[Anthony Filetti]

...the story begins with me waiting patiently for my new "Ultimate Sharpening" machine...been about 8 days since ordered and paid for to our friends up north. I've been drooling with the thought of coming home from work one day this week to find my new toy (just like the kid wanting his Red Rider BB Gun)...so I come home from work last night and again no sharpening machine...AGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

...along comes a wonderful neighbor...my cell phone starts ringing about 8:30 last night from a local number that I do not know and the caller on the other end asks for me by name and asks if I have been waiting on a package from Chipping Away...I say yes, and he goes on to tell me that it was delivered to his house by mistake, a house about a mile away. He kindly allows me to come pick it up and I am ecstatic at receiving the new tool but a little out of sorts that a $250 machine was delivered to the wrong address...if my neighbor wasn't so nice I would not have been so fortunate as Chipping Away did nothing wrong but our USPS did...(I had saved nickle and dime for this machine...)

...after taking the machine to my studio i couldn't help but wonder how the neighbor knew to call me as my cell phone number is not known by many...turns out Chipping Away was nice enough to put my phone number on the address label...thank the good lord for that!!!

...its funny, I just moved to this new house about 6 months ago now and at least once a month mail is misdelivered, where at my previous house I lived for about 11 years and the whole time I was there it might have happened 3 times....and these are the folks that want to raise our postal rates for what the 3rd time in what seems like less than two years?????

[Nancy_G]

Tony - a good friend of mine had one of those tools and just LOVES it. Tell us how you feel about yours as soon as you can.

I keep looking at their ads in WCI and wondering if I should buy one..... but where would I put it? Right now I use my Burke machine as a place to stack all the tools I'm going to send to Rick Ferry.

[Anthony Filetti]

Nancy,
For me it was a choice between the Burke and the Ultimate Sharpener. The Burke is twice the cost for the enhanced version. After speaking with several other carvers (thanks go out to Mark A., Bart, and Mitchell for their patience) I settled on diamond stones for sharpening my knives to allow for the maximum amount of control over the process and as they are my most used tools and decided on the Ultimate Sharpener for my gouges for the following reasons:
- it was widely utilized by other carvers who use theirs extensively
- ease of use
- while others have bought other 1" band sanders this machine was designed with sharpening in mind
- while systems like the Burke use wheels of varying diameters for sharpening, the Ultimate uses a a flat surface for the sharpening area allowing me (a real rookie) the ability to control the bevels my tools will have
- cost, not as inexpensive as buying a band sander but also not as costly as a Burke
- the machine comes w/ 3 sharpening bands and a leather strop

Now this is not to say my decision does not have a down side. I finally understand the difference between sharpening and honing (as the terms are used by most carvers). While the machine does come with a leather strop it does not come with a solution for honing/polishing the interior of my gouges. If I purchased a complete Burke system this would have been included. So in order for me to complete the sharpening/honing process I will probably purchase a Flexcut shaped strop (available almost anywhere) to accomplish this task. The deciding factor was, should I spend another $200 at this point to accomplish this task when the task is rarely performed and I can accomplish the same thing with a $12 strop and a little bit of my time? I think not.

This is not say that I won't be making mistakes with some expensive tools but I feel that I need to learn. I have used Rick in the past and have been completely satisfied with the service he and his wife have provided, excellent job and tools are returned quickly (you can't go wrong) but I have do not have the budget to afford multiples of my tools so if a tool should go dull I have to wait to continue my project until it is sharpened, as just happened w/ my 1mm v-tool. From now on, I will be in control of that and will be able to make deadlines and reach my goals without delays.

Another reason that I have purchase this machine is it will give me the ability to reshape my tools as desired. For a lot of us caricature carvers that usually means removing a bevel from a knife and rounding the spine for easier cutting and also allows us to reshape points as necessary. This is not to say that my diamond stones won;t accomplish the same thing (I just recently watched Allen Goodman reshape a knife for a customer who had snap the tip off of his knife using a sharpening card) the machine will do it much quicker.

