Hello Ted, this was a very informative video. As a new guy, I'm trying to learn a lot about woodturning to include the sharpening part of it, but I see a lot of different ideas on tool sharpening angles. However, one of the things I never hear on you tube videos are the angle notches on the Vari-Grind jig. Obviously, there are notches on this jig that set the adjustable arm to different angles for a reason. What are the angles for each notch and how do you determine that? From the pivot point or your turning tool? And how are they used at the different settings? No one seems to explain that clearly. I hope you can. Also, as I understand the angle for most tool angles is supposed to be set at 23 degrees but why and where would that be on this jig? Thank you and if anyone else has some insight please respond. Thanks again.
Eureka! I have figured out the answer to the question Ted poses at 0:24. What the arm changes, _exactly_, is the bevel angle underneath the wings. That's all. It seems relatively unimportant, which is maybe why nobody else talks about it. If you want more clearance to the workpiece you can get it with a secondary bevel without thinning down the cutting edge. For a full explanation, refer to my previous top-level comment.
I made a little paint mark on the jig adjuster to suit my fingernail grinding tools and another little paint mark for my spindle gouges. I adjust the arm slightly to one of these marks for either and I never have to do more than eyeball check that the wings are resting flat on the wheel. Some people drill a hole to have the tip of the tool exactly the same distance from the jig every time but I manage with just a guide mark on my bench top. I stopped bothering to check that my degree of angle is correct after about a year. They have never been off by more than one degree.
This was really helpful. I have a Pro-Grind rig but it looks like the basic concepts are the same. I want to try Tomislav Tomasic's asymmetric grind where you have the swept back on the left side of the tool, and the standard grind on the right. It's supposed to give you the best of both worlds.
There is a lot of information presented here and I am not sure I follow all of it. In fact I am sure I don't. But there are several points that I do follow and I think I have enough information to be able to perform a few tests of my own. I have both the Vari-Grind and the Vari-Grind 2. I also have the Kodiak system from Ken Rizzas Woodturners Wonders (although I have not set that one up yet). Thank you for sharing. Have a great 2022 and stay safe.
Yes that is a good question. I didn't use the raptor jigs as my grinder was not setup properly for those jigs. The height of the grinder in relation to the Vari-grind jig platform has to be properly set and mine was not. So I used the angle gauges by Stuart Batty which work really well and do not require the same setup. Hope that helps to explain, and thanks for the question.
Actually, it really doesn't. The question "... how the flute wing changes based on the arm's position" isn't answered and the whole whiteboard thing at 4:42 has no actual justification in fact.
For the life of me I can't get both sides even. The right side of the tool (while facing the grinder) always comes out nice the wing has a nice round shape like it should. The left wing seems to always be flat. I've tried grinding the bottom first and work my way to the top of the wing but It still comes out flat on the top of the wing. All of my turning tools are Thompsons and they are not cheep! I hate to keep grinding away the bucks! Lol
Ted. Enjoyed the video. I was going to do the same experiment and now I don’t have to. The varigrind doesn’t have any numbers on it. Can you explain where you set the leg for a #2 and #5?’ Thanks CHAS
Hey Chas, glad you enjoyed the video. #2 or 5 is just the bottom of the 2nd or 5th notch. So you can loosen the wing nut, put a thin card in the selected slot, move the jig up to match the card/notch and then tighten the wing nut. That's it, and reliable each time. Best of luck!
Thanks Graham for all your comments, I really do appreciate all your insight. This can be a very complicated subject and as you mentioned, is greatly affected by how the user applies. From the initial starting state of the gouge and how much pressure or time spent in actual grinding process. My intention of the video was not a complete guide to the Vari-grind but what changes the sweep of the grind on the tool. As you mentioned, there are other factors to consider and some grinds can be obtained with only changing one or two of the settings. If you do create a graphic illustration I would be interested in seeing, as I have often thought of this as well.
@@TedsTurnings : While waiting to see if you would reply, I completed my investigation of how to re-grind the Crown skewchigouge. I decided that the effect of the starting grind and how much grinding is done at each position of the swing is very significant when using the Vari-Grind jig. I don't have the skill to free-hand a grind and, partly because of this, some time ago I messed up my skewchigouge. So, I designed a jig that controls all of the parameters and will return my skewchigouge to its original state, or at least as close as I can figure that out. It seems to work except that I'm not able to drill holes sufficiently accurately so now I'm working on fixing that. As I wrote before, I don't think we'll make much progress working together to figure the jig out unless we have drawings. I've created a page on my Wiki where I can put up figures exported from my SketchUp model of the grinding process. Maybe the next step is to see if you can access it. I don't know if URLs are permitted in UA-cam comments, so I'll take you the long way around. Start at Wiki dot ecrostech dot com. On the left, in the *House and Home* section, click on _Woodworking_ . Then, in the *Processes* section, click on _Sharpening Tools_ . The last paragraph on that page includes a link to "our" page. The paragraph above contains a link to my page on sharpening the skewchigouge, which I think you will also find interesting.
