Sharpening: newbie follow-up
VTAndy
>Hi,
A while back I had posted some questions about grinding and sharpening.
A friend who builds violins gave me a very nice lesson on sharpening. The blades I wanted to work with were the blades that came with the old Stanley #7 and #5 that I had acquired about a month ago. We discovered that the bevels were at quite high angles -- around 40 degrees -- and so we decided to lower them to around 30 degrees. We did this on a Tormek. My friend first showed me how to dress the wheel, and then we established new primary bevels on the 2 irons. We then honed them on waterstones. I was very satisfied with the sharpness that I was able to achieve. And generally, I found the Tormek surprisingly easy to use.
I have enjoyed learning about the techniques that different people use for sharpening. This friend is a violin-builder by trade, and he uses the waterstones in a different manner than I've seen before. He holds the waterstone up on end, sighting down it, holds the blade in the other hand and passes it only once -- or twice if necessary -- down the length of the stone. Difficult to describe, as I just now realized. However, since he works only with razor sharp tools, it is apparently effective for him.
So, I'm happily experimenting! And I'll probably continue to work with a variety of methods for now.
One question, however. The old #7 actually came with two blades. One with a mostly straight edge, slightly curved off at the edge, and another that is radiused. I haven't used the radiused blade yet -- and we noticed that that blade is warped. What can I do about that? Is it worth working on or should I just forget about it? We didn't touch this blade in our sharpening exercises.
-Andy