Sooooo, my Arkansas stones have been retired and replaced w/ Diamond stones (from DMT) and the sharpening machine.

BTW, if you've ever wondered about diamond stones try the sharpening cards which are only about $12 each and are very portable!!

The one thing I will say about the machine, it was packaged well and was easy to assemble (ready in about 5 minutes). If you're trying to decide between machines, Chipping Away's website has videos on the machine you can watch as a demonstration, hopefully it will be as simple as it looks...

[Irish]

Tony, We have worked with Dennis Moor of Chipping Away for years and you could not ask for a nicer or more gentlemanly person! Plus if you ever have a chance to talk with him on the phone be prepared to come away with a huge laugh ... Dennis can put KennyS, Dave and Al to shame with his quick puns and jokes.

We get our dog prints from our artists in the mail or by UPS all the time. About 5 years ago I headed up to the mail box as usual, late in the day, to discover one of our artist's packages sticking out the mail box.

Normally this would not have been a big deal even though the mailman knew we were always home to accept a delivery. But this time it was. The package was a 5" wide by 48" long shipping tube stuffed into our standard 15" deep by 5" wide mailbox!

One: I do not know how he did it! He must have taken off his shoes to beat the end of the tube to force it into the mailbox. It took forever to wiggle and giggle that tube back out.

Two: I do not know what he was thinking because our mailbox is right at the road's edge so at least 33" of the tube was sticking out into traffic.

We were so lucky that someone didn't accidental clip it or end up in the ditch trying to avoid it.

Susan

[Nancy_G]

Rocket -- remember how OLD I am. I've had time to figure things out.

On my Burke I removed one of the big sanding wheels and replaced it with another leather wheel so I had one I could use for a flat knife and another I could use for deep gouges with no worry.
On the lower shaft I removed the left wheel (I've forgotten what it was) and replaced it with a hard felt wheel that's very, very good for honing. I use the Flexcut compound
I replaced the lower right wheel with a Koch wheel that comes with its own green compound. It's certainly good but I don't find it much better than than the hard felt and the hard felt cost around $40 (if I remember right) and the Koch cost a fortune)

My real solution for sharpening and sending things off to Rick is ---- when things get dull is to buy a new one from Rick, all sharp and ready to go. When I receive it, I mail him the old, dull one. Works like a charm

[Anthony Filetti]

Originally Posted by Nancy_G

Rocket -- remember how OLD I am. I've had time to figure things out.

....Nancy, I enjoy the journey (and trust me my mind has been all over the place) and I would NEVER bring a womans age into the conversation...besides I had my first adventure into getting old this past monday at the gastroenterologist's office (you want to put what? where? )...

Isn't it typical though how much effort and money goes into trying to find what works for us, can't blame you at all for using Rick and Theresa, they are fantastic.

So Susan up here in NY if that happened the postman would find himself stuffed into the box the next day or fitted for some nice cement shoes (he-he) !!

...one other thing that I forgot to mention is that i recently did my first one piece carving scene (like Marv K. does) and when I met with him at the open house he explained that doing these types of carving causes one to become quite creative in creating tools to make cuts in tight places and he brought a few objects that he had sharpened just to make a couple of cuts. Since this type of carving interests me (it sometimes can be like playing chess trying to figure out how you are going to make a series of cuts) the machine will allow me to experiment with sharpening different objects that will allow for this...

[Eddy Smiles]

In case you all are not aware of it, there is no longer any requirement that the United States al Service deliver mail to the correct address (Hee! Hee!). I know that this sounds far fetched but it must be the truth because I frequently have folks knocking at my door delivering mail that we addressed to me and delivered to them or I'm delivering mail to them that was delivered to me by mistake. I've asked my mail person about it but have been told that the mail is now cased back at the post office by others and the mail person is no longer responsible for mis-delivered mail. What ever happened to the old, "neither rain, sleet nor hail will stop the postman" days! Scary isn't it? I sure hope that I haven't offended any retired postal workers!