Balance Staff, just can’t get to 0.2

[nickelsilver]

When I was in school (U.S.) we started with HSS Vallorbe gravers, learned to sharpen them, and eventually got to cutting blue steel with them. Then we got carbide, and I don't think I've used steel since. In the Swiss school I went to, the folks in the full training section were only allowed to use steel (HSS); knowing that, and that they didn't have carbide or diamond grinding ability, I brought my own grinding wheels and carbide, haha. They didn't care if I used it, they just wanted to make the guys learning from the ground-up to suffer.*

 

If you want to try out carbide, Eternal Tools has a good selection of small diamond wheels, as well as carbide gravers. You can also use old carbide drills and regrind them, just fit it to a small wooden handle. If using round blanks you have to grind the sides quite a bit to end up with a traditional shape at the tip. Here's one I ground from a 3mm blank (this was a milling cutter before). You can see that it was ground with a coarse wheel, then a finer finish done where it actually cuts.

*Actually just remembered- I also did a course for teachers at the Swiss school, to learn how to teach "their" way. At one point we (there were 5 of us) had to sharpen, free hand, steel gravers, then make pivot gages in the dead center lathes, using a hand crank for power. It was funny to see that some of the teachers hadn't done much turning in years, lots of complaints about the gravers being crap. There was an older Polish fellow who was piling up curly chips as fast as he could turn the crank, and I did OK as I wasn't that long out of school myself and did a lot of turning work for other watchmakers. So we would go to show the other teachers that yes their steel gravers could cut the blue steel just fine, hahaha. The main issue was getting the angle of attack right.

 

So that was the last time I used steel gravers.

Edited July 3, 2024 by nickelsilver

[nevenbekriev]

I will advice to do what I do - I make gravers out of this kind CNC router bits. I reshape and sharpen them with such kind of diamond disk, grit 800, dry. No polishing needed, just sharpening.

[SwissSeiko]

Carbide is a good choice, but remember that you need something much harder than steel to sharpen and polish. So you WILL need a diamond wheel and diamond compound to grind and polish. Everyone has preference and I guess I'm a bit old school, in that I like M2 and O1 steel to make gravers out of, mostly O1. AOA is the most critical when turning blued steel. Just practice. you can turn it with M2 steel

[Neverenoughwatches]

3 hours ago, nevenbekriev said:

I will advice to do what I do - I make gravers out of this kind CNC router bits. I reshape and sharpen them with such kind of diamond disk, grit 800, dry. No polishing needed, just sharpening.

Just got mine in Nev, i can have a play around with the shape this afternoon. I just need to get out of the barrel arbor the bit of blue steel i cut and then broke inside it

[Daniel123]

I just double checked and I’ve been using WS Graver, just been online and got a HSS to check the difference. I’ll persevere with the WS for time being, I’ll just need to sharpen them every 2 mins. 

[SwissSeiko]

12 minutes ago, Daniel123 said:

I just double checked and I’ve been using WS Graver, just been online and got a HSS to check the difference. I’ll persevere with the WS for time being, I’ll just need to sharpen them every 2 mins. 

WS is tool steel that is water quenched. It should still work for you, and if you heat and temper correctly, it can actually get a bit harder than O1 steel.  Don't give up on your gravers just yet. Work on cutting profile and I firmly believe you will get great results.

[Daniel123]

3 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

WS is tool steel that is water quenched. It should still work for you, and if you heat and temper correctly, it can actually get a bit harder than O1 steel.  Don't give up on your gravers just yet. Work on cutting profile and I firmly believe you will get great results.

Should I heat and temper the graver after I’ve got a good edge?

[SwissSeiko]

23 minutes ago, Daniel123 said:

Should I heat and temper the graver after I’ve got a good edge?

Only harden after you have the shape and cutting faces 95% of the way to sharp, So yes! what I do is as follows:

-Shape my cutter to the desired rake and relief, then sharpen the cutting face and relief faces to something that would cut brass.

-Heat to a cherry red and hold at the temp depending on thickness of material. A 1/8in graver I would hold there for 30-45 seconds.

-Immediately plunge into oil and swirl to maximize heat loss

-Stone all faces of the cutter back to a nice finish with 3K oil stone, including the cutting face and relief faces

-Temper with a torch to a light straw color only to about an inch from the cutting edge, this happens quickly if you arent paying attention and is why we want to stone to a nice finish before hand, so we can easily see the change

-Let air cool after it has reached a straw color for a few seconds, then plunge into water or oil, doesn't matter at this point

-Stone on a fine oil stone, I use a ruby stone, and it gets me a mirror finish.

Edited July 3, 2024 by SwissSeiko

[nevenbekriev]

Something important about the cutting itself. No mater what kind of cutter - the steel ones can easy get dull, carbide ones can chip easy. One have to be carefull not to break the tip in both cases...

On the picture is shown the correct position of the cutter when cutting most of the work. Pay attention where the shavings come out from. They get out from the middle of the cutting edge of the cutter, the tip is not engaged in the routine cutting at all. The tip is only used to form sharp internal angles. This way of holding the cutter gives longest time between sharpenings and eases cutting. Try to understand and use it and wili be pleased by the result.