@@grahamdavies8924 Hey Graham, I reviewed your page and have a few comments. First the video I created was intended for bowl or possibly spindle gouges using the Vari-grind tool jig. The gouge you are trying to sharpen (skewchigouge) is quite different in that it does not have a flute. You could use the Vari-grind to sharpen the bevel but would not help you at all for the upper face of the tool. It appears that once you have the upper face established, you should only need to sharpen the bevel to get it back to optimum condition. Also, honing of the tool is up to the turner, as some turners like the rougher edge on their gouges, verses a fine honed edge. They find it cuts wood away a bit quicker, and they don't worry so much about the small serrations on the edge. A couple comments on your jig, be careful grinding on the side of the wheel, most wheels will not hold up under much pressure sideways and could explode which would be a very dangerous situation. It also looks like a high speed grinder, so it will quickly take a lot of steel away from your tool, which means you will be replacing it much quicker... Otherwise it looks like what you are doing is working for you and as you progress and practice in woodturning you will learn a lot more. Best of luck!
@@TedsTurnings : From your recent reply, it seems you think I was asking you for help, whereas my intent was to offer to work with you to answer the question you raise in the video, i.e. "... how the flute wing changes based on the arm's position". You don't actually answer this question and you also make some statements that will probably mislead viewers. I'm sorry not to have been clear in my intent. I should not have mentioned the skewchigouge; it was just the problem that I was working on that made it possible for me to help you. Sharpening the skewchigouge is now solved. The vari-grind jig *does not help* at all. I have figured out exactly what it does and does not do. Your "Best of luck!" is clearly a sign-off and I totally respect that. Sorry to have wasted your time. I will do some cleaning up.
My earlier comments on this video seem to have done more harm than good. I'd like to apologize for that. To try to make amends, I have done, on my own, what I originally planned to do in collaboration with Ted Ross. That is, I've tried to answer the question Ted raises at 0:24 : "... if I set the arm here or here, how's it change, does it change my bevel, does it change the wing of my tool, what does it change, exactly." I'll post progress on this investigation as replies to this comment. I think that the way UA-cam works means that if you reply to this comment you'll get a notification when I post an update. If, that is, your UA-cam account is configured to notify you of replies. If there are no replies at all, I may abandon this where it presently stands.
*Whiteboard Session* - From the session at the whiteboard (4:23 to 4:57), it's possible to get the impression that there are "three jig settings" (protrusion, arm position and distance to wheel) that, in combination, determine _independent outcomes_ for "three ... considerations for sharpening a ... gouge" (nose bevel, flute wing sweep and flute wing shape). This is not the case. The jig provides support for only two aspects of the grind outcome. The first is the nose bevel, which can be defined precisely, as Ted shows. The second is the _range_ of shapes that the wings can take, given a _specific bevel_ and according to how you _manually manage_ the grind.
*Tool Protrusion* - You might as well set the tool protrusion to some standard value and leave it there. Common values are two inches and an-inch-and-three-quarters. At 6:08 Ted sets the protrusion, using a gauge, to what looks like one-and-three-quarter inches. He only changes the protrusion to grind clearance bevels at unspecified angles (11:36). Although, at the whiteboard, he appears to state that the tool protrusion needs to be selected according to the desired outcome, he takes this line of thinking no further. In fact, adjusting protrusion does nothing for you that can't be done more simply with the leg / arm position. Set it and forget it.
*Experimental Results* - In the video, at 8:24 to 8:56, Ted grinds the badly-ground bowl gouge that he showed us at 3:57 for a *40°* nose bevel with the Vari-Grind Leg /arm at the *second* notch. Then, at 9:45 to 11:03, he grinds the gouge that he showed us at 3:43 for a *55°* nose bevel with the Vari-Grind Leg /arm at the *fifth* notch. At 14:13 Ted tells us that the sizes of the two gouges are, respectively, half-inch and three-eighths. From 13:39 to 15:28, Ted displays and describes the results of grinding the two tools and attributes the differences to the leg / arm position. I don't think that this is entirely justified. There are three differences between the tools that have nothing to do with the leg / arm. The first is the tool diameter. The second is the chosen nose bevel. The third is what Ted was trying to achieve with the grind. I would like to find out how much of the resulting wing form is due to the leg / arm position and how much is due to the other factors. I don't think the question can be properly answered until this is figured out. Opinions?
