Sharpening chisels

[Sawyer]

I managed to get hold of a Stanley honing guide but its a little hard to use as the blade keeps moving. Will probably invest in the Axminster one plus their waterstone as my dads got a stone but hasn't a clue what it is!(?)

I'd just go and buy the Veritas gauge - it really is very good and will save a lot of hassle. The cheap ones are a bit of a pain to use.

I'd also ignore the jig vs freehand "discussions" (even tho they aren't that) as they are about as useful as the hand cut vs machine cut dovetails "discussions" for most of us. Best left to those that find something useful in them

Dibs

I have never owned a honing guide, or even tried one out. But I don't get too hung up about exact honing angles. The question is 'does the chisel do well, what I want it to?'. If not - it's back to the sharpening bench.

I wouldn't dream of criticising anybody for using a guide, that's one's own business and if a fellow woodworker has achieved a sharp edge, good luck to them - I don't care how they got there. Why would I?

Re; jigs vs freehand, did I hear somebody mention spindle and bowl gouges?

(light the blue touchpaper and run!!) :wink:

 

[matthewwh]

T'aint so much the exactitude of the angle itself (in degrees) it's the repeatablilty. If you can set precisely the same secondary each time (whether it be 28, 30 or 29.537495725476 degrees) if it's exactly the same angle as you had last time you need to remove less metal which means less strokes, and your blades stay longer for longer.

Freehanding has it's place, I strop and grind freehand most of the time and I'll even admit to using 'the dip' when stropping to avoid rounding over the edge - thanks Jacob. But I'm blessed if I can hone a dead parallel 1mm secondary into a dead parallel 1.2mm secondary without using a guide, especially on a cambered iron. With a guide I can do it without even thinking and come up with a machine perfect result every time - so I use one.

Occasional stropping as you work means that you are always working with a fresh edge, it's not even really honed, more smoothed, so any tiny defects in the surfaces are eased. Using a guide for this would be as pointless as an ashtray on a motorbike because the leather surface has some give in it - hence 'the dip' to alleviate any rounding over at the end of the stroke. Once the wear bevels begin to develop (you feel the pressure required to make the cut increasing slightly) it's time for a quick hone through the grades on proper abrasives, one or two strokes on each with a tickle on the back and you're back to a fresh edge again.

Taking Stuies example of honing everything at the end of the day, if the last cut was as perfect as the first why do you need to hone at all....? I understand some supersteels have got over the problem of primary carbide formation that dogged air hardening die steels like A2 and D2, but good quality plain carbon steels like white#2, T10 or O1 never had that problem anyway and they are a fraction of the price. Would I pay that if it halved the time between stropping or sharpening, no, I'd still have to do it and I believe a few moments mindless activity at the strop every once in a while is actually quite refreshing.

A lot of folks mumble on about old steel being better than new steel, my take on this is that steels themselves have improved dramatically in both quality and consistency of quality. The problem is that hardening went down the pan in the dark ages (1950 to 1990) when the accountants hamstrung the metalworkers and introduced monstrosities like induction hardening. Induction is accurate to about +/-3 deg Rockwell C, so the finished product can be anywhere from RC55 to RC61. 55 is cheese, 61 is spot on, so you get good ones and bad ones. Oil, water or salt hardening, which all self respecting manufacturers either never left or have gone back to, will give accuracy of +/-1 degree or better, so you get quality and consistency. I understand that if it weren't for progress we would be bombing Libya with Lancasters, but there is a world of difference between genuine progress and change for its own sake.

 

[Doug B]

Or use some Solvol Autosol and 3-in-1 on a flat piece of wood

Super-quick, super-cheap and super-sharp 8)

Cheers :wink:

Paul

I`ve been experimenting with this method since Paul first mentioned it in his "honing lessons from Westonbirt" thread, & couldn`t agree more with his comment, Super-quick, super-cheap & super-sharp..


Cheers.

 

[Anonymous]

Or use some Solvol Autosol and 3-in-1 on a flat piece of wood

Super-quick, super-cheap and super-sharp 8)

Cheers :wink:

Paul

I`ve been experimenting with this method since Paul first mentioned it in his "honing lessons from Westonbirt" thread, & couldn`t agree more with his comment, Super-quick, super-cheap & super-sharp..


Cheers.

its almost always the simplest ways are the cheapest and most effective as they have stood the text of time.

