Honing Guide

[carlb40]

What's the best size to cut the abrasive sheets? I was thinking maybe divide it into 4???

I think that will depend on your widest blade to be sharpened/ honed plus the guide used? The kell mk2 will add 34mm to the overall width of the blade.

 

[Jacob]

What's the best size to cut the abrasive sheets? I was thinking maybe divide it into 4???

If you use sheets it's best to keep them in one piece (assuming A4 or close) and to move about to spread the wear.

It's a small world - I googled kell mk2 images and a few places down met my own little SS sharpening stick! I'd forgotten all about it:

NB it's not as daft as it looks - small blades are difficult to hold.

 

[GazPal]

What's the best size to cut the abrasive sheets? I was thinking maybe divide it into 4???

Width will depend on your widest blade/iron, but it pays to determine the stroke length used, because this could be anything between 4" - 9", or whichever sheet length and width you're dealing with.

In terms of honing guides, narrow wheeled ones such as the Eclipse #36 are fine with blades upward from 1/2" in width, but can tend to rock when narrower blades are involved. Wider wheeled guides or ones with rollers work best with narrower blades, but the question you need to ask is whether or not the expense justifies end result. The same question applies to any sharpening regime you decide upon, but the trick is to try and keep whichever method you finally decide upon as simple as possible.

Naysayers tend to mistakenly neglect to consider whether or not proponents of freehand honing have ever tried/used jigged methods for any length of time. Most craftsmen/amateurs have experimented with at least some of the many sharpening techniques out there and it would be wrong to assume otherwise. There's nothing wrong with using jigs and guides, but often the simplest route is the way forward. Experience is gained via mistakes made during the learning process and all we tend to offer is a shortcut to correct sharpening technique without the pitfalls involved in experimentation with jigs and gadgets. We've already been there, bought the t-shirt several times and found the method we recommend to be the most cost effect and least time consuming route to achieving an accurate end result.

Less time spent setting up guides and gadgets = more time spent woodworking and creating things.

Honing an edge should involve no more than a half dozen - twenty swipes of an edge across stone/diamond plate/paper to produce/refresh a refined cutting edge. Any more than this and you've mistakenly allowed the edge to become too dull and should reconsider the need to hone/strop more frequently. A correctly honed edge need only involve the refinement of 1/32" metal at the very edge of a blade. A very slight rise above the plain of the primary bevel provides sufficient lift in the blade, which - in turn - makes it possible for the user produce a strong cutting edge.

I think some seem to confuse grinding with honing and the supposed need for precisely gauged text book angles, but the truth is both are separate activities - if using the two bevel method - and honing angles only need to be within ball park figures.

Food for Thought

If an edge needs refreshing once every fifteen minutes and it takes up to 3 minutes to refresh an edge using a guide, your down time would equate to approximately 80 minutes of lost time per 8 hour day. Obviously less time if edges require infrequent honing, but .......

If refreshing an edge at the same frequency, but freehand, the period for potential lost time would be approximately 78 seconds per hour (Involving up to 20 seconds per sitting). This amounts to approx 10.5 minutes per 8 hour day and virtually zero lost time.

If time is short and you're working on an amateur basis of say 6 hrs per week, you'd be losing up to 72 minutes of your valuable time per week to jig-aided honing. Add this to other down time and you soon come to realise where your valuable time is disappearing and why projects sometimes seem to take quite a period of time to complete.

 

[carlb40]

Not sure if you have seen this video?

http://www.workshopheaven.com/tools/Sha ... video.html

Mathew often recommends cutting the sheets into 3rds to get maximum usage from them. It is roughly 8 minutes long, but it is on how to prep a new chisel. The same will apply to plane blades. I reckon if Mathew didn't talk and just the actual flatting/honing was filmed, it would be about 5 minutes.

One thing to mention, if you get the veritas guide, keep the roller clean and use lubricant on the sheets. Also don't press too hard as you can tear the film.

