John from Lutz
One of the hardest things I dealt with when starting turning was the sharpening of the gouges. Everybody has a different opinion and that is not bad. There are a lot of options for you to try to find what works for you. I even bought a number of medium grade gouges so I could work with different grinds without having to stop to change the grind in the middle of turning. I decided I liked the Ellsworth grind. I finally met Don Gieger, http://www.geigerssolutions.com, and ended up with a his pro solutions jig to be used with the Vari-Grind. It raises the contact point of the leg in the basket. This makes a big difference in how the wings grind. He has replaced it with an updated and less expensive version. Perhaps the best thing was that in talking with him he explained a lot of turners grind the wings to sharply such that there is almost no bevel which makes them grabby. I now grind the wings with as much bevel as possible which works well with both pull cuts and shear cuts for the final clean up.