 

[Jacob]

...... I'm blessed if I can hone a dead parallel 1mm secondary into a dead parallel 1.2mm secondary without using a guide, especially on a cambered iron. .......

Yebbut why on earth would anyone want to do that?
OK it looks nice to have such visible precision but the edge can be 30º and perfectly sharp even if the "secondary" bevel varies from zero to full width.
I don't have secondary bevels at all on any of my very sharp plane and chisel blades, though you could count a rounded bevel as a series of infinitely small bevels, starting with an infinitely small 30º bevel, if it made you any happier!

 

[bugbear]

...... I'm blessed if I can hone a dead parallel 1mm secondary into a dead parallel 1.2mm secondary without using a guide, especially on a cambered iron. .......

Yebbut why on earth would anyone want to do that?

Matthew's first paragraph explained in detail, as you know and deleted, so this must be another of your "cat amongst the pigeons" posts.

BugBear

 

[Jacob]

...... I'm blessed if I can hone a dead parallel 1mm secondary into a dead parallel 1.2mm secondary without using a guide, especially on a cambered iron. .......

Yebbut why on earth would anyone want to do that?

Matthew's first paragraph explained in detail, as you know and deleted, so this must be another of your "cat amongst the pigeons" posts.

BugBear

You have missed the point.
It might help if you attempt to answer the following question yourself.
How do you think freehand honers manage to achieve sharp edges quickly and easily (as they do), when they clearly can't achieve the 0.2mm precision and "repeatability" as described by Matthew?

 

[dunbarhamlin]

Hey! Quit squabbling you two. You're like Floyd and Delia. Mashing spuds? One says boil 'em, bash 'em, fling in some butter and a splosh of milk. Other fannies about making sure the water's to temp, they're all the right size, weighs the butter, measures the milk, probably bloody warms the milk, faffs about some more. And you both just end up with mash.
Jigs work well for most tools. Those tools OTS jigs don't work for could be jigged - but would take longer to make the jig than to learn to freehand - and you'll freehand the weirdies better if you're in practice freehanding other tools.
The precision is a requirement of the honing guide not of the operation, as with other jigged processing (e.g. insisting all styles are of identical thickness - only required for jigged/powertool joinery)
Repeatability a given either way. Jigged, it's a function of the precision. Unjigged it's a bit of practice - can see and feel when your at the right angle and if one side needs more work than the other.

 

[Colarris]

Just wondered if somebody could explain what is going on in the vid below. What is that strip of black stuff he uses? Is that a substitute for a grinding stone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnvwAIVW4uM

 

[Karl]

The first is some 800g wet n dry paper. The second is a block of wood with some polishing compound rubbed into it.

Cheers

Karl

 

[Colarris]

Thanks Karl.

 

[Jacob]

Just wondered if somebody could explain what is going on in the vid below. What is that strip of black stuff he uses? Is that a substitute for a grinding stone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnvwAIVW4uM

He's fine honing an already sharp chisel (800 grit is pretty fine) and then polishing it with polishing compo.

He doesn't know some simple basics i.e. he's using a tile so he could stick the paper down just by wetting it, if it wasn't so crumpled up, as he hasn't taken any trouble to keep it flat, the ..

He doesn't show how he'd cope with a blunt chisel but I guess he'd start on a coarser grit.

You have to take youtube demos with a pinch of salt. There are some complete nutters out there!

 

[bosshogg]

I used to hone freehand, cause that was the way it was done in my day, but I always wondered if I could make something that would make the job easier. In those days grinding followed by honing on the 'India' oilstone, was the norm and I have to say until recently that was how I did it. Now, due to unforeseen circumstances, I have to do it differently.
The greatest thing, to me, was finding a diamond sharpening plate (my 'India' oilstone having been nicked) a very cheap (£3.99 I think) medium grit 6"x2" steel plate about 5/16" thick, which I glued onto a piece of mahogany. This worked very well, improving my blade stock quite considerably, but once I got a honing jig (Faithful, cheap from Amazon and free delivery) I've never looked back. I have recently acquired a set of three diamond honing sheets, c/w dust holes, which are crimped to coloured plastic sheets £2.99 from Lidl's I siliconed them onto a piece of mahogany (with heavy plane on top to assure flatness) as they are quite light and flexible, cheap and cheerful didn't expect much, boy was I wrong

