Sharpening chisels for a complete novice

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My mate Vernon was one of - if not the first - bike builder in the UK to be able to weld titanium stuff.
Just sayin'...
 
Carbon fibre, discs and always a helmet.

Too many of my cycling buddies have been pleased to have worn one when their head hits the road. I've yet to experience this pleasure and don't want to audition for the part.
 
I was joking just making the point about contentious subjects on all forum!!

No more forum drift I'm out on my bike 100 miles today!!

Cheers James
 
Hmmm ..... bikes. eh?

A bit of minor modification, and you could have a pedal-powered grindstone.

Just sayin' ...
 
Pretty easy really : just remove the metal flywheel, replace it with a grindstone and my Turbo trainer will be honing chisels all day long !

There's more than one second or third world trade sharpener riding around on a bike that can be shifted between riding and turning a grind stone above the front wheel.
 
There's more than one second or third world trade sharpener riding around on a bike that can be shifted between riding and turning a grind stone above the front wheel.
Put the frame on a stand and apply some green compound to the back tyre, and you've got a pedal-powered strop as well.
 
I may sell my Tormek and use my Turbo trainer with a grinding wheel. At my age, my cadence on the trainer is about the same as the RPM of my Tormek and I can use my sweat as the grinding wheel lubricant.
 
Morning all

First post for me and why not start with a complete novice question. I have an assortment of chisels that all need sharpening. I haven't a clue what to buy or for that matter how to actually sharpen the chisels but I guess you tube will be the best source. Still remains what is a good set to start with ?

I saw that Rutlands had a pretty decent diamond block
https://www.rutlands.com/sp+premium-200mm-diamond-combination-sharpening-stone-600-1000+R7524or on a real budget I can buy this
https://www.screwfix.com/p/stanley-oil-chisel-sharpening-kit/80823?tc=FT7
Would that be a good place to start and are they pretty easy to use ? I appreciate that you guys are all a lot more experienced at this than me but opinions vary but budget is one thing and I can't stretch to some expensive japanese water stones etc. Any advice would be most welcome. thanks
Wouldn’t bother with Waterstones I hadn’t got anyone to teach me so went the awful root of buying different things and hoping for best in truth if your after a cost effective way of hand sharpening and they are an investment mine but getting 3 different diamond stones is a good bet I wish I’d done that from the start but now due to arthritis that wouldn’t be an option for me so much so I use a Robert sorby pro edge but do touch up with a very fine vintage stone but also still strip the the chisels with a home made strop
 
DW, cult TV of the 90's, The Fast Show


Nice! Needless to say, I didn't see that show in the states - probably could've with a 15 foot satellite dish back then (if anyone remembers the days that most of the programming routed through satellites was unscrambled - your areas may not be as rural as ours, but in really rural areas without a through-the-air signal back then, you'd see all kinds of contraptions just trying to get any kind of media/entertainment - especially for places in mountains/valleys).
 
Seems to be an uncanny number of cyclists on this woodworking forum.

Is there a connection 🤨

Personally went from 5 bikes to one and had the biggest Hope collection in the UK outwith Hope's own museum. although I've still a number of Hope prototypes in the now diminished collection.(I bought a Hope engineers personal stash a bit back via another forum).

Think ill start a bike thread rather than cluttering up this one.
 
Even I had a stint with road biking (that stint went away when I moved to a place where it's massively inconvenient to get on a road bike, and now I've got a grandpa cruiser - an 8 speed bike with leather hand grips and a leather seat (but sneaky hard tires).
Wouldn’t bother with Waterstones I hadn’t got anyone to teach me so went the awful root of buying different things and hoping for best in truth if your after a cost effective way of hand sharpening and they are an investment mine but getting 3 different diamond stones is a good bet I wish I’d done that from the start but now due to arthritis that wouldn’t be an option for me so much so I use a Robert sorby pro edge but do touch up with a very fine vintage stone but also still strip the the chisels with a home made strop

Someday, I hope to show people who buy lots of diamond stones the virtue of an india and inexpensive oilstone.

:)
 
Nice! Needless to say, I didn't see that show in the states - probably could've with a 15 foot satellite dish back then (if anyone remembers the days that most of the programming routed through satellites was unscrambled - your areas may not be as rural as ours, but in really rural areas without a through-the-air signal back then, you'd see all kinds of contraptions just trying to get any kind of media/entertainment - especially for places in mountains/valleys).

I've tried a few of the US comedy shows. Best so far, Trailer Park Boys (Conky and the Swaze express is the peak), Always Sunny, F is for Family have hit the spot thus far. The internet is very convenient.
 
