Mk.II Honing Guide and Veritas block plane

[Jonathan Gennaro]

What jig would you recommend? Or would you recommend just doing it by hand? Damn, I wish I didn't spend the money on this jig now. It was only for this block plane blade. My other 15 dollar one has worked flawless since I bought it. I just made a couple stop blocks on a piece of wood and its a two second touch up.

[Jonathan Gennaro]

I'll check that when i get home too

[Jim Koepke]

I'll also check for thickness of the blade.

Before anything else the squareness of the edge should be checked. If it is square at the edge nothing else matters. If it isn't square then there may be action(s) that need to be taken.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Jonathan,

The image of the blade holder you linked looks like it has two places to hold a blade. The obvious is at the top. The not so obvious is under the lip of the platform for the top position.

Here is an article with a couple of images showing blades held in the lower position:

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/ar..._honing_guides

Good luck,

jtk

[Prashun Patel]

Even if the bevel is out of square, I doubt it'd be so far as the honing line suggests. That honing line does not appear to be perpendicular to the sides.

My suspicion is over-tightening. The two screws on the MKII cantilever over the edge of the blade further on your block plane blade than with the wider #4/5 blades. It's therefore easy to torque one side too much so it presses the blade with more force on one side. That's what usually causes the skew for me.

The trick is to tighten each screw a little at a time until they are both just barely snug. Then, when you sharpen, let the stone do the work. Keep your forefingers towards the middle of the blade. There is enough camber to the roller that if you press on one side of the blade, you'll cause the grind to skew. That's by design; you can camber your blades evenly by pressing on the outsides in even succession.

Last, you can do micro adjustments with a tiny mallet. Check your progress and tap the offending corner with the mallet a tad, and you can get to perfect.

That guide is great, but not foolproof...

[Jonathan Gennaro]

Jonathan,

The image of the blade holder you linked looks like it has two places to hold a blade. The obvious is at the top. The not so obvious is under the lip of the platform for the top position.

Here is an article with a couple of images showing blades held in the lower position:

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/ar..._honing_guides

Good luck,

jtk

Yeah I know it has two places, but the back of the blade curves in and it will not hold such a tiny blade.

[Jonathan Gennaro]

Alright, I'll give it a try tonight. From everything I read before using it everyone said make sure that things damn tight haha. I'll make it just snug and sharpen it more gracefully.

[Winton Applegate]

When I first looked at your photo of the edge, and before reading Derek’s assessment, I thought the exact same as Derek. I use this guide a ton and on these blades and plane and it is mindlessly easy to get stellar results. No negative aspersions on you . . . after all you got great results on the other blades. My point is that the jig works well.


Be sure to use the cambered roller assembly

C.

Veritas® Camber Roller Assembly 05M09.05

$24.95

No need for the “and I mean tight”.

I pulled this photo up to post in the scraper thread but am posting it here to show what the jig, the plane and a bit of care can do. Very capable combination.

Planing a finish with no corner gouging or cutting too deep into the finish let alone all the way through the finish is about as good as one would want from a block plane and edge prep as far as edge accuracy and sharpness goes. Held up well taking a heavier cut to put on a hand held edge facet in place of the sharp top edges of the bubbinga table too.

I love the plane, the blade and the jig !

[Tom M King]

I keep the camber roller on mine all the time. Either of my helpers can sharpen anything as good with this guide as I can with any method. They're hopeless with anything else.

[ian maybury]

Pardon the length, but the photo Jonathan suggests that both your bevel grind and the honing bevel may be out of square and/or in different planes.

I do Veritas block and apron plane blades on the Mk 2 honing guide without any difficulty, and don't think you need to buy a new guide. There are a few things to watch out for - it took some tuning to get mine working right. The Veritas block plane blade is no problem, it tapers to the rear, but it's got roughly 1 1/4 in long parallel sides running back from the edge which align perfectly well with the separate registration guide used with the Mk 2. Use as the guys say of the camber roller makes the whole deal much less set up sensitive. (see below) There's a few other angles to using the Veritas guide though if mine was typical.