 

[Jacob]

.....
I think some seem to confuse grinding with honing and the supposed need for precisely gauged text book angles, but the truth is both are separate activities - if using the two bevel method - and honing angles only need to be within ball park figures.......

Actually the convex bevel method (Sellers etc) combines honing and grinding. Every time you do it, you do it the same way and back off a bit of the bevel at the same time as you hone the edge. Grinding as such then becomes something you do occasionally, to remedy defects such as nicks or misshapen blades (i.e. somebody else's ).

 

[GazPal]

I know, through freehand sharpening my own blades and irons, but I only tend to use more aggressive stones to refresh the overall bevel occasionally. Even with the double bevel method it only becomes necessary to grind once the secondary bevel begins to encroach on the primary bevel.

 

[woodbrains]

Food for Thought

If an edge needs refreshing once every fifteen minutes and it takes up to 3 minutes to refresh an edge using a guide, your down time would equate to approximately 80 minutes of lost time per 8 hour day. Obviously less time if edges require infrequent honing, but .......

If refreshing an edge at the same frequency, but freehand, the period for potential lost time would be approximately 78 seconds per hour (Involving up to 20 seconds per sitting). This amounts to approx 10.5 minutes per 8 hour day and virtually zero lost time.

If time is short and you're working on an amateur basis of say 6 hrs per week, you'd be losing up to 72 minutes of your valuable time per week to jig-aided honing. Add this to other down time and you soon come to realise where your valuable time is disappearing and why projects sometimes seem to take quite a period of time to complete.

Hello,

These sums are all well and good, but unless they have been taken from data from some sort of time and motion study, do not mean anything. It is a huge, unfounded assumption than a plane iron will need to be honed every 15 mins and it would take 3 mins too do it with a honing guide but only 20 secs freehand. These numbers also assume that a person does nothing but planing, all day and everyday. A very sharp plane iron, as mine are ( 8000 grit waterstone or finer) will last more like 30-40 mins in oak, and you can plane an awful lot in this time, perhaps all I need for that days work. Also, the removal and re installation of the blade in the plane is exactly the same whether a guide is used or not and I would contend that the number of strokes required on the stones for a jig user is less than a freehander, and certainly could be no more. Also , scary sharp, water stones and some other methods are much faster than oil stones,, so it is swings and roundabouts, really as to speed, accuracy and fineness of finish obtained by both methods. Scary sharp lends itself to guides, as there is a real danger of tearing the abrasive without one, as do some of the softer waterstones being easy to gouge once in a while with a narrow tool when free hand honing. The OP is sensible to explore jigs for scary sharp and I would advise the eclipse type for value for money and simple effectiveness. The Veritas mk 2 if money is less of a barrier as the wider roller and angle setter can be advantages. Oil stoners, whatever is easy, freehand is free and effective,but you have to go finer than Fine India stones and the stones that do that are expensive, though will last practically forever. I have used all methods you can think of and my favourite, until recently was medium then fine India followed by Welsh slate and a strop. I now favour the faster cutting of waterstones and do not need to strop. I honed freehand on oilstones or an Eclipse jig. I have used Black Arkansas and translucent Arkansas which are slow and, for me, benefited from the jig, as the number of strokes required on these needed more consistency than I could manage freehand. (Muscles get a bit tired over 20-30 strokes for a wide blade). For the best edge these would still need stropping , and the Welsh slate gave as good an edge as the Arkansas, quicker, as the slate is softer, but meant that stone needed truing once in a while and takes longer to true than waterstones, though not as often. Scary sharp will get edges as fine and fast as waterstones and need no truing. But could be expensive in the long run. Diamond hones are expensive but quick and only until very recently have come in grits fine enough for a finished edge (DMT extra extra fine is 10000 grit ). There are many combinations, and any one taken out of context will compromise the system. Unless one wants to abandon one system completely for another, then it is pointless advising something which will not work. If the OP wants to use scary sharp then the advice should be to use a guide, even though personally I would not advise scary sharp as a long term solution to sharpening, or someone else prefers freehand sharpening. We have to keep within context.

