What is the most durable shape of graver to use on hard tough metal.

Jerry Huddleston
11/7/2007 12:42:31 PM

Hi Jerry

What's worked for me is a 55 degree face and blunting the tip of the graver. All I do once it's sharpened is touch the diamond wheel/sharpening stone with the very tip of the graver. This just dulls the point slightly. It can add quite a bit of life to the graver point.

Another thing that can work well is to polish the heel and get all scuff marks out of it from sharpening. For some reason the tougher gravers (carbolt, carbide?) seem to really like breaking on a scuff mark and when they go.....they really go. The down side of polishing the heel is that it will leave a brighter cut which may, or may not be what you're after.

I'd be interested to see what others have to say about it.

Cheers
Andrew

Andrew Biggs
11/7/2007 6:01:17 PM

Hi Jerry.

Andrew gave you some good tips.
Raise the Face angle, 55,60,65 or even 70 degrees.
A 105, 110 or 120 V is stronger than a 90 degree bottom.
Nubbing the point, as Andrew said will further strengthen the tip.
Very slightly rounding the heel along the long axis will nearly double the durability of the graver.
Polish the FACE and HEEL of carbide and carbolt.
Both of these materials, carbide especially tend to set up fracture line along any remaining sharpening tool marks.
And they break with a very sudden let go!

Hope this helps, best of luck. John B.

John Barraclough
11/8/2007 10:58:29 AM

Thanks guys. Back to work.

Jerry Huddleston
11/8/2007 11:38:35 AM

also: make very sure your heels are quite short if cutting tight or small scroll curves. the wider heel will put additional pressure on the point.this added pressure is not needed.. will also cause scrape marks along the scroll side wall. your heels should also meet at the exact same point on the graver bottom. this can cause proplems too. heels should be not much wider than a thin pencil line.

J.D. Swartzfeger
11/18/2007 1:12:24 AM

I can recommend for hard steel sharpening angle around 80 degrees. First rule: harder metal - upper angle.

Dmitriy Pavlov
11/18/2007 11:47:38 AM