Moderate overtightening or uneven tightening isn't necessarily a big deal on plane blades, but it can if really overdone bend the clamp bar and/or sometimes tip especially narrower blades out of horizontal. It's also very possible (presuming accurate alignment in the first place) that it's slippage of the blade in the clamp that is messing things up. It's unfortunately a powder coated casting, and as a result quite slippery and may not be quite truly flat. You will probably get enough grip to handle a plane blade with it, but it's potentially a bit iffy. Mine was very problematical on stuff like Japanese chisels with irregular/tapered backs. I refaced my clamp and fitted it with DIY high grip facings - this was a big improvement, and ended the urge to over tighten. You may not need to do it, but description here: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...Fix&highlight=

Second is that if you use the cylindrical roller for honing on the MK 2 guide (as the guys say it's not advisable for blades that are wide/stable enough not to tip unexpectedly sideways when honing - see below) it dictates the side to side alignment of the blade. Trouble is that presumably due to casting and machining tolerances the line of the roller axis is not necessarily perfectly aligned with the face of the body half of the clamp that determines the horizontal alignment of your blade - it wasn't on mine anyway. This means that even if the primary bevel you grind on the blade is accurately square (and it looks like yours is not), and the blade is correctly aligned in the clamp that the micro bevel you hone on still cannot line up correctly with the primary bevel on your blade.

It's relatively easy to fix - some careful filing of a slight tilt into the mounting surface on the main body casting for the roller bracket (seen in the photo below before filing) can compensate for any misaligment and square it up for use on stuff like narrower chisels - but using the camber roller avoids the issue a lot of the time. Take care if you do decide to go with this fix to ensure that the face created is flat so that the roller assembly can't wobble.

Using the barrel/camber roller http://www.leevalley.com/US/Wood/pag...072,43078&ap=1 as Winton/the guys on wider e.g. plane blades means that the fence on the registration/angle setting jig that goes with the guide can be used to align the blade in the clamp every time (with no requirement for further fiddling about), and the blade is left free (because the camber roller can rock on the surface of the stone) to self align on the face of the waterstone. This unless something is off with the honing technique (e.g. overdoing with too much pressure or too many strokes it on one side vs the other) will deliver a micro bevel accurately aligned with the primary bevel every time.

A less likely issue to watch out for is that it seems that at least some early production (?) Mk 2 guides may as in my example have had a misalignment in the machining of the eccentric adjuster in the roller used to lift the back of the guide to hone a micro bevel. These if used may result in the blade tipping sideways a little out of the horizontal when the adjustment is made - with the result that the subsequent micro bevel ends up in not quite in the same plane as the bevel. Lee Valley have been replacing affected roller assemblies - but it seems that there may not be very many that got out.

You may need to think about getting your grinding/re-grinding of the primary bevel square. If as looks to be the case you're doing it hollow ground on a Tormek or a dry grinder then you'll have to rely on the others for a technique to keep it square - although when honing afterwards with the camber roller it doesn't need to be perfect. When there's not much metal to be removed I do it using the Mk 2 guide with the above set up (with the camber roller in) on the top surface of a Work Sharp on an 80 or 150 grit diamond lapidary disc (but it can be done on a coarse waterstone too) - the point is that using the camber roller for this job too again gives control over the squareness of the grind. (which is checked with a square)

Honing can then be done after slightly increasing the blade projection using the registration jig to increase the angle by maybe 5 deg, or by using the micro bevel adjustment. It's another step on, but the camber roller as well as tolerating some out of squareness in your primary bevel grind also allows any needed camber (curve) to be added to the edge using the Charlesworth method of extra honing strokes towards the outside corners….

ian

veritas low angle 0.001in camber:8 strokes on 1000g 30-8-14.jpg veritas hg flattening of castings 17-7-14.jpg

[Robert G Brown]

Found my problem. The blade sides are not parallel. The MKII will only register one side. Fortunately an old home-made one allows me to register the other side. The plane now planes straight across without digging in on one side.Jig - MKII.jpg
This jig I made a few years ago works. So I am blaming the blade. Thanks Guys. The posts here helped me to figure this one.
Jig - Home-Made.jpg

[Winton Applegate]

I'm shocked the sides are not parallel.
Varitas might re grind it for you or make it right other wise.
Shame not to be able to use your nice new jig. I am sure they would agree.
They are a great company.

Some how I thought you had the little block plane but that's a honking' blade.

[john zulu]

I notice that the grind from LV is skewed at times. I was wondering for a long time on this matter. Anyway after a few good sharpening it will be square. No biggie

[john zulu]

Blade for the plane does not need to be parallel. Dead square. We can skew the blade to adjust it. However chisels needs to be dead square.

[Kees Heiden]

I still don't see why that blade wouldn't fit in a the cheap Eclipse style jig. You could also try to use the chisel position slots. Or free hand of course. This would have been an ideal opportunity to learn a valuable technique.

And why would a chisel need to be dead square? Reasonably square, OK, but not something to get overly exited about I guess. I have some vintage ones with tapered sides, good luck on making these dead square. The work perfectly allright of course.