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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tools for homesteading
  • Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 10:21:19 -0700


On Mar 2, 2008, at 10:01 AM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

lust for one of those
old sharpeners where you sit on a tiny seat and push foot pedals to
power the big stone wheel.

Such a wheel is for gross reshaping of metal, not actual sharpening unless it
is a cultivator disk or shovel or some such.

Yes, the stone wheel if too rough for real sharpening.


With a few execptions, you have the sharpening device working the edge as if
the tool were cutting off a piece of the wheel, file, or stone. And yet I see
people most often doing just the opposite! That is, the wheel wolld be
turning TOWARD you as if the axe is trying to cut away a piece of the wheel.

Is that how you meant to say it? In both the positive and the negative uses you have it, "as if the tool [were cutting] is trying to cut [off] away a piece of the wheel.

I wrote a few days ago about the geezer who was consulted on the very old question of whether one properly has the wheel turning toward or away from the user, and how he responded, always have it turning away from you because that way you avoid having water into the face. The direction of how the metal is applied to the stone does matter, of course, but I suspect that in the wheel stone case, as you note, one is not doing fine sharpening so the direction does not matter.

And of course, with a proper rest, the wheel could turn toward or away from the user, but the blade edge could be positioned as desired, toward or away. Most of us would find it more natural, and by instinct safer, to have the edge away from us, but with practice there may be little challenge to having it the other way.





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