Block Plane Sharpening problem.

[Adam Cavaliere]

Hey all,

I picked up a Stanley sweetheart low angle block plane and just tried sharpening the blade with my wet stones. I have run into a strange problem with the way the blade sharpened.

The iron is shiney almost all the way to the top of the bevel and nearly all the way across. Normally I don't care about how shiney it gets all the way to the top as long as the bottom of it (cutting surface) is shiney. The problem I am running into is that I cannot get it shiney all the way across. It seems to scuff up pretty easily all the way across on the 220 grit stone, but the instant I start going up to the 1000 grit and above, a tiny amount of the plane on each side does not really shine.

Any ideas as to why this is happening? I have not run into this with my other block plane. I also just finished up sharpening all of my chisels right before and did not run into this problem, even on my largest chisel.

[Matt Evans]

My first thought is that there is a belly in the blade. I may be misinterpreting what you are trying to say though.

I would put a straight edge on it before anything else and make sure that the area you are talking about is dead flat first.

It could also be a matter of camber. if there is a camber on the blade and you aren't accounting for that with your sharpening method, then that may be the issue.

A picture might help in deducing the issue.

[Ron Petley]

Sounds like it is not flat all the way across the blade.
Cheers Ron.

[James Taglienti]

maybe check your coarser stone for flatness. If your stones aren't all equally flat it could show up on your cutter.

[Adam Cavaliere]

Here is a picture.

[Adam Cavaliere]

I did flatten all of the stones to make sure that wasn't the case.

[Matt Evans]

It could be the picture, but it looks like the edges of the blade are slightly radiused or cambered. If you try to put a little more pressure on the edges when taking the blade across the stones it may hone those edges.

The slight camber on the edges will actually help not leave plane tracks in your work if that is the case.

[James Taglienti]

Have you tried taking it back to the grinder and starting over/ ?

[Adam Cavaliere]

I didn't start with it on the grinder, and I'd rather not since I don't have a lot of experience with it.

[john brenton]

Go get one of those chincey little Wen wet wheels. I use mine all the time. They're cheap, and you don't have to worry about doing any damage to your tool...not to say that you COULDN'T do damage, but it is a lot easier.

I didn't start with it on the grinder, and I'd rather not since I don't have a lot of experience with it.

[Adam Cavaliere]

I tried starting over again from 150 grit sandpaper.

150 Sandpaper: Even scratches all the way across
220 Wet Stone: Even scratches all the way across
1000 Wet Stone: Only in the middle again. I had to go to town and just keep honing the blade for awhile. I could see minimal progress. Finally I got it to the point where it was even all the way across on the tip and a bit down. What is interesting is that the shine is not even across the whole blade. It slopes ever so slightly down when looking at it from left to right. I have checked the squareness of the blade and it looks to be perfectly square. Any clue as to why that would occur?

The other two wet stones produced the same even shine across, so at this point I am pretty happy with it.

Thanks for all of the input!

[Robert Culver]

Was just studying your picture for a few seconds and it may just be the way your light is hitting it but it almost looks like it could be cupped a tiny bit. That could be why its not polishing all the way across on your smoother stones the heavy grit can reach the edges but the smoother stones wont.

Im no pro though just a idea.

[Jim Koepke]

Some of my blades do this at times. It is kind of like having a camber on the blade so I don't worry about it. If I want to get all the way to the edge, I just lift the blade a little and give it a micro bevel. Most often it is just left and after a few uses and sharpenings it goes away.

jtk

[Richard Magbanua]

Maybe your sandpaper and first stone have a very slight dish in them, wearing away the edges just a bit. This would still show an even scratch pattern. Your fine stone may well be flat but, at that point, your blade may not be.
What size and kind of stones are you using? What's your sandpaper set up look like?

[David Weaver]

One of the stones is out of flat. Either the coarse stone is hollowed or the finer stone is convex. There is an outside chance it's technique if you're really all over the place when you're sharpening.

You can direct finger pressure on the iron on the finer stones to wherever you need them to polish, but it isn't really a fix when you don't know what's causing the problem.

Given where it is, on bevel side, and how small it is, if the back is uniformly polished, I would just place finger pressure on those corners to polish them if you think they'll be involved in the cut. At some point, you'll figure out what's causing it, until then you can do that.