Need advice on chisel sharpening

[Jacob]

+1
Grahams video is spot on (the first bit, I didn't watch it for long). He flattens the face but it gets flattened enough in the ordinary process of using/sharpening and you don't need to spend much time on it IMHO
There's a bit of a cult thing with modern sharpening about spending hours flattening and polishing but don't get drawn in - it's a complete waste of time!

 

[RogerP]

For the past 5/6 years I've settled on a bench belt sander with a blue Zirconia belt and then wet and dry on a piece of float glass.
Quick and easy and the results are good enough for me.

I already had all the kit for other uses so just needed a bit of glass which I found at a car-boot for 50p. It even had nicely ground and rounded edges!

 

[wizard]

For the past 5/6 years I've settled on a bench belt sander with a blue Zirconia belt and then wet and dry on a piece of float glass.
Quick and easy and the results are good enough for me.

I already had all the kit for other uses so just needed a bit of glass which I found at a car-boot for 50p.

that's how its done simples

 

[Corneel]

Another vote for Grahams video. One caveat, when you restore old beaten up chisels, you will need a coarser stone then that fine India. The coarse side would probably do.

When you look closely in the light at the edge you migt see a shiny line just on that edge. When you see that, you know the edge is till dull. Get going on that coarse stone untill you can feel a good burr on the backside. Turn it over on the fine side of the tool like Graham shows to remove that burr. Have a look again at that edge. Still shiny spots or even chips out of the edge? Then you have to repeat the coarse work. After that you can do the fine honing like Graham shows very well.

Trying to hone out the chips on a fine stone is too much work to be fun.

And of course, sandpaper works too. Get a bit of glas from a glass factory.

 

[shrimp]

I watched this video before but I didn't think the chisel cut the oak very well. There is another video on youtube where they used waterstones and when they tried paring oak end grain it was like a hot knife through butter. Shame he don't reply to his messages so I could find out what chisel he used.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

For general household joinery work, the level of sharpness Graham demonstrated is more than sufficient. True, you can get edge tools sharper, but you only need that level of sharpness for things like finishing cuts when woodcarving, finish paring show surfaces in fine cabinetmaking and the like. If you want that level of sharpness you'll have to pay for it - translucent Arkansas stone (£100+), 10,000grit waterstone (about the same price) and so on.

You just don't need those insane levels of sharpness for household joinery in softwoods and mild hardwoods.

The chisel he used was a Marples, available from somewhere like one of the big DIY retailers or internet tool suppliers. Perfectly good chisel.

 

[Trafalgar]

AlOx powder on a hard strop will get you to uber sharp when necessary. I'm told the powder is in the 50K+ grit range though the actual number is trivial to me; it is obviously extremely fine. It imparts a very, very high polish. It's dry, not waxy, and the residual wipes off easily. I paid $5 for a little vial that is still half full after three years. I don't use it all the time, but often enough. It doesn't take much.

No need to buy stones that cost several hundred dollars. Most use AlOX as the media anyway. Just buy it loose and pocket the other $295 which is essentially the cost of the binder/matrix, marketing, etc.

Oilstones will establish geometry and give a fine working edge for almost all tasks. The loose powder will refine an edge on those occasions when it's called for.

My daughter wanted me to "pick Rudolph" so here he is: :deer

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I forgot to add - the 'insane sharp' chisels are often paring and carving tools with shallower bevels; something like 20 - 25 degrees. They will indeed slice through end-grain like a hot knife through butter, but that's ALL they'll do. Try whacking one into a piece of sofwood with a mallet to cut a hinge sink, and the cutting edge will curl up and fracture before you could say 'oilstone'. For that sort of duty, a steeper bevel angle - about 30 degrees - is needed to hold up to the impacts. Secondly, if you sharpen a 30-degree bevel to the n-th degree and then start a job that needs a bit of mallet work, you'll knock the ultra-fine edge off in seconds, leaving you no better off than if you'd just honed on the fine India and wiped off the wire edge on the strop, as shown.

