Workers Of Wood

I recently purchased an adze that has the bevel on the inside of the curve, (incanel). I also have some carving gouges that are incanel type. These present special sharpening challenges. I have yet to find any manufacturer's type sharpening tool that fits all diameters and curve radii that will also put a razor edge on them. Grinding points for drill or dremel are available in quite a few diameters which are good for reshaping the bevels if for example you want more slope on them but I haven't come across any that are extremely fine grained. Luckily the solution is simple and cheap. Automotive wet/dry sandpaper does an excellent job and comes in some pretty fine grits.

To sharpen my adze I purchased one sheet each of 320, 800, and 2000 grit Klingspor sandpaper. Wet/dry sandpaper has silicon carbide grit on it so it cuts tool steel easily. I cut off three pieces of the paper about 2 to 2 1/2" long by 1 1/4 to 1 1/2" wide and wrapped them around a magic marker starting with the 320 grit one. A few minutes each of stroking them back and forth at the correct angle on the bevel had the edge sharp enough to cleanly cut some test wood. On incanel gouges you can usually find something that is close to right radius between wooden dowels, pens, markers, pencils, or anything else that is tubular in shape. It's also a good method for removing the burr on outcanel gouges. One photo shows some test cuts with the adze and it is cutting very cleanly sharpened to 2000 grit. If you want even smoother you can get felt bobs for drill or dremel and charge them with green honing compound. The green compound is 8000 grit and will polish the bevels.

If hand sharpening is too tedious for you then you can motorize the process by gluing paper to wooden dowel and chucking it in a drill. I always use Lee Valley's fish glue for doing this. Fish glue is forever water soluble so when the paper wears out you rip off what you can and then spritz what's left with water and wait two minutes. Then peel off the remainder. That leaves a sticky residue which you can either add more glue to or wipe off with a wet rag and then start over with new paper. You don't need to replace the dowel every time.

If you are using a dowel that is too large for a drill chuck it's easy to cut a tenon on the end of that will go in a chuck. This is a method borrowed from Papasombre. I just set up a miter gauge on my table saw that is roughly centered to the apex of the blade and set the fence for 3/4 to 1" depth and then advance the end of a long piece of dowel rod over a blade that has been raised enough to take off all but the center 3/8" of the diameter. You just keep advancing it to the miter gauge, rotate it around and then back up, move over, advance again, and rotate again until you've turned that part round. Then cut off the tenon and about 2 to 3" of the full diameter and glue sandpaper around it. Photos are in reverse order.

Is there a reason why the miter gauge is in backwards...? And is it clamped in place...?

Not really and not clamped. The only reason I did it that way was so I could advance the dowel into the blade until it stopped at the miter gauge. I just left the gauge in that spot and did the rest by hand. It was faster that way. You could keep the dowel against the gauge if it was facing the other way and use the miter gauge to advance the dowel to roughly where the apex of the blade would be and then rotate it when you got there. That way would probably be a little smoother than my way but mine was accurate enough to chuck in a drill. If you were making a dowel on the end to fit a drilled hole it would be better if it was smoother than mine. Also if you were tenoning the end for that type reason I would either mark where the miter gauge should stop or make a stop to fit in the groove to butt it up against. I do have a home made device that can do that. I made it to lock a thin strip ripping gauge onto a saw that has only the old style standard miter gauge channels that aren't t-grooved. One of the things I want to do in time is create a shop hacks/tips thread like Paduke did on RF and things like it and turning the tenon on the end of a dowel would go in that.

Cherryville Chuck wrote: ↑Sun Nov 01, 2020 6:47 pm One of the things I want to do in time is create a shop hacks/tips thread like Paduke did on RF and things like it and turning the tenon on the end of a dowel would go in that.

Gotcha...great idea for shop hacks/tips thread...looking forward to it...