by cazclocker » Mon Sep 15, 2014 4:43 pm
Hi, I just found this thread. I find that like Bob, when the tee-rest is left soft, my graver kind of "bites" into it and tends to stay put without sliding back and forth. As to excessive nicking into the tee-rest, I try to at least partially solve that with how I prepare my gravers. Before I even grind the lozenge tip, I start prepping my graver on a fine India stone. I just round off one of the corners, along the full length of the graver blank. I don't round it off very much, just enough to get rid of the sharp 90-degree angle. Then once I have one of the corners rounded, I then take the blank to the grinder to start making the lozenge shape. The rounded corner becomes the bottom of the lozenge shape. After stoning the lozenge to mirror brightness, the rounded corner becomes the corner that I seat onto the tee-rest. I have one graver where I rounded two opposite corner edges - one became the base of the lozenge and the other became the tip of the lozenge. The only thing I don't like about that graver is I can't cut super-sharp cuts because of the slightly rounded tips. My gravers, when prepped this way, stay put on my soft tee-rest even though it's rounded a little bit.
...Doug
PS....I don't know, but I suspect tee-rests were made soft intentionally. Most of our lathes were made nearly a century ago by the old-time industrialists who really knew how to make stuff the right way. I love old technology!
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Doug Haeussler
NAWCC #0167553
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