spindle gouge riser blocks - Woodworking Talk

john lucas · 04-13-2008, 10:26 AM

I had been planning to make some riser blocks so that I could sharpen my spingle gouges without changing the adjustment from the bowl gouge setting.
When I turn my hand mirrors I use both tools and would have to readjust the Oneway arm way to often. Most of my spindle gouges have a grind similar to the bowl gouge, with swept back wings and I use the Oneway Wolverine jig to sharpen them. I thought I could just build riser blocks that would give me the correct angle for the 40 degree or so angle on my spindle gouges.
Here is a photo of the block in use. I simply cut the corners off of a block I was about to turn. This gave me a block with one 90 degree corner and 2 45 degree corners. Then I layed the gouge and jig on the block and put the bevel flat on the grinding wheel. I marked a pencil mark on the block a little closer than the end of the Wolverine arm. Then I drilled a 3/8" shallow hole so the outer rim hit this line. Then I just carved away the back side of the hole until the bevel of the tool sat flat on the wheel. If you used a forestner style bit you could probably just "whittle" away at the hole to enlarge it enough.
I made one for the Detail gouge and one for the 1/2" spindle gouge. I have spindle gouges with several different grinds. Usually I arrived at these based on a need from experience however most of my grinds are very similar to the Ellsworth bowl gouge grind with steeper nose angles.

allenn · 04-13-2008, 12:24 PM

Great idea. I love cheap fixes.

allen norris