Double-Bevel Paring Chisel Sharpening On Waterstones

[sdbranam]

Here's a blog post on more conventional sharpening using double-bevel: http://www.closegrain.com/2012/08/double-bevel-paring-chisel-sharpening.html

I still don't have perfect control for flat bevels, but I continue to practice.

 

[mtr1]

I think the reason you are still getting convex bevels is, you are holding the handle instead of the iron. Hold the iron, and rest the heel of your palm on the ferrule, or below that to the sharp end with your right hand. Keep both your hands as close to the end of the iron as you dare. That said, the chisel cuts the pine well with minimum effort, so does it matter?

 

[Paul Chapman]

I still don't have perfect control for flat bevels, but I continue to practice.

I admire your perseverence, Steve, but why not just use a honing guide? You could have had better results (which are repeatable) in a fraction of the time.

For chisels the Trend one is good as it has a wide roller

and registers from the flat side of the blade

Or you can modify an Eclipse-style jig to register from the flat side

I agree with Mark - holding the chisel by the handle will tend to cause it to pivot.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[sdbranam]

I admire your perseverence, Steve, but why not just use a honing guide? You could have had better results (which are repeatable) in a fraction of the time.

Sheer pig-headed obstinacy? It's a learning goal, not something I expect to achieve in a few days. As Mark points out, I'm getting good results on the pine, so why bother? But I believe I can do better over time. I find that I seem to make incremental improvement every few months. In another year, while getting actual work done, I'll have made additional improvements. Granted, this is getting to the level of diminishing returns, but it's also homing in on very fine control.

I like your Eclipse mod. I have that one and the Veritas (from my earlier days).

Mark, I tried several positions for holding the chisel, realizing that holding the far end means any little movement of my hand will affect it. I tried holding it up close as you suggest, and got pretty similar results, I think because of the long heavy end of the chisel hanging out with little support. So that's where I expect that additional practice will help. Like the archer taking a thousand practice shots or the violinist playing a thousand scales, these are extremely fine motor skills that take time to sort out. The fact that I've seen improvement over time convinces me it's worth going on.

Meanwhile, despite the obsessive activity of the last few weeks, I don't spend all my time doing this! Honest! :shock:

 

[Jacob]

What is this obsession with flat bevels? Is it just for appearance sake or what? Why bother - a convex bevel works perfectly well if the edge is OK, as woodcarvers and knife users all know perfectly well. Other woodworkers have no particular need for flat bevels either.

 

[bugbear]

What is this obsession with flat bevels? Is it just for appearance sake or what? Why bother - a convex bevel works perfectly well if the edge is OK, as woodcarvers and knife users all know perfectly well.

You should know, Jacob (but why let facts stand in the way of rhetoric, you never have before) that bevel shape is just as hotly debated in knife circles, with just as little consensus.

BugBear

 

[Jacob]

What is this obsession with flat bevels? Is it just for appearance sake or what? Why bother - a convex bevel works perfectly well if the edge is OK, as woodcarvers and knife users all know perfectly well.

You should know, Jacob (but why let facts stand in the way of rhetoric, you never have before) that bevel shape is just as hotly debated in knife circles, with just as little consensus.

BugBear

knife "circles" maybe - they have a strong looney fringe too, :lol: , but the vast majority of ordinary knife users (i.e. almost everybody) is quite content with convex edges and sharpen their knives (if they ever do) with steels, freehand. I've never heard mention of knife bevels, ever, in all the many thousands of occasions when I have seen people using knives, slicing bread, meat, eating their dinners etc etc.
Probably less than 1 in a million knife users ever gives "bevels" a thought. I wonder why woodworkers got so infected with this contagious idea.
And woodcarvers do convex bevels.

 

[bugbear]

knife "circles" maybe - they have a strong looney fringe too, :lol: , but the vast majority of ordinary knife users (i.e. almost everybody) is quite content with convex edges and sharpen their knives (if they ever do) with steels, freehand. I've never heard mention of knife bevels, ever, in all the many thousands of occasions when I have seen people using knives, slicing bread, meat, eating their dinners etc etc.
Probably less than 1 in a million knife users ever gives "bevels" a thought. I wonder why woodworkers got so infected with this contagious idea.

So you claim to know the sharpening practices of people who don't ever talk about sharpening. Telepathy?

Those statistics/numbers would provide convincing evidence for your argument. Could you say where you got them from?

Or are you just making stuff up?

BugBear

 

[Paul Chapman]

the vast majority of ordinary knife users (i.e. almost everybody) is quite content with convex edges and sharpen their knives (if they ever do) with steels, freehand.

I don't know many people who sharpen knives. They don't know how to. They seem to throw them away when they get blunt and buy a new one. They are quite cheap in the £1 shop :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[mtr1]

I think the vast majority of people who use chisels/planes are dealing with flats, and or need to register a square. A flat or hollow ground bevel is easier to achieve this. Woodcarving is different and deals with curves. I know woodcarvers who use hollow grinding, then just ease the top bevel so it doesn't mark the work, that said some use the apple seed bevel you like also Jacob.