Mike.

 

[Vann]

Also, the removal and re installation of the blade in the plane is exactly the same whether a guide is used or not...

Not so if you have a two-piece cap iron. Then freehand is faster as no need to unscrew the cap-iron, and then reposition and re-screw after honing (as Jacob recently discovered).

Having said that, I now use a Mk11 honing guide. I just don't have enough shed time to keep my hand in with freehand honing. The honing guide may take a little longer, but I stuff up less often... so in fact, it ends up taking less time.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Why do I have a strange suspicion that I know where this is leading?

 

[Vann]

Why do I have a strange suspicion that I know where this is leading?

Ever decreasing circles?

Cheers, Vann. :mrgreen:

 

[woodbrains]

Also, the removal and re installation of the blade in the plane is exactly the same whether a guide is used or not...

Not so if you have a two-piece cap iron. Then freehand is faster as no need to unscrew the cap-iron, and then reposition and re-screw after honing (as Jacob recently discovered).

Having said that, I now use a Mk11 honing guide. I just don't have enough shed time to keep my hand in with freehand honing. The honing guide may take a little longer, but I stuff up less often... so in fact, it ends up taking less time.

Cheers, Vann.

Fair enough about stay set cap irons, but all things being equal, the only time difference between jig or no jig is attaching the jig versus stuffing up less or what ever. Could be the equaliser,or not depending on the operator. My main point is nothing more than context, though. There is little point suggesting methods which will not do what is required with a different sharpening medium, or expected end result.

Mike.

 

[GazPal]

Food for Thought

If an edge needs refreshing once every fifteen minutes and it takes up to 3 minutes to refresh an edge using a guide, your down time would equate to approximately 80 minutes of lost time per 8 hour day. Obviously less time if edges require infrequent honing, but .......

If refreshing an edge at the same frequency, but freehand, the period for potential lost time would be approximately 78 seconds per hour (Involving up to 20 seconds per sitting). This amounts to approx 10.5 minutes per 8 hour day and virtually zero lost time.

If time is short and you're working on an amateur basis of say 6 hrs per week, you'd be losing up to 72 minutes of your valuable time per week to jig-aided honing. Add this to other down time and you soon come to realise where your valuable time is disappearing and why projects sometimes seem to take quite a period of time to complete.

Hello,

These sums are all well and good, but unless they have been taken from data from some sort of time and motion study, do not mean anything. It is a huge, unfounded assumption than a plane iron will need to be honed every 15 mins and it would take 3 mins too do it with a honing guide but only 20 secs freehand. These numbers also assume that a person does nothing but planing, all day and everyday. A very sharp plane iron, as mine are ( 8000 grit waterstone or finer) will last more like 30-40 mins in oak, and you can plane an awful lot in this time, perhaps all I need for that days work. Also, the removal and re installation of the blade in the plane is exactly the same whether a guide is used or not and I would contend that the number of strokes required on the stones for a jig user is less than a freehander, and certainly could be no more. Also , scary sharp, water stones and some other methods are much faster than oil stones,, so it is swings and roundabouts, really as to speed, accuracy and fineness of finish obtained by both methods. Scary sharp lends itself to guides, as there is a real danger of tearing the abrasive without one, as do some of the softer waterstones being easy to gouge once in a while with a narrow tool when free hand honing. The OP is sensible to explore jigs for scary sharp and I would advise the eclipse type for value for money and simple effectiveness. The Veritas mk 2 if money is less of a barrier as the wider roller and angle setter can be advantages. Oil stoners, whatever is easy, freehand is free and effective,but you have to go finer than Fine India stones and the stones that do that are expensive, though will last practically forever. I have used all methods you can think of and my favourite, until recently was medium then fine India followed by Welsh slate and a strop. I now favour the faster cutting of waterstones and do not need to strop. I honed freehand on oilstones or an Eclipse jig. I have used Black Arkansas and translucent Arkansas which are slow and, for me, benefited from the jig, as the number of strokes required on these needed more consistency than I could manage freehand. (Muscles get a bit tired over 20-30 strokes for a wide blade). For the best edge these would still need stropping , and the Welsh slate gave as good an edge as the Arkansas, quicker, as the slate is softer, but meant that stone needed truing once in a while and takes longer to true than waterstones, though not as often. Scary sharp will get edges as fine and fast as waterstones and need no truing. But could be expensive in the long run. Diamond hones are expensive but quick and only until very recently have come in grits fine enough for a finished edge (DMT extra extra fine is 10000 grit ). There are many combinations, and any one taken out of context will compromise the system. Unless one wants to abandon one system completely for another, then it is pointless advising something which will not work. If the OP wants to use scary sharp then the advice should be to use a guide, even though personally I would not advise scary sharp as a long term solution to sharpening, or someone else prefers freehand sharpening. We have to keep within context.

