sharpening carving chisels

A place you may want to check  out.  I have one of their  608-M Rubberized abrasive wheels and I love it.    Great for taking the fine grit grinder marks out of small edged tools before stropping.  The best part is that it sure saves a lot of time and elbow grease.  I also use it for dressing lathe chisles

http://www.cratex.com/rubindx.htm

dlb,

The first number is the sweep (or profile) and the second is the cutting width in mm.  A 1-16 would be a #1 sweep that is 16 mm wide.  Pfeil also uses a number of letters to designate different types of gouges.  If there is no letter it is a standard size straight gouge.  A "D" would indicate the smaller version of the standard gouge.  An "F" indicates a fishtail gouge.  An "L" indicates a long bent gouge while an "a" indicates a spoon-bent.  You can check with Woodcraft to see the various designations.

Jim

For an abrasive wheel less aggressive than conventional grinding wheels, Cratex rubberized abrasives are excellent. Note, however, that the problem of matching the abrasive to the shape of the tool is still an issue. For mechanized stropping purposes, you might also consider a hard felt wheel, loaded with the stropping compound of choice. The typical cloth wheels may be too "floppy" for that purpose, since they are designed for softly polishing odd-shaped objects.

I put myself in the beginner category, carving-wise. So, I wonder if carvers obsess over sharpness in the same way that general woodworkers do over chisels and plane irons. Wouldn't sharpening the inside curve of a carving gouge, for example, require a stone or sharpening support (e.g. for use with fine-grit sheets) of a similar profile? I've used dowels for that purpose, but could envision a board with a series of carved profiles to match a series of gouges.