English material isn't that scarce here - it's just not on the major networks. I could TPB you by saying that the "English guy on Roseanne" typifies the English who end up over here (I know....he was irish!)

By TPB, I mean that that's actually a Canadian show, and not just a little Canadian like the ones right across the border, but all the way up in halifax.

I LOVE it, though.

As far as English shows go, the nuttier the better for me - though I have a soft spot for Doc Martin as he talks to people the way I sometimes wish I could (which means that I sometimes probably do that, but I'm not standing from the same position of strength as his character is - i just talk like that, anyway).

I don't watch much TV any longer, so I couldn't really give a good idea of what a good American show would be. I like believable shows, or absurd in the other direction, and not the types that try to be smart and elite. I remember Tina Fey at one point lecturing the entirety of the american public because of how much smarter and better he show was than most of what was on TV elsewhere and something along the lines of if people were smarter, they'd like her show more.

It reminds me of what I've heard a comedian say about jokes - if your jokes are so exclusive so as to be hard for most people to follow (or uninteresting), then that's not funny no matter how smart you think you are.

Believable is a different thing to different people. Growing up rural with parents who liked to do things like stay several blocks off of the beach when we did go (which is more than some had at the time), the shows on TV where people were on cruises or flying all over the place - completely unrelatable to me. Cliff Huxtable and (can't remember his name) living in a giant stone house in NY as a ob-gyn and an attorney, completely unfathomable. So unrelatable that I didn't even get how exclusive a house like theirs would be.

Roseanne, on the other hand - I knew those people from working in a cabinet factory. Same folks were up and down the assembly line with fast quips and one liners, just like the show.

The drummer in my high school band was maybe a little too close to TPB, but he was that by choice.
 
Even I had a stint with road biking (that stint went away when I moved to a place where it's massively inconvenient to get on a road bike, and now I've got a grandpa cruiser - an 8 speed bike with leather hand grips and a leather seat (but sneaky hard tires).


Someday, I hope to show people who buy lots of diamond stones the virtue of an india and inexpensive oilstone.

:)
You mean an old oil stone or the cheap onse you can get ? I’ve got vintage oil stones I tend to use lord knows how much they’d cost though
 
Anything that hones a large flat surface neatly and slows down when most of the scratches are out of the surface, and then can hone just the tip of the bevel side to a polish quickly without raising more than jus a very fine burr that's neatly removed on bare leather with reasonable pressure.

There's an enormous number of natural oilstones that meet that description. Washitas do it, as do second tier stones like the Dan's hard (The inexpensive level below the black and trans stones).
 
To be clear, that includes both old and new. Ultra fine is better chased with polishes and graded powders than top cost stones. The former is much cheaper and can easily be far finer if chasing a Jones. The advent of inexpensive microscopes has put to bed the myth that there are magic stones that defy logic, and the truly fine stones are always slow.
 
To be clear, that includes both old and new. Ultra fine is better chased with polishes and graded powders than top cost stones. The former is much cheaper and can easily be far finer if chasing a Jones. The advent of inexpensive microscopes has put to bed the myth that there are magic stones that defy logic, and the truly fine stones are always slow.

The thing that's alway got to me though is the backs of tools like chisels. I've never had much luck removing a burr from the back of a tool with polishes/strops. I've always had to use a stone to flip it to the bevel side and then use the strop to remove it there. I don't really like having to do that with anything but a very fine stone or else large scratches accumulate.
 
That's more or less my suggestion above - quite often, you may see someone like jacob advocating finishing an edge with an india, but the outcome is poor (a plane isn't very sharp and you'll be back to the stones far sooner, completely negating not working the tip of the tool on a finer stone).

A washita or what dan's calls a "hard" but not "true hard" arkansas stone will break in leaving a very small wire edge that comes off in bare leather. It's good policy to tease the wire edge a bit thinner with back and forth light passes before going to the leather (takes a couple of seconds, eliminates any chance the burr will have much strength).
 
With apologies to Dr Seuss



Woodworkers are handy.

They cut up trees.

They eat their lunch.

They are easy to please.

But get them on sharpening, edges and honing,

then some of them get all insistent and moaning



“There’s only one way, and its my way, and best,

You’d fail in an instant if you took a test.

If you use all manner of things that will aid,

You will fail!

Despite all the good things you have made.



But today you are you, that is truer than true,

there is no one alive that is youer than you.

You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes,

you can sharpen your axe anyway that you choose.



Should we be worried?

Not one little bit

If you hone with a guide or you stand or you sit.

It’s things that you build with your hands and your head

That’s the important bit when all is said.

We shouldn’t insist there is only one way

The effect is it takes the fun all away.



I could go on a bunch, but its the end of my lunch… :)

Cheers
Richard
 
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