Mike.

None of what you've said is new and I agree with much of what you had to say, but I somehow seem to have struck a nerve, as use of paragraphs would have made for a far easier read. :wink:

I simply stated examples of time comparisons as food for thought and not as an attack upon anyone's methods. Read what I've clearly stated earlier in this and other sharpening threads and you'd realise this. Yes, the figures I gave assume daily sharpening and constant blade usage, but they're a legitimate means of calculating time against labour and costs, plus performance. Such figures allow you to break down a working day into the various working elements and apply a cost to each. Timescales were drawn from time and motion studies for hand crafting in my professional cabinetry workshop (Originating from a QS publication I had at college and university when I studied ONC, OND, HND & BSc civil engineering almost 30 years ago) and were a basis from which I could calculate prices, costs and potential profits on orders taken. I can easily email copies of my SMV (Standard minute value) costing sheets for your perusal if you wish, as they are correct with figures based upon professional time & motions studies publications, plus timescales and allowances per shop activity and variations in materials. Nothing clutched from mid-air or assumed.

Do you guestimate costs or accurately measure and cost from legitimate figures? I prefer legitimate figures for the sake of accuracy.

SMV = hourly labour rate divided by sixty minutes in order to give minute value for costing purposes.

Add withdraw, dismantle and re-install blade to my sample figures. It's a simple enough exercise, but I omitted this point as my focus was upon sharpening and not whether or not we were dealing with plane irons or chisel blades, or dismantling and re-assembling tools. Periods between honing sessions obviously vary depending upon work done, but - again - figures are simply in place as a guide and if you're not honing as frequently you'll make more money. Zzzimples. :wink:

Food for Thought :wink:

 

[Jacob]

If you put numbers on it its a bit like breaking down an estimate - it gives your client 10 figures to argue about rather than one.
All I can say is that when I rediscovered freehand sharpening (5 years ago?) I found that the process became dramatically faster and easier. In fact an idle pleasure rather than a tedious task! A bit like first learning to ride a bike.
Oil stones are slower if you do it the same way as you would with soft waterstones or paper, but you don't. Instead you put much more force and speed into it. That's the big difference.
And you can't be forceful with a jig - you have to be so careful to get the edge engaging with the surface but not lifting the whole thing to round it off. A lot of the force goes down onto the wheels and is wasted.
Which brings me to another point which I've raised often - all jigs have the wheels in the wrong place, they should be in front rather than behind the edge. I keep expecting this design to appear but it hasn't yet. I'm sure it will one day.

 

[carlb40]

If you put numbers on it its a bit like breaking down an estimate - it gives your client 10 figures to argue about rather than one.
All I can say is that when I rediscovered freehand sharpening (5 years ago?) I found that the process became dramatically faster and easier. In fact an idle pleasure rather than a tedious task! A bit like first learning to ride a bike.
Oil stones are slower if you do it the same way as you would with soft waterstones or paper, but you don't. Instead you put much more force and speed into it. That's the big difference.
And you can't be forceful with a jig - you have to be so careful to get the edge engaging with the surface but not lifting the whole thing to round it off. A lot of the force goes down onto the wheels and is wasted.
Which brings me to another point which I've raised often - all jigs have the wheels in the wrong place, they should be in front rather than behind the edge. I keep expecting this design to appear but it hasn't yet. I'm sure it will one day.

