Sharpening tooling

[teakwood]

Had to sharpen my TyG cutters, a shop charged me 80$ (8 pieces of carbide cutter tools) the price seems ok to me but the shop is 250km away, shipping isn't a big deal here. but thinking: a 1000$ sharper would pay of pretty fast. how much are these sharpers? and where can i buy one.
I was at their shop and it's not rocket science. was a drill with a diamond disk installed on a lathe with a degree indexer so you can accurately adjust to  90 degrees

Any thoughts?

[Larry]

I have a sharpening shop a few miles away that does an excellent job at reasonable cost so I really don't sharpen unless an emergency like on the weekend.  I do have the equipment and skills to do it.

I bought a Baldor tool grinder at a machine shop auction during the recession for a few dollars and it came with a dozen diamond wheels.  I use it for a quick touch up on router bits and shaper cutters free hand.



Similar setup new is going to be a lot more than your $1,000 budget and it would even be a stretch to get their with used equipment.

Sometimes I don't have a diamond wheel that will fit so I resort to the $10 method.  Harbor Freight diamond wheel  I put the wheel in a cordless drill, crude but works for a touch up.  I also have a indexer so could put the wheel in my metal lathe or milling machine but its a whole lot easier to drop the cutter off at the sharpen shop.
 
 

[teakwood]

Back to my sharpening problem. Bought this tool for cheap. very heavy duty base. was for sharpening edge control, microscope.
So my idea: want to make a moulder tool sharpener out of it. it moves on the x and y  axle very precisely, i want to take the microscope off and hang a grinder motor from it. the thing on the right which looks like a late is a 90 degree indexer, so the tooling will get mounted on this devise. only need to fabricate some kind of an arm to hang the motor from and get a motor.

What do you guys think about the motor, where do i buy a motor?  My woodmizer band sharpener uses a 1/7hp, 3500rpm motor.
So i thought of finding a AC current, 1/6- 1/4 hp, 3000-3500rpm, 110V motor.

Does anybody have actual experience with knife sharpening? which direction the wheel has to turn? do you grind from the knife edge towards the inside or outwards. couldn't find much info on youtube. i don't need shapening, only sharpening

[beenthere]

tw
Looks like a good beginning for a precise sharpener. 

[teakwood]

Well, not many tool sharper on FF i guess. found some YT videos and learned a little bit

found a nice small sharpening motor with disc and it's coming together nicely, i think

[twar]

Does anybody have actual experience with knife sharpening? which direction the wheel has to turn?

I have no experience sharpening moulder tools or TyG cutters, but I do sharpen my woodturning tools, knives and drill bits. I use a Tormek, and their instructions are that you can sharpen in either direction, with the wheel turning towards or away from the edge. The hand motion with the tool in a jig is back-and-forth and not continuously or consistently inward or outward. Seems direction is not an issue when removing material, but again, I don't know if there's something different about the tools you'll be sharpening.

[longtime lurker]

My very limited experience is the grinding wheel goes from the knife edge back.

[teakwood]

@longtime lurker  , that is definitively the way to do it.

I'm getting there, my self made grinder is almost done. The small motor i got from the widow i bought the whole metalshop from. my friend the old guy with the precision shop made the inox holding arm for the motor, had a nice bronze nut laying around, only needed to made a acme thread on the round stock bar for height adjustment.

The base is from Weinig Germany, they make the best 4 siders and moulders in the world, absolute precision piece, i can move x and y axle with a digital display in hundreds of a millimeter. the displays shows 131.88 mm. i bought the base for 500$, the motor for free and the holding arm for 100$. my TyG cutters are pretty dull right now, 2 new sets are on the way from Taiwan, but i don't dare to start sharpening yet. it will be a learning process 
 

[longtime lurker]

Where do you find the time for these types of projects?

I'm in the office by 6 am, staff start at 7 and work until 4, after that I'm usually in the log yard or drymill or back into the office until 6.30ish. Eat, sleep, repeat, run away with my lady friend for a 4 day weekend once a month or so... and the list of things that need doing to keep it all moving stretches out forever.

