[Jewelry making - Article 00326] - Re: [Orchid] Graver sharpening tools

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>         BTW, I use only 3 gravers, and for setting only - mostly
>     bright-cutting - so would prefer to find a simple solution. 

    For gravers that don't need to be bright cutting, with a bit of
    practice, you can do a decent job with a medium grit adalox moores
    disk. Sounds crude, but it works well enough for things like the
    round gravers you raise beads with, or knife or onglette gravers used
    for general trimming. For the bright cutting gravers, I go from the
    moores disk (just hand held, yes, but with practice, you get quite
    good at judging the angles, and it's also very fast) to a ruby bench
    stone. That's used for honing the cutting edges a bit more, and the
    key is holding the graver very rigid in your hand, with the elbow
    resting on the table. Your elbow's contact on the table is the pivot
    point as you move your hand back and forth. Your whole arm moves, so
    the angle stays pretty crisp with a bit of practice. Then, move to a
    piece of worn 4/0 emery polishing paper, resting on something very
    flat like a piece of glass. A single stroke initially pulling the
    graver back just enough so you can see from the mark on the paper
    that you're flat "on" the graver face, then slide the graver to the
    side and off. Once more, but this time to the other side. Flip the
    graver over to do the same for the belly, and you should, if you got
    this right, now have a graver that cuts a bright totally clean
    surface. It takes a little practice, but isn't all that hard. 

    I can think, frankly, of no reason to grind the graver only forward
    and back when using a Crocker sharpener. By hand some people might
    have an easier time getting the face flat, rather than rocking it
    side to side rounding the face, so it makes sense for hand grinding.
    But the Crocker will prevent that rocking, and it should work just
    fine. In the final honing step on the 4/0 paper, that slide to the
    side means those finest of sanding marks left by the paper are now
    parallel to the edge, which makes the cut MUCH brighter than if you
    pulled it only front to back. this seems to hold true even when using
    things like diamond polishing compound on a ceramic lap on a GRS hone
    (though to a lesser degree). 

    The main limitation to the crocker is that it's hard to see, on the
    sharpener, exact angle settings. It's just not the equal of the GRS
    sharpening fixture, or others similar, in that regard. But you can
    compensate well enough by use of a simple plastic protractor to aid
    your setting of the angles. I'm less confident with these things when
    trying to sharpen a graver that needs more than one cutting face,
    like a square point, or 120 degree point, since then you've got
    rotational/indexing angles to worry about too, which can get
    frustrating with the Crocker. But you generally don't need those for
    setting work, and for getting just a good bright cut flat graver,
    the Crocker should be fine. 

Cheers
Peter Rowe

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