Thoughts on Sharpening tools for Wood Turning
Welcome to the turning world. 🙂 There is a sharpening concept I refer to as "grinder abuse". The idea is that if you make your tools from HSS (High Speed Steel such as M2, M42, CPM, etc.) you can grind the hell out of them and not worry about ruining the temper when they turn blue. When working with "old school" tool steels (also called carbon steel) such as O1, W1, 1095 and so forth, one of the cool things you can do is heat treat in your home oven or even a toaster oven. At around 400°F your metal will turn a color called "Straw" the ever lightest of yellow/browns. This takes out the hardness just enough to keep a hardened blade from being brittle, like glass. That is wonderful. With any hand stone oil, water, diamond, CBN, etc.. you would be hard pressed to rub fast enough to ever reach such a temp and so you are fine. Nor, can you manually carve wood so fast that you would reach such a temperature, unless you were some weird super-hero in a Marvel ...