*Tool Diameter* - After sleeping on the problem for a couple of nights, I'm going to say that the tool size plays no significant part in how the grind turns out. Because we're dealing with the angles that things make to other things, and not the distances between them, the whole arrangement scales with tool diameter. This is not _precisely_ true because a larger tool will need to be lifted away from the wheel more as it is swung over. But, the distance that the axis rises is small as compared to the length of the axis (tool nose to the end of the leg / arm) so that the change in the angle is small (a fraction of one degree). I'm going to stop thinking about this and concentrate on the effect of the different nose bevel angles on Ted's results.
*Grinder's Intent* - I don't know why I didn't figure this part out earlier. What the operator is trying to achieve is fully defined by Ted's procedure at, for example, 9:23. He "pre-grinds" the tool in the upside-down position on the wheel. The cutting edge is replaced by a flat (or slightly curved) surface. Where that surface intersects the flute is where the operator intends to have the new cutting edge. So, he grinds away on the bevel side until the flat surface is just gone again. This seems like a really good idea because you establish where you want the edge to be first and then have a way of knowing how close you are to achieving it. You don't have to decide where the edge should be at the same time as you're grinding it. Unless you deviate from this procedure, how you pre-grind the top side of the tool _fully defines_ the sweep of the cutting edge that you'll get from _any given set_ of jig adjustments.
Thanks Ted. I just ordered the Oneway Wolverine system and now I know some important things more about it. Very good camera work and well explained.
Awesome. Thank you for showing all the steps completely and close up camera work.
Glad you liked it and got something out of it!
Thanks for demonstrating the techniques you use. Excellent!
Thanks Brad, glad you enjoyed!
This was great!
Glad you enjoyed it and found some value!
Very informative. Thanks!
Thanks Ted. I just started to dive into sharpening with a jig and have had all kinds of problems with the geometry. Keep the videos coming.
Glad to help
Thanks Ted. That makes a lot of sense. Great Video, now i have a better idea what to do to for a sharp tool.
Keep up the good work.
Glad it helped, happy turning!
Great video
Thanks for the visit
Thank you.
Hello Ted, this was a very informative video. As a new guy, I'm trying to learn a lot about woodturning to include the sharpening part of it, but I see a lot of different ideas on tool sharpening angles. However, one of the things I never hear on you tube videos are the angle notches on the Vari-Grind jig. Obviously, there are notches on this jig that set the adjustable arm to different angles for a reason. What are the angles for each notch and how do you determine that? From the pivot point or your turning tool? And how are they used at the different settings? No one seems to explain that clearly. I hope you can. Also, as I understand the angle for most tool angles is supposed to be set at 23 degrees but why and where would that be on this jig? Thank you and if anyone else has some insight please respond. Thanks again.
Eureka! I have figured out the answer to the question Ted poses at 0:24. What the arm changes, _exactly_, is the bevel angle underneath the wings. That's all. It seems relatively unimportant, which is maybe why nobody else talks about it. If you want more clearance to the workpiece you can get it with a secondary bevel without thinning down the cutting edge. For a full explanation, refer to my previous top-level comment.
I made a little paint mark on the jig adjuster to suit my fingernail grinding tools and another little paint mark for my spindle gouges. I adjust the arm slightly to one of these marks for either and I never have to do more than eyeball check that the wings are resting flat on the wheel. Some people drill a hole to have the tip of the tool exactly the same distance from the jig every time but I manage with just a guide mark on my bench top. I stopped bothering to check that my degree of angle is correct after about a year. They have never been off by more than one degree.
This was really helpful. I have a Pro-Grind rig but it looks like the basic concepts are the same. I want to try Tomislav Tomasic's asymmetric grind where you have the swept back on the left side of the tool, and the standard grind on the right. It's supposed to give you the best of both worlds.
Sounds interesting, I will have to check it out. Good luck!
There is a lot of information presented here and I am not sure I follow all of it. In fact I am sure I don't. But there are several points that I do follow and I think I have enough information to be able to perform a few tests of my own. I have both the Vari-Grind and the Vari-Grind 2. I also have the Kodiak system from Ken Rizzas Woodturners Wonders (although I have not set that one up yet). Thank you for sharing. Have a great 2022 and stay safe.
Thanks Glen, it takes some practice but you will get it, best of luck!
why did you not use the raptor jigs to set your angles? I own them and they are great for setting and repeating the angle you want.