[Neverenoughwatches]

2 hours ago, nevenbekriev said:

Something important about the cutting itself. No mater what kind of cutter - the steel ones can easy get dull, carbide ones can chip easy. One have to be carefull not to break the tip in both cases...

On the picture is shown the correct position of the cutter when cutting most of the work. Pay attention where the shavings come out from. They get out from the middle of the cutting edge of the cutter, the tip is not engaged in the routine cutting at all. The tip is only used to form sharp internal angles. This way of holding the cutter gives longest time between sharpenings and eases cutting. Try to understand and use it and wili be pleased by the result.

A similar principle is used in wood turning though the chisel tip has a different shape in order to plane the wood but the same skew angle is maintained. In timber around 45° with either a skew chisel or a skew approach angle, the cut comes from the center of the tool except when detailing .

[ScrewDropper]

On 7/2/2024 at 10:24 AM, Daniel123 said:

That’s helpful thanks, the gravers are Valorbe from Cousins. It may well be the angle or how I am sharpening. I’ll will start again on new balance, it may be I need to practice sharpening first.

I’ve bought some diamond plates, 400-2000 grit in a set. Depending on how blunt I get the graver, I’ll start between 400-800 and keep going until the face has been completely removed, ensuring the corners are even. I then do about 50-100 passes (higher as the grit level increases, through the range of grits, checking the top sides adjacent to the face for burs and removing them as necessary. Once if finished the 2000 grit, I then finish the face on an Arkansas stone.  I have a relatively cheap graver holder for sharpening but it seems to do the trick. The plates are pretty cheap too. I picked them up on Amazon 

[SwissSeiko]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:50 PM, Daniel123 said:

Should I heat and temper the graver after I’ve got a good edge?

I just wanted to circle back to this, as my advice was for the untreated steel that you have ordered. In order to reharden your current graver, you will need to anneal it first. This is a process that does take some time, but with the small pieces we are working with, its not bad, maybe a 20 minuet process. Let me know if you want help annealing it, but I think you should still be able to cut with the factory treatment.

[Daniel123]

7 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

I just wanted to circle back to this, as my advice was for the untreated steel that you have ordered. In order to reharden your current graver, you will need to anneal it first. This is a process that does take some time, but with the small pieces we are working with, its not bad, maybe a 20 minuet process. Let me know if you want help annealing it, but I think you should still be able to cut with the factory treatment.

So 0.2 has been achieved, but with an old graver. I have hardened my gravers but they are still burnishing the work instead of cutting. I will persevere with them but they are hard work to get sharp. The old graver gets a sharp edge with no issues.

[nevenbekriev]

7 hours ago, Daniel123 said:

 I have hardened my gravers but they are still burnishing the work instead of cutting. I will persevere with them but they are hard work to get sharp. The old graver gets a sharp edge with no issues.

 

You hardened what, HSS gravers? How exactly, do You know what HSS is?

[Daniel123]

38 minutes ago, nevenbekriev said:

You hardened what, HSS gravers? How exactly, do You know what HSS is?

WS. If you read the thread above you’ll get the whole story 

[Neverenoughwatches]

49 minutes ago, nevenbekriev said:

You hardened what, HSS gravers? How exactly, do You know what HSS is?

I still have some hss chisels from my wood turning days, bloody hard stuff compared to carbon identifiable by the sparks when sharpening it up. Thin dark orange  where carbon has broad bright yellow sparks. It certainly comes as already heat treated which i believe it to be a pretty complicated process.

18 minutes ago, Daniel123 said:

WS. If you read the thread above you’ll get the whole story 

If you want to try hss then some good quality steel drill bits, they have a good portion of tungsten content.

[nevenbekriev]

36 minutes ago, Daniel123 said:

WS. If you read the thread above you’ll get the whole story 

I see, sorry.

If You need real result with no problems, move to carbide cutters, as I showed above.

[Daniel123]

31 minutes ago, nevenbekriev said:

I see, sorry.

If You need real result with no problems, move to carbide cutters, as I showed above.

Yes I’ve come around to that idea, I used to use carbide in my engineering days, but this is a new way of working that I’m still transitioning to. I’ve ordered a HSS graver to practice with it. 

1 hour ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I still have some hss chisels from my wood turning days, bloody hard stuff compared to carbon identifiable by the sparks when sharpening it up. Thin dark orange  where carbon has broad bright yellow sparks. It certainly comes as already heat treated which i believe it to be a pretty complicated process.

If you want to try hss then some good quality steel drill bits, they have a good portion of tungsten content.

I have a load of broken drill bits that could work. Old engineer never threw them out

[Neverenoughwatches]

23 minutes ago, Daniel123 said:

Yes I’ve come around to that idea, I used to use carbide in my engineering days, but this is a new way of working that I’m still transitioning to. I’ve ordered a HSS graver to practice with it. 

I have a load of broken drill bits that could work. Old engineer never threw them out

Lol, old joiner that still doesn't throw anything out.

[nevenbekriev]

Old engineer too... I throw away things only whem my wife gets in my workshop. Unpleasant situation.

[caseback]

My guess is that we have a lot of "old" engineers on this forum. 

[Daniel123]

So my new HSS graver arrived, I’ve had a quick use of it. Definitely put the fun back into lathe work.