my bevelers have gotten dull

[MatthewD]

I think that my bevelers have gotten dull but I am at a loss on how to sharpen them. Would anyone have a suggestion on how to sharpen them?

[David Genadek]

I think that my bevelers have gotten dull but I am at a loss on how to sharpen them. Would anyone have a suggestion on how to sharpen them?

Mathew,

Do you mean edgers? Bevelers shouldn't need to be sharp unless your talking about an undercut bevelers?

I worked for Ellis Barnes who owns Hackbarth Gomph tools. Ellis taught me to use a dremel tool with a hard felt wheel that we would shape to the edger. If you need to do more aggressive shaping then you can use a Kratex wheel for that. I use this for all my odd sharpening jobs. One of the keys is to keep a finger close to the edge so you can feel if you are over heating the metel. You can pick one of these up at a home depot pretty cheap. I purchased a bunch of Tim the toolman models for like $10.00 a peice in a close out so I have one on every bench for sharpening edgers.

Ellis would get his kicks by shaping the edgers so they would hop off the belts and slice our hands. I quickly learned to do it myself. Despite his cruel games I did learn that it is an indispensable tool to have in your shop.

Weaver makes a board with strips of leather you can put rouge on and manually touch up your edgers with.

If your trying to sharpen undercut Bevelers then I would get a rotory tool of some sort. You can get wheels and attachments in bulk from Jewlery supply houses. Get safety glasses too?

You may mess up a few tools when learning to get the edges the way you need them but long term the cost of the learning curve is worth it becouse a project can not get any better than the cutting.

David Genadek

[MatthewD]

Thanks David, I was talking about edgers... I have a dremel and I use it for sharpening other things but didn't know if I would use it for this or not... but I think I will give it a go now..

[Jordan]

I know this is a fairly old thread but I would like to hear from some of you about sharpening an edger. I am having a dickens of a time trying to sharpen mine. I get it close but it either digs in and bunches up or does'nt even cut in, just scrapes fuzz off the edge. The more I mess with it the more frustrated I get and I am about ready to chuck it and buy another one. Any suggestions will be appreciated, I think it's a #2 from tandy or what they call the old favorite. It is very hard for my old eyes to see the edge so I think thats part of my troubles. I have tried a dremel, emery cloth, files and strop.

[ClayB]

When I got a couple edgers from Ron's Tools, they came with a metal rod that I didn't understand. I figured out that the rod fit the groove in the tool. If you put wet/dry sandpaper over the rod, then run the edger over that, it sharpens the tool. It worked really well on all my old Tandy edgers too. I was going to just throw them away, but they work better than ever now. Try and find a piece of wire or something that fits the grove of your edger, cover that with wet/dry paper, and see if that doesn't help.

[Kodiak]

I have some old machinist polishing stones of all different shapes - round, round tapered, trialgle, square, etc. These do a heck of a job on small tools. You can usually pick them upm on eBay from time to time, or buy them new - if new, they are not cheap!

Some of the woodworking sites have wet and dry stone set ups like the strop described above.

[rawhide1]

Jordan

I always used a piece of emery cloth wrapped over a awl shaft. And just ran it back and forth. Mike

[Jordan]

Thanks for the tips, I will give them a try before I buy a new tool. Jordan

[Billsotx]

Jordan,

I pretty much follow Clay's way on this. I keep wet/dry sandpaper handy. (Leather sands like wood.) I modified those TLF bevelers to round bottom edgers when I finally figured out theirs weren't designed for the work I was trying to do. Work through varying grits of sandpaper depending on how much you need to shape, re-shape, modify whatever. On your final run 2000 grit will leave it pretty nice. Rub some polishing compound on a small piece of manilla folder and wrap that around a stiff piece of wire, shaft of a small screwdriver, needle file or similar rod. You've probably got the rod around your workbench and auto parts store have fine grit paper if you don't find it at Lowe's or HomeDepot.

[Rawhide]

Another little trick an old guy taught me was to pull some cord (thread) through jewelers rouge. then pull the "loaded" string through your edger as many times as needed to keep your edger sharp.

Marlon

[Regis]

I've always keep a string loaded with rouge attached to my jewelers bench for a multitude of small polishing tasks. BUT, never thought of if for keeping edger sharp. Thanks. Attached to bench allows you to pull string tight while polishing.

Another little trick an old guy taught me was to pull some cord (thread) through jewelers rouge. then pull the "loaded" string through your edger as many times as needed to keep your edger sharp.

Marlon

[Rawhide]

Hey,

We just learned something from each other. Thanks and you're welcome at the same time.

[esantoro]

Here's a page from Stohlman's book on using and caring for leathercraft tools. It seems to illustrate what some have pointed out in this thread .

I have also realized how important it is to sharpen edgers. The different is as between night and day.

The attached page shows the need to take a file or sanding stone to the bottom of the edger. So far I have been using 600 emory paper on the top side only in fear of dulling the cutting edge. The tandy edgers are good to practice on, as I'd hate to mess up a more expensive edger.

ed

sharpen_edgers.pdf

sharpen_edgers.pdf

[esantoro]

I'd like to hear more about using a dremel to sharpen these edgers and know which attachments to use.

Ed

[Skipknives]

whee haw,,thanks guys,,and thank you for the pdf,,that helped too