Yes that is a good question. I didn't use the raptor jigs as my grinder was not setup properly for those jigs. The height of the grinder in relation to the Vari-grind jig platform has to be properly set and mine was not. So I used the angle gauges by Stuart Batty which work really well and do not require the same setup. Hope that helps to explain, and thanks for the question.
Thanks. That really helps.
Actually, it really doesn't. The question "... how the flute wing changes based on the arm's position" isn't answered and the whole whiteboard thing at 4:42 has no actual justification in fact.
Glad it helped
@@grahamdavies8924 Graham, it would be nice if you could make a video so we could all learn. Thanks
@@hawkeye10100 : Please see my new top-level video comment. I'm trying to help out. What is your level of interest? Do you have a Vari-Grind jig?
For the life of me I can't get both sides even. The right side of the tool (while facing the grinder) always comes out nice the wing has a nice round shape like it should. The left wing seems to always be flat. I've tried grinding the bottom first and work my way to the top of the wing but It still comes out flat on the top of the wing. All of my turning tools are Thompsons and they are not cheep! I hate to keep grinding away the bucks! Lol
Ted. Enjoyed the video. I was going to do the same experiment and now I don’t have to.
The varigrind doesn’t have any numbers on it. Can you explain where you set the leg for a #2 and #5?’ Thanks CHAS
Hey Chas, glad you enjoyed the video. #2 or 5 is just the bottom of the 2nd or 5th notch. So you can loosen the wing nut, put a thin card in the selected slot, move the jig up to match the card/notch and then tighten the wing nut. That's it, and reliable each time. Best of luck!
(Comment removed, but not deleted so as not to delete Ted's replies. That would be up to Ted.)
Thanks Graham for all your comments, I really do appreciate all your insight. This can be a very complicated subject and as you mentioned, is greatly affected by how the user applies. From the initial starting state of the gouge and how much pressure or time spent in actual grinding process. My intention of the video was not a complete guide to the Vari-grind but what changes the sweep of the grind on the tool. As you mentioned, there are other factors to consider and some grinds can be obtained with only changing one or two of the settings. If you do create a graphic illustration I would be interested in seeing, as I have often thought of this as well.
@@TedsTurnings : While waiting to see if you would reply, I completed my investigation of how to re-grind the Crown skewchigouge. I decided that the effect of the starting grind and how much grinding is done at each position of the swing is very significant when using the Vari-Grind jig. I don't have the skill to free-hand a grind and, partly because of this, some time ago I messed up my skewchigouge. So, I designed a jig that controls all of the parameters and will return my skewchigouge to its original state, or at least as close as I can figure that out. It seems to work except that I'm not able to drill holes sufficiently accurately so now I'm working on fixing that.
As I wrote before, I don't think we'll make much progress working together to figure the jig out unless we have drawings. I've created a page on my Wiki where I can put up figures exported from my SketchUp model of the grinding process. Maybe the next step is to see if you can access it. I don't know if URLs are permitted in UA-cam comments, so I'll take you the long way around. Start at Wiki dot ecrostech dot com. On the left, in the *House and Home* section, click on _Woodworking_ . Then, in the *Processes* section, click on _Sharpening Tools_ . The last paragraph on that page includes a link to "our" page. The paragraph above contains a link to my page on sharpening the skewchigouge, which I think you will also find interesting.
@@grahamdavies8924 Hi Graham, I have found the page/article and will look it over. Thanks.
@@grahamdavies8924 Hey Graham, I reviewed your page and have a few comments. First the video I created was intended for bowl or possibly spindle gouges using the Vari-grind tool jig. The gouge you are trying to sharpen (skewchigouge) is quite different in that it does not have a flute. You could use the Vari-grind to sharpen the bevel but would not help you at all for the upper face of the tool. It appears that once you have the upper face established, you should only need to sharpen the bevel to get it back to optimum condition. Also, honing of the tool is up to the turner, as some turners like the rougher edge on their gouges, verses a fine honed edge. They find it cuts wood away a bit quicker, and they don't worry so much about the small serrations on the edge. A couple comments on your jig, be careful grinding on the side of the wheel, most wheels will not hold up under much pressure sideways and could explode which would be a very dangerous situation. It also looks like a high speed grinder, so it will quickly take a lot of steel away from your tool, which means you will be replacing it much quicker... Otherwise it looks like what you are doing is working for you and as you progress and practice in woodturning you will learn a lot more. Best of luck!
