Hi D-W .
I’d certainly try anything .
But you will have to explain to me your method as I may have misunderstood.
Ive read through your posts on this thread but can‘t seem to see what your method is. Maybe I missed it .
So if you can point me to something I’ll be happy to read and try ...seriously.
Gerry, what I suggested is grinding at 25 and putting a tiny stripe at 34.
That's a good start to getting at the method that graham posted above. I like proof and experimenting because I intend to work mostly or all by hand from here on out. I also have distaste for the folks who advocate something, show distaste toward (or deride) something else and can't prove why when the burden of proof is low. These are not hard things to try.
The OP here has chisels at 25. A tiny stripe at 34 takes almost no time and holds up better than 30 degrees with less cut resistance at the same time. "tiny stripe" in this case could be a couple of hundredths of an inch long.
When I was experimenting with the buffer method above (to find out why a buffer sharpened incannel gouge that I had cut better than one sharpened to a flat apex but didn't dent at the edge
despite taking large scratches on the back from silica, I figured I should figure out where such damage would stop with a flat apex.
I didn't know if it would be 31 or 48 or whatever, but found with a large range of chisels, damage stops at the tip between 32 and 34. When damage stops, you keep going. When you finish a smaller tip of a chisel, then you tend to get the fine finish right at the edge. Before any buffer, I'd started doing this rolling a tiny tip on chisels (to mortise plane bodies, so that I could continue working without faffing).
At 30 degrees, a chisel takes a lot of damage. If it gets through the cut easier at first, it's gone in 10 strikes, so what's the point?
So, what I found is that if you get considerable damage at 34 degrees, the chisel is junk. Nothing avoids damage below 32 or so in medium hardwoods. The range is small.
It's that simple. But the easy instruction at the beginning of this is throw out anything about resetting bevels, why bother? It doesn't help. Instead, if you're a spanking new beginner, hone a tiny stripe on the chisel with a finish stone at 34 degrees, go to work. When the 34 gets hard to hone, then address the bevel. It could be a while.
Winston in the video above took the method I was talking about and ran with it, but it can be done for $3. Grind at 20 something (low) on $1 of sandpaper, put a secondary bevel on at 25 so as to make the 34 easy to continue doing and then use a very fine compound to do the last little stripe. I did it with a $1 stick of clearance buffing compound from sears (when they still existed). I didn't pay anything for the mid stone, and used scrap wood for the buffing bar. The sandpaper would need to be changed periodically (i covered what's best for grinding bevels with that already - coarse white or yellow alumina lasts the longest and stays coarse), any medium stone (more expensive is often more fine which is not more better) and then some kind of graded abrasive for the tip (nothing expensive - more expensive is not more better).
I didn't know winston was taking my suggestions and running with them (didn't even know winston), but he did.
Graham is right about PWW - there was an article in Feb 2021. Writing articles gets pay but puts the article behind a paywall, so the article was a condensation of a free article that I wrote testing chisels from a soft sorby to a japanese chisel, across flat bevel angles and then with the method shown. There was more similarity between chisels than differences, except the sorby was a bit too soft for my tastes (just sold them on ebay last week). I didn't take payment for the PWW article, but rather had the site where the original discussion occurred designated as getting the contract. Two guys who tried my method wrote the condensed article from my wider bits and their experimenting, the site owner is a professional editor (so he did the editing and shopped it around) and all of us pointed the money back toward the site.
I make nothing, but the experimenting cost me something.
I don't know if I get into this stuff without toolmaking. If I'm making tools and I can't make them at least as good as something I can buy, then I won't use them (BTDT), so finding out what makes them good is important. This sharpening stuff comes in on the periphery.
As winston and bill were experimenting, they requested that I adapt the buffer above to planes. I resisted suggesting there was nothing to gain, but was wrong. I don't always use the method to sharpen planes, but found that with a $3 home depot iron here, I could plane cocobolo totally laden with silica in it and not damage the iron, leaving a bright surface on it (which means anything with silica - mahogany, limba, cocobolo, rosewood, etc, can be planed without buying some exotic iron - with no marks on the surface.).
When I try to offer a simple suggestion - just put a 34 degree tiny stripe on the 25 degree bevel, of course it is ignored as stupid or derided. The question is two parts:
1) is the method I proposed better? Yes , of course it is. It's less effort, stops edge failure, removes more wood per chisel strike and lengthens sharpening intervals on chisels by a huge amount.
2) does it matter and is it needed? No, if you don't care, it doesn't matter. If you don't care about sharpening more often, it's not needed. But to call it confusing and rabbit hole while giving someone a method that most don't master quickly (just roll a rounded 30 degree bevel on a chisel), that's not very smart.
I'm pretty vocal about it because I make no personal gain. I just really like things that prove to be true and doable by someone, and the next person and the next person
I've gotten a lot of tools with the "sellers" method or from people who "used to do it but moved on". What's that say about it?
