Sharpening

[condeesteso]

excellent info Matthew, true knowledge given.
Re glass, no workshop is complete without a couple of off-cuts. I have some 8mm free from the glazing place, about 400 x 200mm. Invaluable for sharpening, but also good for checking planer blade setting, use the reflection to check a 45 degree mitre when hand sawing...and many other things. And I reckon the scraps are flat for our purposes, very flat really, but try and get the thickest they will give you.

edit: and when I sharpened my 10 1/2 rebate plane, needing a truly flat straight edge, the glass was invaluable as my waterstones are not perfectly flat.

 

[Jacob]

.... free hand sharpening of my chisels is a coming along now, and it's not too difficult. I'm still a bit leary to try it with the plane irons yet.

I'd say just do it and try not to think about it too much! You will probably produce a camber even with a flat stone but that's OK and preferable for most purposes. The flattening brigade actually give themselves problems IMHO.

 

[GazPal]

I'd say just do it and try not to think about it too much! You will probably produce a camber even with a flat stone but that's OK and preferable for most purposes. The flattening brigade actually give themselves problems IMHO.

I couldn't agree more and this continual flattening malarky must cost newcomers a small fortune when setting up, as well as having to replace their sharpening medium far too frequently. There's no need to invest heavily in sharpening kit, bar buying decent (Professional) quality oil/water stones in Course, medium and fine grits. Add in a decent 4k grit stone at a later date if you wish and you're set to go without having to sell major body parts or organs, or pursue the holy grail surgical cutting edge. Factor in a power grinding wheel at some point too and you're all set for full blade maintenance with your grinding and honing facilities (Grind and hone).

Longitudinal dishing of a stone isn't too problematical and the aspect you need to watch for and avoid is lateral dishing of your oil and water stones, as this affects the quality of a whetted edge far more than anything else. Whetting/honing should involve as much of the stone's surface as possible and don't be afraid to use the narrow edge of a stone to whet narrower blades/irons.

For those water stone users out there, a handy tip and ye olde worlde trick of the trade is for you to add a touch of bicarb to your water and you'll find you virtually eliminate flash rusting while you're whetting your blades/irons. It works very nicely and even better still if you have a lukewarm heat source on which you can rest freshly sharpened blades/irons nearby, as this also helps prevent flash rusting. :wink:

 

[bugbear]

Longitudinal dishing of a stone isn't too problematical and the aspect you need to watch for and avoid is lateral dishing of your oil and water stones, as this affects the quality of a whetted edge far more than anything else.

Intriguingly, Joshua Rose (in a rather old book) states a preference for narrow stones - narrower than the plane blade he's sharpening. His reasoning is that this makes lateral dishing pretty nigh impossible.

An interesting thought for people chasing huge stones for their #8 or coopers' plane blades.

BugBear

 

[Corneel]

Well, I know, flat is out. We are woodworking, don't need no stinking flat etc.

But: Most of my tools is vintage stuff. I just like old stuff more then new. There is a lot of work involved sometimes, with pitting and bellied backs on plane blades and chisels being the most work usually. It's very common to find the corners or even th whole edge being decidedly lower then the rest of the back. Add some deep rustpits, and you know that this is going to be a lot of work.

Now, when you are going into this, you must remember that you are not woodworking anymore. This is metalworking, and you would be crazy if you don't keep your stones flat. When your stones are dished, you can't go from one grit to the next one without spending a lot of time repairing the damage of the previous one.

And when you have restored your chisel and flattened a decent amount of the back, in the future it will be a lot easier and faster honing the back when you keep your stones flat.

So my advice to beginners would be, get a 1000 and a 8000 grit stone (waterstones because I have no real experience with oilstones). Something easy to keep these flat. Really the easiest way to keep stones flat is a DMT extra coarse. You can use sandpaper on glass for a while, but it gets old real fast.
And then when you want to restore older tools, get a piece of thick float glas and a couple of rolls of coarse sandpaper. Glue the sandpaper down to the glass, and refresh it often.
Then I would really encourage to get an electric grinder with a very coarse wheel and something to dress the wheel. I wouldn't want to live without that one anymore. Doesn't need to be expensive.

Later I added a 400 grit stone to go between the sandpaper and the 1000 stone, I also added a 4000 stone, but almost never use it.

 

[Jacob]

My advice to beginners would be to keep it simple. Get a double sided oil stone like this and never use anything else until you are competent with it.
Keep it flat by spreading the load (work the whole stone), back off the bevel on the coarse side almost as often as you hone the edge on the fine.
If you have to regrind a damaged edge then 60 grit wet n dry (wet) or 60 grit on a belt sander.