@@TedsTurnings : From your recent reply, it seems you think I was asking you for help, whereas my intent was to offer to work with you to answer the question you raise in the video, i.e. "... how the flute wing changes based on the arm's position". You don't actually answer this question and you also make some statements that will probably mislead viewers. I'm sorry not to have been clear in my intent. I should not have mentioned the skewchigouge; it was just the problem that I was working on that made it possible for me to help you. Sharpening the skewchigouge is now solved. The vari-grind jig *does not help* at all. I have figured out exactly what it does and does not do. Your "Best of luck!" is clearly a sign-off and I totally respect that. Sorry to have wasted your time. I will do some cleaning up.
My earlier comments on this video seem to have done more harm than good. I'd like to apologize for that. To try to make amends, I have done, on my own, what I originally planned to do in collaboration with Ted Ross. That is, I've tried to answer the question Ted raises at 0:24 : "... if I set the arm here or here, how's it change, does it change my bevel, does it change the wing of my tool, what does it change, exactly."
I'll post progress on this investigation as replies to this comment. I think that the way UA-cam works means that if you reply to this comment you'll get a notification when I post an update. If, that is, your UA-cam account is configured to notify you of replies. If there are no replies at all, I may abandon this where it presently stands.
*Whiteboard Session* - From the session at the whiteboard (4:23 to 4:57), it's possible to get the impression that there are "three jig settings" (protrusion, arm position and distance to wheel) that, in combination, determine _independent outcomes_ for "three ... considerations for sharpening a ... gouge" (nose bevel, flute wing sweep and flute wing shape). This is not the case. The jig provides support for only two aspects of the grind outcome. The first is the nose bevel, which can be defined precisely, as Ted shows. The second is the _range_ of shapes that the wings can take, given a _specific bevel_ and according to how you _manually manage_ the grind.
*Tool Protrusion* - You might as well set the tool protrusion to some standard value and leave it there. Common values are two inches and an-inch-and-three-quarters. At 6:08 Ted sets the protrusion, using a gauge, to what looks like one-and-three-quarter inches. He only changes the protrusion to grind clearance bevels at unspecified angles (11:36). Although, at the whiteboard, he appears to state that the tool protrusion needs to be selected according to the desired outcome, he takes this line of thinking no further. In fact, adjusting protrusion does nothing for you that can't be done more simply with the leg / arm position. Set it and forget it.
*Experimental Results* - In the video, at 8:24 to 8:56, Ted grinds the badly-ground bowl gouge that he showed us at 3:57 for a *40°* nose bevel with the Vari-Grind Leg /arm at the *second* notch. Then, at 9:45 to 11:03, he grinds the gouge that he showed us at 3:43 for a *55°* nose bevel with the Vari-Grind Leg /arm at the *fifth* notch. At 14:13 Ted tells us that the sizes of the two gouges are, respectively, half-inch and three-eighths. From 13:39 to 15:28, Ted displays and describes the results of grinding the two tools and attributes the differences to the leg / arm position. I don't think that this is entirely justified. There are three differences between the tools that have nothing to do with the leg / arm. The first is the tool diameter. The second is the chosen nose bevel. The third is what Ted was trying to achieve with the grind. I would like to find out how much of the resulting wing form is due to the leg / arm position and how much is due to the other factors. I don't think the question can be properly answered until this is figured out. Opinions?
*Tool Diameter* - After sleeping on the problem for a couple of nights, I'm going to say that the tool size plays no significant part in how the grind turns out. Because we're dealing with the angles that things make to other things, and not the distances between them, the whole arrangement scales with tool diameter. This is not _precisely_ true because a larger tool will need to be lifted away from the wheel more as it is swung over. But, the distance that the axis rises is small as compared to the length of the axis (tool nose to the end of the leg / arm) so that the change in the angle is small (a fraction of one degree). I'm going to stop thinking about this and concentrate on the effect of the different nose bevel angles on Ted's results.
*Grinder's Intent* - I don't know why I didn't figure this part out earlier. What the operator is trying to achieve is fully defined by Ted's procedure at, for example, 9:23. He "pre-grinds" the tool in the upside-down position on the wheel. The cutting edge is replaced by a flat (or slightly curved) surface. Where that surface intersects the flute is where the operator intends to have the new cutting edge. So, he grinds away on the bevel side until the flat surface is just gone again. This seems like a really good idea because you establish where you want the edge to be first and then have a way of knowing how close you are to achieving it. You don't have to decide where the edge should be at the same time as you're grinding it. Unless you deviate from this procedure, how you pre-grind the top side of the tool _fully defines_ the sweep of the cutting edge that you'll get from _any given set_ of jig adjustments.
can you use the raptor gages with the vari-grind 2
You lost me by moving the arm up.. you’re not making any sense at all. try another approach and not jump around..👎