Gary, That reflects my experience as well.
I was turning something in a lathe and one of the old codgers didn't like the looks of my cutting tool. Now mind you, I had spent quite a bit of time the night before creating that cutter with a protractor and setting up the table angles and all that stuff...
He grabs a new blank out of his toolbox, flips on the pedestal grinder, hits one side, sparks a'flyin, hits the other side, hits the top side, dunks it in the cooling water, and hands it to me. Whole process took like 45 seconds and worked 1000 times better than the one I must have spent a half hour on.
I asked him what angles he used and his response was something like "The right ones. Cuts nice, doesn't it?"
That's how I do it. I'm not 80 yet.
I have a lot of experience with sharpening hss steel tools for my wood lathe, I am just getting into metal turning, so give me a break if this does not apply.
CBN wheels are my choice, they don,t load up like friable wheels, do not need to be trued up, less heat transferred to the tool and I get a sharper edge.
Expensive, $ 150 to 200, but wort he every penny. I don't think you can wear them out, also run very true and smooth.
Jeff
My guess, with a similar background, is that if you have gotten good at sharpening effective wood cutting tools and understand how geometry and tool approach angles affect the cut and prevent or contribute to tear-out, smooth cutting, etc, etc, that you have one specific habit to overcome and you will be very, very good at it, better than most modern machinists.
The one habit that woodwhackers tend to develop is pushing the envelop on rake and clearance angles. Woodworkers may use neutral rake and very rarely neg rake to prevent tear-out in wild and wildly changing grain. Say french heads for the shaper and scraper profiles for the lathe, until they learn about hi-shear tools being as effective though much harder (more complex) to grind. But other than that, woodworkers tend to strong rake, shear when possible, and loads of clearance with very acute cutting edges.
For metal, generally less positive and neutral tools work with more stability in the cut, and less clearance makes them last much longer. Metal is less springy than wood, so it only needs a few degrees of clearance, as opposed to 15, 20, or even 30° in some cases for wood.
The other thing woodworkers are very good at is understanding and refining every ground edge with slipstones and hones to make it truly smooth, sharp and more durable. This is very effective for metal cutting tools, too.
I use an open wheel grinder, no guards and no rests, for all my hand ground tools and bits. I've made buckets full of woodworking shaper (moulder) profiles that way. I don't reccomend open wheel, it is just how I learned and for profile knives and you sometimes change through 3 or 4 wheel widths and profiles to grind one, so the guard gets in the way.
If anyone comes up with a source for AlO wheels for the so-called "Carbide" grinders, I'd love to know. I bought one for my kid sister a few years ago for a wedding present (she asked for it
)and have regretted ever since that it only came with green wheels. She obviously does not use it often, but both for health and effectiveness reasons, I feel guilty not having followed up with some decent AlO wheels. I had not realized at the time how difficult that had become.
smt