low low buck sharpening jig and fixture.

Rain today, lots of rain, so no play with the lathe under my patio. I decided it was a fine time to unveil my ultimate jig and fixture, finest one offered for under ten bucks!

The material list should give a hint:

A 12" piece of 2x4 from my scrap pile.

A 1"x1"x30" hard maple cue shaft blank, ruined in Hurricane Isaac.

About 3" of 3/4" PVC schedule 40

3/4" PVC "T" and collar.

About a dollar's worth of grade two bolts from Tractor Supply. (Pretty sure the PVC is stronger!)

2 each 3/8" wing nuts. Couldn't cheapo these, forty-five cents each!

I bought a few extras that weren't needed, when I look at just what I used the cost was under ten dollars. The four dollar pool cue shaft blank was the big hit moneywise but it was ruined for use as a cue shaft anyway.

I did put stubs of 3/4" PVC into each end of the gouge holder to stiffen it and give a longer true surface for the gouge to ride on. Then I cut another piece one and a half inches long to join the collar to the bottom leg of the tee. Cut the collar in half and wood cored all the way to the bottom of the cross bar section of the tee for strength and more importantly to give me more to thread into. A little CA on the threads and recutting them wouldn't be the worst idea. A quarter inch bolt with a rounded end secures the gouge.

The screw to hold the gouge in position does need to be back away from the mouth of the tee. Even reinforced with the pipe stub I got too much flex in the PVC in an earlier attempt. Too many different variations of arm angles in different people's jigs, I went pretty shallow with this one, between 22.5 and 30 degrees I believe. I think I am going to blow another eighty-five cents on another tee and coupler to make another jig with close to a 45 degree angle. Not shown are quarter inch lag bolts I had bought to place in the bottom of the V's cut to hold the back of the jig bar. They haven't been needed but could be used for fine height adjustment. Bought by the pound at Tractor Supply, about a dime for those. The bolt with the head ground off I used for the main rod gives a half to three-quarters inch adjustment there too, this is sophisticated equipment!

The 12 inch 2x4 was whittled out to fit the 1x1, with the 1x left sitting a little above the surface of the 2x4. Carriage bolts from the bottom of the 1'x2' three-quarter inch plywood the grinder sits on and the wing nuts secure the 2x4 in position and also lock the arm in place. This is known as an elegant solution in engineering. :D

Since I cleverly used a wooden arm, a pencil line is all that is needed for repeatability. Homely and crude as this is, it works.

As usual, cell phone pictures. These were taken in my store room, low light and left handed while I held other things. Got close to an inch of rain this morning and my open patio shop is holding a good portion of that inch. Lathe and shavings barrel were covered this time though. Neglected to cover my shavings barrel adequately last time and there was a roof leak directly over it. Forty gallons of wet shavings weighs considerably more than forty gallons of dry shavings! :eek:

Final picture is of my variable speed grinder. I think I can actually see it cringe when I come at it with my scrapyard grinding rig.

Plans would be available but what would be the fun in that? This is a Bubba rig, use what ya got!

Husharpening fixture and jig 001 post.jpgsharpening fixture and jig 008post.jpgsharpening fixture and jig 010post.jpg
 
I actually looks more advanced then store bought jigs, you have multiple setting and the repeatability with the use of a pencil is out standing. You get two thumbs up for thinking out of the box. :thumb: :thumb:

Very nice!
 
Fine. Just flaunt your extravagance, Mr. Moneybags. :rolleyes: You sure spared no expense, huh? :rofl:

That looks like a great jig, Hu. :thumb: It may be redneck engineering with mostly scrap materials, but you should be able to get good, repeatable results with it. That's what it's all about. :clap:
 
Vaughn,

While I am a spare no expense kind of guy, or no spare expense kind of guy as the case may be, another issue is living down here on the farm. Fifteen mile round trip to the nearest place I can find a bolt, maybe; over twenty-five mile round trip to the nearest Ace, and over fifty miles round trip to the nearest big box, Lowes. My old Dodge truck never met a gas pump it didn't like! After awhile I start looking around for what I have here to test ideas before trying to get too fancy. What really fries my grits is when I get back home and discover I'm missing a critical piece. Easy to spend all day on the road if I'm not careful. After awhile it starts getting fun to make things out of basically nothing too. That is one thing I like about the green wood turning. The power line company trimmed some trees in my back yard yesterday. Fixing to find out how Chinese Oak turns.

Too, like you say this jig and fixture is working. Much more tempting to take a second to sharpen a tool now and sharp tooling is one of the reasons for the better bowls. Fixing to get brave and cut an Ellsworth or Michelsen grind on one tool, I think! Well there is a real chance it will be a Hu grind but the intention will be somebody else's grind. :)

Hu
 
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