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Screwdrivers dressing


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4 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Hi T I'm a big fan of hollow ground in some tools and want to try this on a watch driver. Good surface contact is a must imo to prevent slippage. As soon as I started honing drivers to fit well, my ability with them greatly improved. So experimenting with HG is a must for me. A good fit is important,  and am thinking maybe to the point of having to physically remove the screw from the driver by hand. ( behave, I could have made that sound so much worse) . If you will the driver to fit the slot just tight enough to lift the screw out with, instead of having to switch to a pair of tweezers to remove the screw, using only a light touch with a finger to release the screw. I've not tried that but I definitely am going to experiment to see the implications of it.

T . hollow ground. easiest method is with a grinding wheel. As fine as you can find. You will need to experiment with the size of the wheel and how far down you can go with the driver size is my first thought. I'm guessing not too far down before you need to switch to hand sharpening, a DIY curved bench stone?.The rough cut of a grind wheel to the driver will have pros and cons attached to it. Not fully sure what they will be as yet. Pros - gripping power, less hand sharpening ? Cons - fibre attraction ie. Any fibres, hairs etc kicking around will have more to cling to. 

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6 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

I think I wrote this elsewhere in this thread, but bear in mind that a hollow ground driver will fit exactly one size of slot. A little bigger slot and it will slip around and possibly cause dings, smaller slot and it won't fit. I have one (had two) of the special sharpeners, and tried out hollow ground, and, for the work involved, found that wedge shape is simply better for watch work, for me. But I have a friend who loves hollow ground- and since time is money, he has several sets of screwdrivers with varying thickness hollow ground blades, as well as a set with regular wedge shape. I gave him the spare hollow grind tool I had, he was happy to then have a spare, haha.

I'm definitely in agreement with this I think hollow ground screwdrivers is an accident waiting to happen. I scanned in a image of George Daniels book. You notice in his examples the second image while it's not actually a hollow ground I think would have the same effect of it's not a good idea. A correctly shaped screwdriver will work fine. Whether it's hollow ground or incorrectly shaped that will not work fine. If you're having a problem with the screw you have to change your screwdriver to fit the screw unfortunately. Then as there is no standard on what a screw slot should look like that means there's no real standard on shape of the blades you'll have to modify to fit the situation.

screwdriver blades George Daniel suggestion.jpg

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1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

I'm definitely in agreement with this I think hollow ground screwdrivers is an accident waiting to happen. I scanned in a image of George Daniels book. You notice in his examples the second image while it's not actually a hollow ground I think would have the same effect of it's not a good idea. A correctly shaped screwdriver will work fine. Whether it's hollow ground or incorrectly shaped that will not work fine. If you're having a problem with the screw you have to change your screwdriver to fit the screw unfortunately. Then as there is no standard on what a screw slot should look like that means there's no real standard on shape of the blades you'll have to modify to fit the situation.

screwdriver blades George Daniel suggestion.jpg

Thanks John. You might have just saved me some time experimenting there with that diagram. That illustrates how accurately the fit would need to be if hollow grinding. A whole bunch of time spent to make one driver fit just one screw.  Sorry Nicklesilver I did not see your post.  A straight ground will fit more than one. Very slight taper to the hollow ground, like a very shallow angle straight  blade 👌. Great for making a tenon joint though. I'll still want to have a go.

Edited by Neverenoughwatches
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On 4/14/2022 at 9:03 PM, Tiny said:

Not sure how I'm going to maintaining the edge yet I'm sure I can make a jig for it some how. anyway here is the link to the blades

OK, I wasn't even aware of those until now. It looks like an even more extreme version of the hollow-ground pattern, but with an additional factor of difficulty in the maintenance and in the adjustment to fit different slots. When the conventional flat blades work as well as they do, everything else looks to me like a solution looking for a problem. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts though, when you've had a chance to use them.

Edited by Klassiker
Word missing, added for clarity
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