After the lathe is bought and the tools are purchased, there are the basics of woodturning to learn.
One of the first is sharpening the tools.
This is not hard to accomplish with the right approach.
Sharp tools are essential to safe and efficient woodturning.
Dull tools require extra force to work, leave bad surfaces requiring a lot of sanding and may skip and hurt the turner.
The nature of wood turning with fast moving material that often includes bark, knots and such things as gravel and sand means that tools need to be sharpened often.
While the basic sharpening tool for the woodturner is a grinder that is usually found in the home shop, the curved shape of many woodturning tools means a new skill for the new turner learn.
While the new skill is similar to turning itself, causing many experienced woodturners to push free hand sharpening, for the beginner and for many experienced turners, jigs are the way to go.
They are easily made or bought and remove any problems from learning this woodturning basic.
Consider a simple roughing gouge.
This is sharpened straight across at a forty five degree angle.
While this does not sound difficult it means holding the tool at a steady forty-five degree angle to the turning wheel while rolling it at a constant speed to the left and right.
One a person tries it they realize how much of a skill this is to develop.
Instead a jig calls for an arm to be set at a definite distance from the stone.
The gouge is laid on the arm and as the stone rotates, the gouge is rolled from side to side without chance of being held at the wrong angle.
Precision is built in to the jig.
Instead of learning complex body movements it is only necessary to learn to read the instructions for the jig.
It is certainly possible to learn to sharpen woodturning tools freehand.
Woodturners have been doing it for thousands of years and continue to do so today.
However, woodturning tool sharpening jigs can turn a difficult to learn skill into a quickly acquired facility for a woodturning basic and thus make a new hobby or profession safer and more enjoyable.