sharpening..stones vs hones

Hi everyone.

I want to get some templates from Lindsay to sharpen my gravers.
I am a setter and can sharpen by hand/eye, but sometimes I just want perfection with angles.

Would you say the stones are enough to sharpen from a blank without spending the money on a hone?
I mean yes, I can afford a hone but if I only have to sharpen 10-15 gravers every so often and just redothe face it it chips...Do I really neet the hone?

Will the faces and angles be exactly the same quality with using the sone system vs a hone? Just a bit more elbow grease?

Thanks

Good evening,
I believe if your only wanting a few good gravers every now and then the the stones will be perfect for you. Also if your mostly doing softer metals a tungsten carbide graver will almost not dull at all, sure it takes a while to get one shaped but after that the template will make re sharpening a simple matter.

Wouldn’t make the leap to a powered hone unless doing stainless steel is in your future. In that case you’ll be snapping tips and sharpening so often the stones will quickly become obsolete.

Hope this helps and have a great week. BB

ByrnBucks said:

Good evening,
I believe if your only wanting a few good gravers every now and then the the stones will be perfect for you. Also if your mostly doing softer metals a tungsten carbide graver will almost not dull at all, sure it takes a while to get one shaped but after that the template will make re sharpening a simple matter.

Wouldn’t make the leap to a powered hone unless doing stainless steel is in your future. In that case you’ll be snapping tips and sharpening so often the stones will quickly become obsolete.

Hope this helps and have a great week. BB

Click to expand...

Thanks, mostly platinum and 18k gold...

it's quite easy to do initial quick shaping using a common bench grinder. then "finish off" with the template sets. the "quick'work must be done with care and keep a can of water handy.

It is easy to use a common drill press as a hone, as Shaun Hughes shows at youtube


the drill press bit starts at about 5:30

I used a similiar setup to shape gravers before I built my minihone, as I found shaping the blanks purely by hand too tedious.

For the quality of the faces and angles: if you use templates and stones, much depends on the stability of your setup. The stones should be flat and parallel to the surface where you slide your templates on back and forth. The edges of your templates should be straight, the graver well fixed in the template. Especially when you grind the heels, small deviations in angle produce significant variations in the heels. You could built a setup with a glass plate to slide the templates back and forth, and finely levelled emplacements for the stones as it was described for the crocker sharpener in the past.

When using a hone, you have to be sure the your wheels have got a flat surface. I was chasing inconsistencies on my mini hone and finally found that they came from the slightly domed shape of the punched-out copper discs I use with diamond paste. As mentioned before, the heels are the most sensitive faces. As stone setter, many of your gravers got no heels, right?

Cheers

Ralf

For the Crocker setup I mentioned above see the Meek book (The art of engraving), pages 104-107

I would recommend that you purchase a couple of diamond laps from E-Z Lap. They aren't very expensive and last a very long time. Search the web for diamond laps .I have several in different grades that are 2 inches by 4 inches.
I also have a Easy lap machine that I only use to shape the graver. After sharpening I use diamond laps to resharpen.