Rough hogging gravers, on the cheap by Rod Cameron

rod

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Nov 19, 2006
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Location
Mendocino. ca., and Scotland
I liked Carl's tutorial on the Lindsay Forum, showing how to set up a drilling machine to hog graver blanks, nice set up!

If time is money and tinkering with tool's is not your thing, well, you can 'buy a ready to go' high rpm hogger, as advertised in the "Engraver" mag, and elsewhere.

Many an experienced engraver will have long established sharpening setups, but if you are cash strapped and starting up, this might be worth considering. It can work for fast roughing and finishing of gravers be it with GRS or Lindsay systems.

Since I have set up my "clean" engraving bench up in our bigger multi purpose room in the house, where we also sleep, and not wanting Kathleen to think that she is sleeping in a workshop, I have a small bench in our 'garage converted to spare room', where I can do messy stuff like grinding, sanding and sawing. Of course, I have one of everything in my real messy workshop, but that is three blocks away from the house. By choice, I keep my engraving and flute making well separated. Flutes pay the bills, so I need to keep at them through the daytime.

Hope the photos show up in order?

I mounted a $39 rough diamond heavy 6 inch dia 1 inch wide wheel on a $30 bench grinder, after making a hardwood insert to take the one inch bore down to half inch to suit the grinder spindle .... the more precise you can do this, the sweeter the wheel spins as it is heavy. Buy this, $39, 6 inch 120 grit diamond wheel from

www.jadecarver.com in Concord California

Coincutter, Steve says 'Harbor Freight' also have good prices.

Next, I mounted my circular lap beside the bench grinder, and had it sit on a bunch of printing paper about .5 inches thick.... this is adjusted page by page till the top of the hogging wheel is level with the top of the fine diamond lap. Check it with any kind of straight edge.

That little block under the straight edge needs to be exactly half an inch lower than the wheels, to allow the Lindsay sharpener to do its angles correctly. You can use anything for the block, and here I use a piece of milled aluminum. I super glue two one inch super magnets to the underside of the block, so it will hold nicely onto the top of the steel lap box and have that surface be 1/2 inch lower than the lap face ( and the top of the hogging disc).

Now it is one stop shopping! Put a carbide or cobalt graver in the GRS or Lindsay fixture, hog off the excess ... takes about 15 seconds to hog the 45 degree flat. it stays cool and you hardly need any pressure. Yes, I know that you are working on the top curve of a 6 inch wheel, but it is really not a problem!

Immediately flip to the fine horizontal lap, and ceramic lap if you do use that for bright cutting.

You can prepare many gravers in a short time, and later, at your "clean" bench, if you have the Linsday hand stones, you can keep the gravers touched up and in crisp condition.


I like all the systems for different reasons ( including hand held tweaking under the microscope). The universally adjustable angle setter sold by GRS is good for rounded heel, and you can see that hogging the graver down will work equally well with this set up.

By the way, the bench grinder is still available to do general work.

Notice this little "hand lathe", made from a busted belt sander motor. Throw away the capacitor on the motor (that determines its direction of rotation). With these low power motors, just turn it on, give it a little spin in the direction you want it to rotate, and off it goes, obeying your direction command....world's cheapest reversing switch, but don't use this on motors over 1/10 hp!

Mounted in the chuck is a very inexpensive diamond drum hogger, cost me $4 in a surplus store, but cannot find any now. For the really cash strapped engraver, this drum hogger will rough your carbide graver blank down in no time just working by eye, like sharpening a pencil ... and it stays pretty cool.

best

Rod
 

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