 

[condeesteso]

Paul - I like the look of that Trend jig... I may get one. It looks like a better version of the Axi 'deluxe' honing guide they do, and I have worn one of those out over the years (the brass roller wearing away on internal bearing surface).
I'm not remotely interested in the for and against arguments re jigs v freehand. I do both at different times for different reasons. But no free-hander can get the accuracy and repeatability that a decent jig provides.

Wait for it... :wink:

 

[David C]

Yes indeed.

Accuracy, repeatability, speed, efficiency.

David C

 

[Cheshirechappie]

How accurate does a chisel or plane iron edge need to be? Leaving aside plane irons sharpened to a slight curve for now, chisels can very easily be ground and sharpened accurately enough by eye alone - just a small try-square to check squareness to the length of the blade is all that's needed. It doesn't really matter whether you use a jig or not (both jigged and freehand work; some people prefer one, some the other) what you're aiming for is the convergence of two surfaces (back and bevel) to as near as you can get it, nothing. Sharpness is defined right at that convergence, and what happens half a milimetre or more behind the edge on either surface doesn't really affect sharpness. It helps chisel technique if backs are reasonably flat, but bevels can be concave (hollow ground) flat (as in Japanese chisel practice) or convex - they all work.

Edit to add - if you sharpen freehand, a small gauge is useful to check that bevel angles are in the right parish. Nothing complicated - mine is a piece of cardboard with angle notches cut in it, but you can get nice brass ones fairly cheaply.

For REAL accuracy and repeatability, you need a surface grinder with a sine table, or a toolroom cutter grinder. Obviously, that's over the top - the really important thing is getting a sharp edge that's about the right bevel angle, and square to the sides of the blade. It doesn't take much practice to be able to do that freehand, but if you prefer to use a jig, that's fine. However, no hand sharpening jig will give machine tool accuracies - and it isn't needed anyway.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Paul - I like the look of that Trend jig... I may get one.

What I like about it is that it registers from the flat side of the chisel and it has a wide roller. It comes with a gadget for setting the angle but I don't find that very good. I use a wooden stop block to set the projection of the blade.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[sdbranam]

Part 2 follow-up blog post on this, showing how to get paper-slicing sharp right off the stones, no stropping needed: http://www.closegrain.com/2012/08/double-bevel-paring-chisel-sharpening_24.html

 

[Paul Chapman]

Good to see you got there in the end, Steve.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[bugbear]

Part 2 follow-up blog post on this, showing how to get paper-slicing sharp right off the stones, no stropping needed: http://www.closegrain.com/2012/08/double-bevel-paring-chisel-sharpening_24.html

Historically, stropping was mainly a method of getting finer abrasives than the available/affordable stones.

With Arkansas stones, or Japanese Waterstones stropping may not improve the edge at all. It just depend how fine your last stone is.

Just to further muddy the water, some people are experimenting with stropping with rather coarse diamond paste - coarser and faster than some stones!

BugBear

 

[Jacob]

Part 2 follow-up blog post on this, showing how to get paper-slicing sharp right off the stones, no stropping needed: http://www.closegrain.com/2012/08/double-bevel-paring-chisel-sharpening_24.html

Historically, stropping was mainly a method of getting finer abrasives than the available/affordable stones.

With Arkansas stones, or Japanese Waterstones stropping may not improve the edge at all. It just depend how fine your last stone is.

Just to further muddy the water, some people are experimenting with stropping with rather coarse diamond paste - coarser and faster than some stones!

BugBear

Hmm dunno.
As I understand it stropping was/is done on the hand or on leather, without abrasives. The idea being to remove any last burr and other debris but mainly to polish the face and the bevel - this itself improves the cutting action enormously.
That's what I do myself.
Adding abrasives is just another honing step, not the same thing at all, and you would then need a final strop with nothing added.

 

[David C]

Well I do know.

I was taught that stropping on the hand was a technique to bend the remaining wire edge, (left from insufficiently coarse stones) backwards and forwards till it hopefully fell off. Another method was to drag the edge through some endgrain pine.

Next some craftsmen stropped on leather, glued to flat wood and likely dressed with very fine abrasive such as Jewellers Rouge.

With the ultra fine grits available in Japanese waterstones, I no longer find stropping necessary.

David Charlesworth

 

[Jacob]

.....
I was taught that stropping on the hand was a technique to bend the remaining wire edge, (left from insufficiently coarse stones) backwards and forwards till it hopefully fell off. Another method was to drag the edge through some endgrain pine.

Not quite the same thing. Stropping on the hand polishes - especially of you have horrible horny woodworker's hands. :shock:

Next some craftsmen stropped on leather, glued to flat wood and likely dressed with very fine abrasive such as Jeweller's Rouge.

Another lot of craftsmen (including barbers) stropped on leather with no abrasives. Fairly common and conventional afaik.

With the ultra fine grits available in Japanese waterstones, I no longer find stropping necessary.

David Charlesworth

With stropping I find "ultra fine grits available in Japanese waterstones" etc unnecessary.
The point is - stropping without abrasives is a different thing altogether from an apparently similar process with abrasives.