How to Sharpen Wood Lathe Tools

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dave Trull with the Trull Gallery, a custom furniture shop in St. Petersburg, Florida. And let me talk to you about how to sharpen lathe tools. You can either use a common bench grinder or you can use a slow-speed grinder like I use. I prefer the slow-speed grinder. It doesn't heat up the tool, and it allows you a little bit more control because it's not removing stock quite as quickly. What I'm going to show you is a simple way to sharpen your gouges. And how you sharpen a gouge is very similar to how you sharpen your other tools. The difference is, you get...you...this tool is being rolled on the stone where your flat tools are being held square to the stone. Simply turn my slow-speed grinder on, and this is also a wet grinder, so it also helps to keep the tools even cooler. And I've come up with a little rest here. There are commercially available versions, or you can make your own. And this allows me to put the tool in the socket. And I've already checked to make sure that I'm going to be at the right place on my stone because what you want to do is maintain the angle that the chisel came from the factory. Put the tool in the socket, bring it down to the stone. And we're just going to rock it back and forth. With gouges, especially, it's easy to tell that you've cleaned that edge up. You might find a little burr on the inside right here. Nothing you can see, but you can feel it. In this case, for this tool, I found that a one-inch dowel matches the profile very well. And I just take some 220 sandpaper and push it away from me. It only takes two or three passes, and you'll feel that burr is gone. As I said, sharpening straight tools is very similar, but since we have a straight tool, we're not going to roll the tool this time. We'll double-check our angles. Bring it in to the stone. We can work it back and forth on the stone, keeping it flat, and then roll it over and hit the other side to give us a nice, sharp tool again. Pretty simple operation, and it's something you want to do pretty frequently while you're turning to keep your tools nice and sharp to give you a nice, clean edge. I'm Dave Trull with the Trull Gallery, the fine art of furniture making."