ruby with a Rowley-esque homemade rest for everything else on the other and it seems to deal with my modest roundy-spinny needs okay.

Cheers, Alf

 

[Steve Russell]

Hello,

Thanks so much for the warm welcome! You can always count on woodturners to be friendly chaps!

Nick: I only recently found this forum and since it's UK based, it's even better. For the last five years I have been doing a lot of traveling and demonstrating woodturning techniques all across the U.S. In the last few years, I have demonstrated woodturning 1,764 times (1 hour + demos) and racked up about 450,000+ air miles in the process. My schedule did not allow much time to participate in groups like this, so now that my schedule has eased, I'm getting back into participating in the internet woodturning groups.

More importantly, many years ago when I opened my studio, several woodturners helped me get started by answering the millions of questions I had opening my woodturning studio, Eurowood Werks. My participation in groups like these, is one small way for me to repay that debt. Hopefully, I can also share some of the things I have learned in the last 11 years as a professional woodturner running a very successful and profitable studio.

In addition, I was a featured writer for The Guild of Master Craftsman's "Woodturning" magazine a few years ago when Mark Baker was the editor. Writing is in my blood and writing about woodturning is my passion. Also, although I was born in the U.S., my ancestral heritage is English, so dropping in from time to time here this allows me to keep in touch...

Dave: Thanks for the kind words about my website. We are in the process of coding and loading 300+ articles into my website, all original articles written by me in three phases of 100 articles each. We are also planning on adding video segments to many of the articles, so we are filming the segments as we can fit them into my studio schedule. We have 20 articles in the library now, and we're working on adding the rest. We are HTML newbies though, so it's taking some time to do the HTML coding and photo optimizing for each article. Luckily, my wife types 140 words per minute, so the typing is going fast!

CHJ: Thanks for the welcome! I happy to help whenever I can. Thanks again to everyone and all the best to you and yours!

 

[Paul.J]

Hello Steve and welcome.
I agree with Dave nice website,more reading to do :roll:


Alf wrote
As a known hand-grinder lunatic.
Must admit Alf when i saw your film debut i thought you done a great job grinding one handed,not that you've got a disability,but moving the blade across with one hand and turning the handle with the other,very difficult to do with a flat blade,for me anyway :roll:
Paul.J.

 

[stewart]

Hi Steve

Welcome to the forum and thanks for your tips. Your website has been added to my favourites and I look forward to studying it in more depth. I'm off to a wood show tomorrow so may well return with a grinder... :lol:

Thanks to all the other contributors - you've really filled a gap in my knowledge - even if part of it is to show me that sharpening is a HUGE topic :wink:

 

[Bodrighy]

I am sure that there was a time when all wood turning tools were sharpened on a non electric grinder but I suspect that many of them were like the one that I used a s a scout and were operated wit a foot treadle. The thought of trying to hold my three foot long deep bowl gouge up against a hand operated grinder is not something I, as a newbie, really fancy. Blimey It's hard enough as it is on my 6" B&Q 1/2" wide grey wheel grinder as it is.

Pete

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Steve... ex colonials usually get a warm welcome :lol:

The hand wheel grinder seems to have created a little stir....

When I read the original posting I thought it was a good idea...

... yet another opportunity to let satnex2 (aka 'er indoors, wassername) get involved and feel useful :wink:

(Alf... it's gender non specific :lol: ... )