A Very Inexpensive Way To Sharpen Brazed Carbide Lathe Cutters

I found a diamond wheel at harbor freight intended for tile cutting. I think it was around ten bucks. Very thin, I put it on the shaft of my grinder with the regular wheel so the side of the diamond wheel is accessible. To my surprise, it sharpens carbide very quickly but leaves a very rough "lined" finish on the carbide surface. Follow up with a green wheel takes care of that.
 
rwm
seeing you set up the Sherline to do this, reminds me that I have a small variable speed motor that I could build a setup for and use it. It is from an old sherline, when they used DC motors. what grit wheel do you use.
 
Excellent thread Randy!
great info and you definitely kept the spirit of low cost.
thanks for sharing the valuable information!
 
with prim that is almost cheaper than ebay. For some reason I though maybe a 600 or something like that, or would that be to fine, most of the time I'm just needing to put the edge back on them.
 
that's funny, first time I ever went into a HF store a couple of weeks ago I picked up a set of those diamond impregnated disks and an arbor for $5 or similar, then used one to reshape and sharpen a couple of brazed carbide bits I'd been given. I even ground a chip breaker on one :) After using the diamond disk, I used a diamond lap to hone the edge and they work very nicely. I'll still use HSS bits for most turning but it's nice to have carbide for the occasional tough piece of steel.
 
mattthemuppet said:
that's funny, first time I ever went into a HF store a couple of weeks ago I picked up a set of those diamond impregnated disks and an arbor for $5 or similar, then used one to reshape and sharpen a couple of brazed carbide bits I'd been given. I even ground a chip breaker on one :) After using the diamond disk, I used a diamond lap to hone the edge and they work very nicely. I'll still use HSS bits for most turning but it's nice to have carbide for the occasional tough piece of steel.
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The little wheels are just about perfect for grinding chipbreakers !
 
they are indeed :) I used one of the brazed carbide cutters last night to face a 3in steel disk. Lower speeds with HSS kept making the belts slip, so I kept cranking up the speed with the carbide until it cut smoothly - around 850rpm. Way faster than I would have cut with HSS and a beautiful finish too.
 
Another cheap way to touch up brazed carbide cutting tools is a carbide saw sharpening blade from Harbor Freight. It is a 4" diamond wheel. Here is a photo with part #:

HF diamond blade.jpg

Then make a bushing and mount to a small bench grinder to make it very easy to use:


grinder.jpg

The blade is $10 at Harbor Freight, and the 5" bench grinder was $10 on Craigslist. It also works well for sharpening TIG tungstens.

GG
 
Hello all:
I use the larger disc to sharpen TIG electrodes but had not thought about using it on carbide bits. Thanks for the reminder. Do have the HF tool and cutter grinder but still have not figured out how to hold bits using the miter gage that came with it. Think I need to make a proper holder for the lathe bits once I figure out what it should look like. Take care.
Burt
 
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