Alexander Grabovetskiy, woodcarver, School of Woodcarving · Published 2020
How do you sharpen micro carving tools?
Quick answer: Sharpening micro carving tools is the same work as any gouge, done at a scale where slip stones no longer fit. Reshape the factory bevel long and flat, climb the fine grits only, then wrap sandpaper around a wood chip to put the inner bevel on the hollow.
A number 11 veiner one millimeter wide takes the same four stages as a big gouge. The difference is that no slip stone on earth fits inside it, so the inner bevel gets cut with a scrap of sandpaper wrapped around a chip of wood.
Somebody in one of my streams asked about the number 11 veiners. One millimeter. Half a millimeter. A sixteenth of an inch, then less than a sixteenth, down to a thirty-second. How would you sharpen something that small?
It is a fair question, and the honest answer starts a long way back from the sharpening.
Key takeaways
- A new micro tool needs reshaping before it needs sharpening. The factory bevel is not the one you want.
- Bevels here run long and flat. About 20mm on a big gouge, about 5.5mm on the smallest veiners.
- A grinder wheel cuts a hollow, and on a long bevel that hollow leaves a weak spot that snaps.
- Stones give a flat bevel. They also cost money, need truing, need water, and eat the day.
- Tiny tools want an inner bevel too, and it does two separate jobs.
- No slip stone fits. Fold sandpaper over a wood chip and do what a slip would do. The bigger shapes each get their own workshop in the sharpening course.
Four systems on the bench, and still a problem
More than one machine lives on this bench. A Koch system from Germany. A Work Sharp. A Tormek, the older one with the metal body. And a plain grinder carrying nothing but leather wheels. There are others in another corner of the shop, but those four are the ones I reach for.
Owning four of them is not the flex it looks like. None of them did the whole job, which is how a man ends up with four.
What is wrong with a brand new micro tool?
Take one out of the box and look at the bevel. Whatever size it is, big or small, that bevel is not the one you want.
I do not say that to insult anybody. The people who make tools are not thinking about your carving, and there are honest disagreements about what angle a bevel should be and how a tool ought to be reshaped. So they ship something safe and leave the rest of it to you.
There are stages to sharpening, and the first one is not sharpening at all. The first stage is reshaping. You take the tool and change it completely before you ever worry about the edge.
When I went looking for an unshaped tool to hold up on camera I had trouble finding one. Almost everything in my shop has already been through this.
These tools do exist. The one millimeter in my hand is a Two Cherries, and I have another German one at the same size, plus half millimeter tools from a couple of makers. The sizes are out there. The thing nobody sells is a tool ready to carve.
How long should the bevel be?
Mine are long. Really, really long.
A full size gouge gets its bevel out to about twenty millimeters, which is three quarters of an inch. Some tools get ten, some fourteen, and a few go to twenty-five millimeters, near enough a full inch. The large gouge workshop shows the same thinking on a heavy tool. On a one millimeter veiner it cannot be that long, so there I land at five and a half millimeters or so, about three sixteenths.
Here is a test that costs nothing. Lay the tool on the wood as if you were carving and try to slide your hand under the handle. You should barely fit, knuckles brushing the surface. If the tool grabs the wood at that height, the bevel is right for hand work.
When it does not grab, look at the back of the bevel. A short bevel sits too high and the tool rides on its heel, which is the name for that back corner of the steel.
A mallet changes the sum a little. Your hand has to clear the wood so you can swing, so the bevel comes up a bit. Even then mine stay long.
Why does a grinder wheel weaken a long bevel?
Here is the part nobody mentions while they are selling you a machine.
Every grinder is a wheel. The tool comes at it from one side, at whatever angle you choose, and the wheel cuts a curve into the bevel. Tormek turns one way, most of the others turn the other way, and none of that changes the outcome. The bevel comes off hollow.
Draw it and it stops being an argument. Put a circle on the board for the wheel, run a straight tool into it, and the line the wheel leaves behind is a curve. Exaggerate that curve and you can see exactly where the steel goes missing.
A short steep bevel does not suffer from the hollow at all. A turning tool with a high angle never notices. But run the bevel out to twenty-five millimeters and the hollow eats into the steel right behind the edge, and that spot gets thin. Thin enough to break.
I had half a thousand gouges, chisels and veiners to think about. The straight gouge and the V-tool get the same treatment, at a size you can actually see. I was not willing to ruin a single one of them.
Why not just use stones?
A flat stone gives a flat bevel. The steel behind the edge stays thick, the point is not weak, and on that count stones win outright.
Then you use them.
It takes forever to put a twenty-five millimeter bevel on with a stone, and it makes no difference whether the stone is water, oil or diamond. There is a workshop of its own on diamond discs. One good water stone on my bench cost me two hundred dollars, and I work with four of them, so call it eight hundred dollars sitting there. They have to be trued flat again and again. They take up room. And they want water, all the time.
Price is not even the worst of it. Space is. Four stones and the water they need take up a real piece of bench, and every one of them must be flat before it is worth anything.
Water is the part I dislike most. It puts moisture in my shop, right next to my tools, and I do not like that idea at all.
What about a Tormek?
I love the jigs. Whoever worked those jigs out is a genius, and I use them constantly.
The machine itself I love only to a point, and here is the caveat. It has one wheel. One. The truing stone has a rough face and a fine face, so the grinding wheel can be dressed two ways, and that is the whole range you get: rough, and semi fine. Two grits.
It wants water as well, constantly, because the stone has to be fed.
What ended up on my bench instead
I walked into a store one day and found an inexpensive machine imported from overseas. Two hundred dollars at the time, a little less now. A Work Sharp.
