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An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual Sharpening Putting your nose to the grindstone implies tedious, repetitious, and unending work. You will find that sharpening a dull or abused ax is indeed tedious and repetitious, but to do it right you have to do it slowly (Figure 62). Along the way, youll learn the value of patience, and appreciate the differences in steel tempering and ax quality as you sharpen different axes. Best of all, you will appreciate the usefulness of a razor-sharp ax, and the importance of doing everything you can to keep it sharp. Figure 62-The right way and wrong way to use a grinding wheel (drawings by Frederic H. Kock). Never use an electric high-speed dry bench grinder to sharpen your ax. That type of a grinder will almost certainly draw the temper from the ax and ruin it. Very few people have enough skill to use a high-speed grinder without drawing the temper from the steel, leaving the steel too soft to hold an edge. The only grindstone that I recommend is one of the old- style pedal grindstones that stay wet with a constant application of water to the stone. If you draw the temper from your ax with a high-speed grinder, you may have ruined the ax for good. At the minimum, youve drawn the temper for at least 3/16 of an inch back from the edge. You can always tell when the temper is drawn because the color of the steel at the edge turns blue. If this happens to your ax, youve got to remove a lot of steel to reshape the edge back to where it still is tempered. If you use a pedal grindstone, keep it wet, and always rotate the grindstone toward you and into the ax, not away from it. If you dont have a pedal grindstone, your options are limited to a file and whetstone. This is how most quality ax sharpening is done today. Few stores carry pedal grindstones. Wear leather gloves (Figure 63) throughout the sharpening process, as the ax will become razor-sharp.