With the coarsest grit sheet and the honing jig, I have taken all the blades in my shop to a suitable single bevel, even a 1/8" chisel which I griped below the recommended jaw positions, touching the guide bars and setting to angle by sight. No grinder has been used, normally it takes 10-20 mins to cut the bevel of a plane iron to say 35 deg. which isn't bad considering it only needs doing once, I have become so proficient that I can now set the blade in the jig protruding almost exactly right, a quick measurement confirms the exactitude (either 48 or 45mm in one instance) square and straight almost to the point of clinical, in fact I have to remember the need to take the outer points off the blade to prevent marks on the wood planed. This is done almost in the mind for my smoothing, try and bench planes, but physically sighted on the jacks and roughing planes to get a nice easing camber. I polish my single bevels on an 'Escher' waterstone (possibly the finest, according to some oficiados, I couldn't comment) and achieve the sharpest blade edges ever.
That's my story for what it's worth, I think my message is have an open mind mind "one man's meat is another man's poison" etc. so don't be scared to try whatever you've read so far, if it sounds right to you go for it...bosshogg

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience." A.E. 8)

 

[bugbear]

...I have become so proficient that I can now set the blade in the jig protruding almost exactly right, a quick measurement confirms the exactitude (either 48 or 45mm in one instance)...

If you make one of these (not cabinet work!) you can literally set the protrusion exactly right (*) with your eyes closed (**)

People with sharpening stations (i.e. a board with chocks to hold various stones in place), often put the required stop "in situ", instead of my portable version. I don't have the luxury of a permanent sharpening area.

BugBear

(*) actually, consistency is more important than accuracy, but the gauge gives both
(**) should you want to

 

[Colarris]

Can I not just keep reproducing the micro bevel each time the chisel needs sharpening? How many runs across your stone does it take to usually to get it sharpen? Any sure way of testing it??

 

[jimi43]

Each time you hone the primary bevel with a new micro bevel the latter grows bigger and the time taken to hone gets longer and takes more passes. There comes a point where the primary bevel will then need to be reground. That is the sequence.

A sharp edge is one where two flat faces meet at an infinitely small point..the closer that point, the sharper the edge. The finer the honing surface or grit...the finer the point. You can achieve razor sharpness with fine stones and stropping...which is the reason fine stones are very sought after and expensive.

With the Scary sharp system...you can go down to 0.3 of a micron! which produces a very fine edge. Most people can tell a woodworker because the hairs on their forearm are usually missing!!! Razor fanatics test on a hanging hair...slicing it downwards!! These extremes are not necessary to cut wood effectively for most jobs but it gets to be a bit of an obsession....fun though!

You should also be able to feel how sharp a blade/iron is by running a thumb across it GENTLY from front to back...NEVER side to side...(pretty obvious really!)...these edges can get super sharp!

Let us know how you get on!

Cheers

Jimi

 

[woodbloke]

Each time you hone the primary bevel with a new micro bevel the latter grows bigger and the time taken to hone gets longer and takes more passes. There comes a point where the primary bevel will then need to be reground. That is the sequence.

A sharp edge is one where two flat faces meet at an infinitely small point..the closer that point, the sharper the edge. The finer the honing surface or grit...the finer the point. You can achieve razor sharpness with fine stones and stropping...which is the reason fine stones are very sought after and expensive.

With the Scary sharp system...you can go down to 0.3 of a micron! which produces a very fine edge. Most people can tell a woodworker because the hairs on their forearm are usually missing!!! Razor fanatics test on a hanging hair...slicing it downwards!! These extremes are not necessary to cut wood effectively for most jobs but it gets to be a bit of an obsession....fun though!

You should also be able to feel how sharp a blade/iron is by running a thumb across it GENTLY from front to back...NEVER side to side...(pretty obvious really!)...these edges can get super sharp!

Let us know how you get on!

Cheers

Jimi

Jimi's pretty much nailed it on the head here. The SS system is the one I use but I generally finish on the 1micron 3M film. Going down to the .3micron film is around 36,000g :shock: (according calculations from Matt at Workshop Heaven) which is probably a bit OTT for everyday use - Rob

 

[Vann]

The SS system is the one I use...

Hmm... well I guess SS doesn't stand for Stay-Set in this case.

I'll get me coat....

Cheers :lol: , Vann

 

[woodbloke]

The SS system is the one I use...

Hmm... well I guess SS doesn't stand for Stay-Set in this case.

I'll get me coat....

Cheers :lol: , Vann

:lol: - Rob