I had my doubts about it. The thing is flimsy. It does not even sit flat on my bench. Switch it on and the wheel itself flexes and rides. I walked in and out of that store more than once before I bought the thing.
What sold me was the wheels. They are glass, and you stick sandpaper onto them. I keep 80, 120, 220, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 3600 and 6000, and I can go to 12000 when I want it. A leather wheel strops and a felt wheel buffs. Swapping one takes about ten seconds.
The paper costs almost nothing, it lasts a long time, and when it wears out I tear it off and put another on. The machine runs slow, and slow is what makes it safe to use. I can touch the wheel with my finger. Nobody says that about a bench grinder, and nobody should.
And the bevel comes off flat, because the tool rides on a flat wheel instead of down into a curve.
The one thing it lost is the bar. Work Sharp used to make a bar attachment and they stopped making it. Tormek's bar solves it, and there is a whole lesson here on fitting one.
| The system | What it does to the bevel | Grits | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| A bench grinder | leaves a hollow in every bevel made | very few | thin metal just behind the tip |
| The Tormek system | beautiful jigs, and one wheel to dress | just two | constant water beside your carving tools |
| Flat sharpening stones | flat bevels and a much stronger point | one each | slow, costly, and needing truing often |
| The Work Sharp | glass wheels wearing whatever paper you choose | eighty upward | a flimsy body, no bar included |
For the small tools I skip the coarse papers entirely. About 220, then 400, then 3600, then 6000, and finally the leather wheel. That is the whole outside of a one millimeter veiner, and the long version of that last step is stropping, honing and buffing.
Why do tiny tools need a bevel inside as well?
Two reasons, and the first one surprises people.
A long low bevel leaves a fine point, and a fine point is weak. Cut a small bevel inside and that point thickens up. You keep the long low profile outside, your hand still fits beneath the handle, and the tool stops being fragile.
The second reason is how you actually work. Nobody uses a gouge in one position all day. You turn it over and carve upside down, and when you do, the inside is the face meeting the wood. That face has to cut too.
On some tools I go further and round the heel off as well, so the whole back sweeps smooth right up to the point. A spoon gouge and a back bent both get an inside bevel for the same reasons.
What gets inside a tool this small?
On anything normal you reach for a slip stone. Find one that fits the sweep and the job is finished, which is how a skew bent gouge gets done.
Nothing fits a half millimeter veiner. Slip stones are not made that small, and the ones that do exist are not cheap.
So I use paper.
Take a chip off the bench, one of the shavings from yesterday's carving, and wrap the sandpaper around it. Now you have a slip the exact shape of your own tool, and you use it exactly as you would use a stone. The chip does the work at one millimeter. On the half millimeter you do not even need it, because the folded paper alone goes in.
People hear sandpaper and expect a compromise. What they get is a slip stone shaped to their own tool, in whatever grit they like, for the price of a sheet. I have not found the compromise yet.
The paper I like is silicon carbide, an abrasive made for machine shops and for car work. Waterproof, so you can wet it. I keep 3000 on the bench and I have it up to 12000. A plain 220 sheet will start the job perfectly well.
The same paper works outside the tool as well. Lay a sheet on anything dead flat and you have a stone, for a few cents.
Do you need a whole wall of tools?
Not for a long time, you do not. There was a stretch when I carved with one knife and one gouge. That was everything I owned, and I carved.
For hobby work that is still true. Buy honestly, learn to sharpen, and a small handful of tools will carry you a long way. That is what the tuition is for, and a fingernail gouge is as good a place to start as any.
Professional work is a different animal. Once a piece gets deep and complicated, once you have to go underneath and excavate the inside and keep the movement running through it, one tool will not reach. You cannot get into those cavities with a single gouge, so the collection grows because the work demands it.
The lesson runs four videos, with the whiteboard drawings that make the hollow and the weak point obvious, and the camera close on a one millimeter tool while the paper goes in.
How it's done
- Reshape it first. Treat the factory bevel as a starting blank, nothing more, because the tool gets its real shape before the edge is ever touched.
- Set the bevel length. Aim for roughly 5.5mm on the smallest tools, and up to twenty millimeters on a big one.
- Check it with your hand. Rest it on the wood as if you were carving. Your hand should barely fit beneath the handle, knuckles brushing, and the tool should grab the wood at that height.
- Use a flat abrasive, not a wheel. Paper on a flat glass wheel gives a flat bevel, where a grinding wheel leaves a hollow that thins the metal under the edge.
- Climb the fine grits only. On micro tools the coarse papers get skipped completely. Work 220, then 400, then 3600, and finish at 6000.
- Strop on leather. Finish the outside of the tool on the leather wheel.
- Wrap paper on a chip. Take a shaving off the bench, fold a piece of sandpaper over it, and use the thing exactly as you would use a slip stone.
- Cut the inner bevel. Work the inside until the fine point thickens up. On the smallest tools the folded paper goes in with no chip behind it at all.
Frequently asked questions
How small do carving gouges go?
Down to half a millimeter. A number 11 veiner is made at half, one, one and a half and two millimeters, so a thirty-second of an inch at the smallest. Two Cherries makes a one millimeter and other makers go below it.
Does a new carving tool need reshaping?
Alexander reshapes every one of his. The bevel a maker ships is not wrong so much as generic, because nobody at the factory knows what you carve. Reshaping is the first stage of sharpening, before the edge gets touched at all.
How long should a carving bevel be?
Long. About twenty millimeters on a large gouge, ten or fourteen on some, twenty-five on a few. The smallest veiner comes down near five and a half millimeters, which is three sixteenths of an inch.
What to carve next