Sharpening trouble ~ help

[Michael Hartery]

Thanks for all the great feed back guys.. I am going to digest all of this and ill post back with some of the results. This ended up being a great discussion.
michael

[Eddie Darby]

Hello I have the NL standard block plane.
michael

By 'NL', do you mean LN which is short for Lie-Nielsen?

[Jim Matthews]

What is used to flatten the stones?

Norton makes a simple, inexpensive silicon carbide gizmo to get them flat.
If you're using a Veritas guide, you might want to make sure the thumbscrew isn't deflecting the plane iron.
*Which I doubt*

Run a series of pencil lines across the stones and go through your flattening steps. If there are lines remaining toward the sides of the stone - Eureka.

Lastly, you can avoid some of this by sharpening sideways (laterally) to establish the secondary bevel, and stropping with your guide as normal to finish.
I do this with sandpaper on a granite substrate (cut out to fit a sink in a countertop).

[Mike Davis NC]

Could this be from the honing guide? Possibly bending the blade and putting a dip in the end? even on a flat stone...

Maybe try a different guide or sharpen freehand and see if there is a difference.

[Tony Shea]

Ah ha, Mike Davis finally nailed what I believe the issue to be. Surprised no one suggested this before. I started out free hand honing and have gradually moved more towards honing guides. I bought the inexpensive eclipse side clamping style honing guide and get repeatable results. But after all the rave I decided to check out the Veritas MKII honing guide just because I need another tool like I need another hole in the head.

I chucked my LN #7 iron in the Veritas MKII and went to town trying as hard as I could to get a perfectly straight edge (this is how I like to keep my LN #7). I was surprised to find out when I first started on the stones that the blade acted as though it had a slight camber, only producing metal filings in the center of the stone. But kept on sharpening.

I slipped the blade back into the plane thinking all was well. Hit a couple edges to test the sharpness and put the plane away. Next time I took out the #7 I needed to joint the faces of some boards. Low and behold I was getting shavings on both corners of the blade and whispy shavings in the middle (a concave edge). Took out the blade and checked it under a straight edge and proved the same thing.

Put it back into the Veritas honing guide and ended up with the same results. So just out of curiosity i put the blade in the eclipse guide and sure enough the edges of the blade were all that was being sharpended until things leveled out. Tried another Stanley blade in the Veritas and got the exact same results but a tad more extreme due to thinner blade.

Moral of the story is.... I believe your issue to be the Veritas MKII honing guide. Where the blade is being clamped from above and below, with a decent amount of pressure to keep the blade from moving, the faces of the two clamps NEED to perfectly flat or else your thinner and wide blades will follow the shape. And I have personally proved that the LN blades are thin enough to do this. I have yet to contact LV about my issue as I use the eclipse guide more often anyways unless dealling with akward bevels which are usually narrow enough to not be affected by the issue.

I appologize for the length of the post but I do know where your coming from as I personally struggled with the same exact issue before I actually figured it out.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Tony's example can happen with the eclipse guide as well, btw - I had one where when clamping, the play in it sort of flexed up the middle, bowing the blade. Made a few adjustments to it as shown in the recent Lie Nielsen video and on Chris Schwarz's blog and it fixed things.