Little Grinding Jig for Diamond Stone

[Joules]

A little device I have been meaning to make for a while.   I picked up a very cheap diamond stone on offer at the local hardware shop, it's not a bad size at 65mm x 150mm and double sided 800G+1200G and cost £10.00



The bearings are for skateboard wheels, I picked up a pack of bearings really cheap and use them on all sorts of little projects.  The fasteners are 3mm and two 2.5mm, just because thats what was in the odds and sods draw.



The setup above is for sharpening a jewellers screwdriver.  The blade is carried in the brass sleeve and just set the blade pitch as you want it.  Tighten it all up and a few passes on the stone gives a lovely finish.  Flip the brass sleeve over and do the other side.  If I grind the thread down on the 3mm screw I could just flip the whole jig over, a job for tomorrow.



Once the the blade is profiled remount the blade in the jig as shown above.   Set the bearings on paper shim to set the blade length for grinding.



Hold the jig vertical and gentle grind for a very accurate blade tip.  Just reshim to get your finished tip size.



This is about as good a photo as I could get of the finished blade tip, it measures 0.2mm and you can see from the reflection its pretty even.  It took less than 5 mins to regrind this blade from scratch.  The jig was made to sharpen gravers but it is turning out to be useful for other things too.  For me not a bad days work making this and I'm very pleased to be able to make my own jewellers screwdrivers to accurate tolerance with a very cheap setup.

               Joules

[John Rudd]

 :bow:Very nice Joules....
Could be adapted to honing lathe tools I guess...

[flyingtractors1]

Very nice.  I could use something like that to sharpen my miniature plane blades.   Ralph

[SwarfnStuff]

Once again, a simple idea with a great set of possibilities well described and executed. Claps and cudos to Joules.    Thanks.
John B

[Fergus OMore]

Actually 'Eclipse' made a proprietary one to do plane irons. I have one. Again, I have something similar to do carbide planer blades- possibly Chinese but from B and Q.
Some time back I recall that there was a series of articles in Model Engineer called  'Let's be Lazy, let's be Clever' with something similar.

The interesting thing was the plastic tool which -I think- Eclipse made- which had eccentric wheels to do drills.

The one that 'got me' was the chariot- ex Whistons- that did repairs to raised vee ways on lathes.

So I'm delighted to see the idea aired once more.

[philf]

Joules,

I have a commercially made Bergeon screwdriver sharpening tool which has a self centering feature.



You squeeze the two ends together, pop the screwdriver in and release the ends which clamps and centres the screwdriver.



I was never too happy using it to do the end of the screwdriver blade so I made a dual purpose widget to square off the ends.



You set the tip of the blade so that the single bearing is just clear of the stone - it stops cutting when the bearing touches the stone.

It also doubles up for graver sharpening.



I have a commercial graver sharpener but was never very happy with it.



I also have the Eclipse plane and chisel honing aid which Fergus mentioned. This is a useful tool. To set the angles you adjust the protrusion of the blade.







Phil.

[Joules]

Phil that jig you made for the gravers is excellent...  I was inspired by the Bergeon I saw online.  I am taking on board some of the other comments and looking to expand on those ideas for other sharpening jobs.

      Cheers guys

                               Joules