That really depends on how one uses the jig. With my kell mk2 the blade is mounted and pushed away from me on my sharpening medium. Thus the wheels are in front. The same can be applied to any jig.

 

[GazPal]

If you put numbers on it its a bit like breaking down an estimate - it gives your client 10 figures to argue about rather than one.

In terms of this discussion I agree, but I never show calculations to customers.

 

[Jacob]

If you put numbers on it its a bit like breaking down an estimate - it gives your client 10 figures to argue about rather than one.
All I can say is that when I rediscovered freehand sharpening (5 years ago?) I found that the process became dramatically faster and easier. In fact an idle pleasure rather than a tedious task! A bit like first learning to ride a bike.
Oil stones are slower if you do it the same way as you would with soft waterstones or paper, but you don't. Instead you put much more force and speed into it. That's the big difference.
And you can't be forceful with a jig - you have to be so careful to get the edge engaging with the surface but not lifting the whole thing to round it off. A lot of the force goes down onto the wheels and is wasted.
Which brings me to another point which I've raised often - all jigs have the wheels in the wrong place, they should be in front rather than behind the edge. I keep expecting this design to appear but it hasn't yet. I'm sure it will one day.

That really depends on how one uses the jig. With my kell mk2 the blade is mounted and pushed away from me on my sharpening medium. Thus the wheels are in front. The same can be applied to any jig.

I call that doing it backwards! Is that really what you have to do? :roll:

 

[carlb40]

No it's not 'how' it has to be done. But like everything, there are more than one way of doing things.

 

[GazPal]

No it's not 'how' it has to be done. But like everything, there are more than one way of doing things.

Extremely true on all counts

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

No one has struck any raw nerves, I was just trying to be concise. And no, I probably haven't said much that is new, there is not much changed in sharpening in reality. What I have done, though, is tried almost every method, whereas some here use only one. (I have even tried honing on a flat aluminium plate, which a jig is absolutely essential for ) Using only one method is fair enough, but quite often this means there is s subtle point in another method that people do not understand, but seem to want to comment on anyhow. When explained why they might not be right in this context, they argue the toss.

For instance, doing calculations as to how long it takes to sharpen with jigs is fine if you have a source of data to back it up. But estimating is as good as fiction if there is no factual foundation. I understand the point being made, efficiencies are necessary in a working environment and if you can save something by freehand sharpening then great. But surely alarm bells must ring when these estimates come to the conclusion that jig sharpening takes 80 mins a day.

Also, I love oilstones, used them for 30 years, so I know that they can have a lot of weight put on them, they are pretty resillient. I also know that there is no point as friction has little to do with downward force, these stones cut most efficiently with constant moderate pressure, as do all the others. Waterstones do not need to be beared down on to make them cut, they are very free cutting, which is their design.

I have nothing against freehand sharpening or jig sharpening and I have found that the extra time taken to jig up is no where near as time prohibitive as some make out. If a post here asks for a good jig recommendation, it might be that they know they need one, dictated either by the medium they use, a disability or the fact they just like the repeatability and consistency of the thing. Perhaps they do not want arguments why they do not need one as really they are no great disadvantage anyway and might just get that edge a bit quicker to compensate for set up time. We have already learned that a finer edge keeps longer, so perhaps there are longer gaps between refreshing edges. It is horses for courses.

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

......
Also, I love oilstones, used them for 30 years, so I know that they can have a lot of weight put on them, they are pretty resillient. I also know that there is no point as friction has little to do with downward force, these stones cut most efficiently with constant moderate pressure, as do all the others. ....

Friction has a great deal to do with downward force! The harder you work it the faster it cuts.

Google 'friction and downward force' - try the pencil trick