Sharpen Crucible Type 2 Dividers

After we shipped out our first big batch of Crucible Type 2 Dividers, we realized that we made the tips a little too long, and they bent more easily than we liked. It’s an easy thing to fix with a piece of sandpaper. And the “fix” is also the way to sharpen the dividers after they become dull with use.

Note: The dividers that are shipping now have already been sharpened using these methods, or they have tips we have modified on the mill.

Sharpening these dividers (or any dividers) is part of routine maintenance and is much easier to do than sharpening an edge tool. 

Materials Needed

Here in our shop, we use #220-grit sandpaper that we have stuck down to a piece of inexpensive 12” x 12” floor tile from the home center. We stick it down using a thin squirt of spray adhesive (also available at your home center).

You will find this setup ideal for truing the soles of your block and smoothing planes.

You also could use a medium-grit diamond plate (if that’s how you roll), oilstones or India stones (crystalon). I don’t like to use waterstones for this because they are so soft, and it’s easy to plow a ditch in your stone with dividers.

How To Do It

The video above shows how to do it. If you read our blog via email, click here, and you’ll be whisked to a page where you can watch the video. The desired result is two tapered tips that curve to fine points. The curve strengthens the tips and helps prevent them from bending.

If you have bent your tips, you can either bend them back with some needlenose pliers or (if they bend only slightly) remove the bend on the sandpaper. 

We were going to make a $99 micrometer-powered jig that attaches to your angle grinder to do this operation, but this seemed the better solution.

— Christopher Schwarz

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