Trust us - we've tried!

 

[G S Haydon]

I watched this video before but I didn't think the chisel cut the oak very well. There is another video on youtube where they used waterstones and when they tried paring oak end grain it was like a hot knife through butter. Shame he don't reply to his messages so I could find out what chisel he used.

:lol: Fair point shrimp, it can always be sharper :wink: I did a review on the Stanley Sweetheart Chisels which has a little section at the end where I use them. Again it could always be "better". I have a hard Ark but hardly ever need it. I'm going to use CC's very clever escape that the other guy was sharpening for paring, otherwise it would of been as blunt as mine....or not

Thanks for the comments chaps. The video is aimed at making a fuss free introduction to practical sharpening. It does make 'em sharp, honest :lol:

 

[n0legs]

What would the old masters have used ?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Apprentices.

 

[n0legs]

Apprentices.

They in the Axminster catalogue Phil, which page ? :lol:

 

[Jacob]

What would the old masters have used ?

Not just the old masters but just about everybody from the stone age until about about 1990 ish used man-made (latterly) or natural stones freehand plus grindwheel if they had access to one and leather strops for a fine edge.
Sharpening only got difficult fairly recently - mainly due to the use of jigs.

 

[bugbear]

Not just the old masters but just about everybody from the stone age until about about 1990 ish used man-made (latterly) or natural stones freehand plus grindwheel if they had access to one and leather strops for a fine edge.

Excellent summary, at least for the UK.

BugBear

 

[RobinBHM]

Apprentices.

Correct! falls between Tea making and sash cramp cleaning

 

[Eric The Viking]

There's the old tried and tested "slice off the end at an angle with a plasma cutter" (SOTEAAAWAPC) method.
Young upstarts have been known to use CO2 lasers, but IMHO that's just showing off.

Seriously, if you want to try scary sharp, you don't need glass - anything flat will do, like an old piece of melamine-faced chipboard (a cupboard shelf, for instance), or even a metal tea tray resting on something. Stick the paper down, ideally with spray glue, pick some sort of honing guide (they all work, but the eclipse-type ones are cheap and easy to find and use.

I use scary sharp. I get on with it well and get excellent results. Other people hate it. But nobody really has much of an opinion on this, honest.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

What would the old masters have used ?

Before the introduction of man-made stones in the 1890s, UK craftsmen mostly used (imported) Turkey stones; Benjamin Seaton's tool chest (1797) contained Turkey sharpening stone and slipstones. Charnley Forest stones were also prized for the fine edge they gave, though they were slow cutting. There were quite a few other natural stones that would sharpen edge tools, some of them very slow-acting (several varieties of Welsh 'slate' - some of which are not technically slate, for example), and various imported stones (American Washita and Arkansas, for example). The variety was considerable, and the sharpening properties very variable. Some were very highly prized.

The introduction of faster-acting and more consistent man-made stones was greeted, after initial slight scepticism, with some enthusiasm. The formerly prized natural stones became, to all intents and purposes, valueless. There's an excellent account of this in Walter Rose's 'The Village Carpenter'.

In other parts of the world, practice tended to be dictated by the local availability of suitable natural stones. Thus, North American practice revolved around stones sourced from the Washita and Arkansas areas (and to some extent, still does); in Japan, stones that responded well to water as a lubricant influenced their working tradition, and whilst many of the stones used are now man-made, the tradition is still strong. I'm not too sure about the rest of Asia, Africa or even Continental Europe, but I suspect the same applies.

 

[Doug B]

What would the old masters have used ?

My master uses his light sabre, but being a humble padawan with no light sabre today I used an oil stone.

 

[Corneel]

In Central Europe the Belgium blue and yellow Coticules were and still are highly praised. Always been an expensive stone.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Good point - Jimi has made enthusiastic noises about his Coticules in the past.

Europe is a large and geologically diverse continent with a very long history of edge tool use. There must be many sources of stone suitable for sharpening.