Sharpening gouges - side to side or fore and aft?
Chris Knight in UK
>The thread lower down on sharpening a gouge stimulated me to ask this question. Is there really a best way (Fore and aft or side to side)?
I sharpen planes and regular chisels fore and aft because it is easy to do so - with or without a jig and that is how I was taught. However, having very recently taken up woodcarving, I was taught by Chris Pye to sharpen gouges by hand from side to side (Vee tools and chisels fore and aft). I do not think I could maintain the proper bevel angles on a gouge going fore and aft and whilst this may just be my inadequacy, I wonder if it really matters?
I suspect that the premise that scratches "parallel" to the edge weaken the edge is just wrong. First I doubt that anyone working by hand can create scratches perfectly parallel to an edge so one or two scratches will inevitably intersect the edge at an angle. How is this different from the many scratches intersecting the edge at nearly a right angle when one goes fore and aft? Arguably there will be less serration of the edge!
Even if a very, very thin section of blade were to break off entirely at a parallel scratch, the thickness of metal thus exposed would be so thin that a quick honing on a strop would restore it.
I am really out of the ballpark here?
Chris