03-12-2021, 07:33 AM
(03-05-2021, 04:22 PM)catchinon Wrote: Regarding this part: "... To dispel a myth (maybe): as I understand it there is no jig used to sharpen the Nils; it just requires fine hand work."
My educated guess is that this is true.
At work, the employees often bring me new unused drills to sharpen because my sharpening outperforms a factory grind by a lot. I'm a machinist and very good at sharpening drills to work well drilling even the most difficult of materials and that is as Catchinon says: "it just requires fine hand work." From learning from the best and doing it and sharpening things a lot, I have a sense for the geometry of what cuts best. That is what I saw in the Nils auger when I first saw one and instantly made a decision to buy in in all three sizes without even hearing reports from users and just knowing it's design was excellent. I wasn't disappointed.
Having said that, I have never sharpened my Nils augers because they haven't dulled and cut great. But, when the time comes, I have confidence that I will sharpen them just fine. The geometry and design is just right for cutting, so my strategy would be to maintain that same geometry when sharpening. It looks like it is designed to take many sharpenings to last a lifetime.