I'm amazed not just at the capability of some of you guys  at building or installing or modifying things, but I'm also completely at a loss as to where you find the time. That looks like a nice set-up coming together for you Ramon.

[beenthere]

longtime lurker
You don't have to take a back seat to anyone, near as I can tell.

[SwampDonkey]

With enough determination, willingness to learn, and with some wheel'n and deal'n you can usually get stuff done.

[teakwood]

Where do you find the time for these types of projects?

When i'm at full tilt (like you seem to be all the time) i don't find the time, period. But right now it's one of the slowest times i have had in a long time, quarry is at a standstill, lumber orders are slow and it's way too wet to log. so i have time to do such things, and my TyG cutters are pretty dull right now, so i ether monkey around with the new gismo and get it done or send them to resharpening, so now it's the best time to sit there and spend an entire day playing around.

Although sometimes i worry a little bit about the lack of work i calm down and enjoy the not so busy days, yesterday i accompanied my best friend on a 3h drive to a bank where he sold his farm to a buyer and the bank deposited him the money because the buyer got a loan from them. so i'm very happy for him, everything went smooth.
probably one of these days he will call me up on a midday beer time in the town, so we do take hours of our workdays sometimes, which is also important.

I'm very impressed on what you built in down under there!! and i'm surely not alone with my thoughts. That's very good that you take some days of with your girlfriend! not everything is work in life

[teakwood]

Well, did some toying around and it went pretty smooth, it's not rocket science. The sharper gismo still needs several updates to improve it's performance and speed but for the first time i got a very good result. Already learned that the "professional sharpening service" left a curved surface after sharpening    . That's the nice thing in these developing countries, if your not dumb or have two left hands you will learn to do it better than the "professionals" in no time.

You can clearly see the rounded over edge when holding against the light, learned that from somebody here on FF but don't remember who it was. def need a better magnifier glass.

than paint the surface with a pilot 

pretty nice straight edge, see where the pilot is still intact? there is where they messed up the straigth surface and did like a round over
 

[longtime lurker]

How many meters average do you get with those cutters before they need sharpening in teak?
I purchased a custom profile set recently and that order got cancelled so I haven't opened the box yet... I'm curious as to how the grade of carbide they use stands up to silica and might not use them for a long time.

And thank you for mentioning Tong Fong a while back... I'd saved the link and while I dealt with their Australian agent rather than Taiwan direct... they managed to get a set of custom knives made and landed at my place in under 21 days. Pretty impressive I thought.

I think a lot of smaller shops everywhere have issues... Sometimes it's probably care factor or the lack thereof, but I think a lot is worn equipment that doesn't see enough use to justify replacement. I'd like to eventually bring sharpening in house here but for now it's one more job that I don't have time to do so I keep sending knives to the sharpening guys and using insert knives where I can.

[teakwood]

I would say around 8000 lineal meters average. I think that's pretty good, in a TyG profile they really have to eat some material away. way harder than S4S.
I'm pretty impressed with the Tong Fong cutters, very good quality and customer service is excellent. Wright Liya directly, she will have them shipped to you with fedex or ups in no time.
tfcutter@ms47.hinet.net  I always pay a little extra fee with paypal, but way easier than fooling around with bank deposits.

and a Carbide TyG set (8 cutters with shims) is about 570$, they pay for themselves before the first sharpening. I don't know yet how many sharpenings they are good for but at least 5.
I ordered 2 new sets from Taiwan right now, thought of having a new cutter ready if i mess up the first one resarpening   

A carbide indexable insert cutter set is 2000-3000 $, but you cry once.

I visited the shop i brought my cutters for resharpening and the owner let me go inside the sharpening area, although he has some automated state of the art equipment for bandsaws and circle saws, the cutter sharper was some kind of late gismo to hold the cutter and the diamond disk was held by a hand drill machine (the once you use at your home to drill a hole in the wall)   so i thought that it can't be that hard to sharpen these cutters. The owner explained me that his worker is a expert grinder with 15 years of experience! WOW!