I have a couple of comb back rockers in the works and plenty of carving to do. It has me thinking about gouge sharpening and rehabilitation. Most of my gouges are of the garage sale variety, although I have managed to get some Swiss made over the years. The mishmash gouges sometimes have questionable quality but the price is always right. I will also be detail which gouges make up a good set for most chair detailing (I haven't forgotten JF).
Like all sharpening, it is vital to understand the condition of the tool as it is. I do this with the endgrain pine test. The nasty gouge on the left was the condition of the tool before sharpening. Plenty of subsurface damage. The gouge on the left is the after result. I will show the process that I followed.
As you can see below, the interior of the gouges is rounded over (by repeated buffing and stropping) and a bit pitted. The first step in rehabbing the tool is going to be cleaning up this surface. The next step is going to be blunting the edge, and with this in mind, I can aggressively polish the surface without fear of rounding the edge further. After blunting and grinding, I will be diligent to not round the edge again.
I'll show the process and results of the polishing the interior next.
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