On oilstones with gouges the figure 8 works for me. With flat blades, back and forth works fine for me on oil or water stones.Jim Matthews suggested in a PM to try the figure 8--am not there yet.
jtk
Contributor
On oilstones with gouges the figure 8 works for me. With flat blades, back and forth works fine for me on oil or water stones.Jim Matthews suggested in a PM to try the figure 8--am not there yet.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Contributor
Thanks Brian, I misread your note. I'll add that I use a slow speed grinder and (for now) only have western chisels. David, I do also have a jig and don't hesitate to use it for blades such as a scraper plane blade (for which i've never had luck hand sharpening).
Cheers,
C
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
--Yogi Berra
Member
Plus the video is made of silicon carbide. Check the specs.Originally Posted by lowell holmes
http://www.amazon.com/Sharpening-Woo.../dp/B000H6FSLS
All of my other woodworking videos are made of some kind of tough silvery plastic. No match for SiC.
For $4 delivered, seems like a deal.
Member
I hollow grind only to speed up sharpening you're taking off less metal.
Eventually you will loose the hollow grind thru repeated sharpenings. Most of the time once I reach this point as long as the bevel is flat and not concave I don't regrind.
However, once you get enough practice in and the muscle memory that comes with it might not matter thatmuch.
I just like to be able to rock the blade to find a starting point to sharpen from.
[OP]
Contributor
Hi guys,
Please check out my method here.
Am getting chatter.
Any ideas?
DSCN0626.JPG
I am pushing down slightly (to secure bevel) with the left hand, and feeling for proper seating of bevel and moving blade toward me and away with right hand.
In actual practice, my right hand is far more down toward the bevel.
This seems to work-last wkd anyway; now it chatters.
As always, thanks
David
Confidence: That feeling you get before fully understanding a situation (Anonymous)
Member
I became a freehand convert only after getting a CBN wheel and grinding slight hollows into some of my blades & chisels. (Thanks, Derek ! ) Someday I'll get them all done. Man, what a difference. It makes it much easier to feel when the blade is level, as it rests on two thin edges,
I haven't tried this on a stock Stanley blade, though. Dunno if it would help. Then again, at some point I'd prefer not to have any blades that thin, anyway.
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FWIW, using a hollow grind has other advantages: Less sharpening time. Less wear on your stones. Slightly more relief under the bevel. - And probably a little less effort to push through the work. I suppose the downside is that the edge is a little less robust.
A nice thing about freehand in general, besides the ease of doing a quick tweak-hone, is that if you use water stones, it actually saves a lot of wear:
With a jig, because the roller is so far behind the cutting edge, the total footprint of the system on the stone is very long. Thus, the stone has to always be really, really flat. That means you have to constantly flatten the ends, causing a lot of waste. When you freehand, the stone only has to be flat in localized areas. A slightly concavity doesn't matter much, so you don't have to level the stone nearly as often.
Last edited by Allan Speers; 10-10-2015 at 7:58 PM.
Contributor
Don't you just hate when that happens?This seems to work-last wkd anyway; now it chatters.
There are as likely many ways for this to happen as there are people sharpening their blades freehand.
This happens to me mostly right after flattening my stones and trying to hone a thick blade.
My belief is it is caused by a form of stiction from the interaction between the flat bevel, the flat stone and the water.
YMMV!!!.jpg
When this happens my solution may be to put a micro bevel on the blade.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Member
The use of applied contrast makes it easier to effectively sharpen the very edge. I use Dykem blue layout fluid on my bevels. It contrasts well with metal and is less thick than black marker ink. It comes off immediately with denatured alcohol.
Contributor
I hollow ground edges for a LONG time, but as the flats gradually got wider, to the point of taking over the whole bevel, the need to hollow went away. Now, I only put something to a grinder if the edge has a chunk out of it.
[OP]
Contributor
When my mother in law started taking pictures, we had chatter marks on the stone. After all the re-takes, now they aren't there....but the chatter is with the actual sharpening.
It occurred to me that some sort of suction/friction dynamic was happening is this the dreaded 'stiction'? Of course, when doing a micro-bevel (or my version of one), it did not chatter.
If it continues, I may get the Tormek out-really dont' want to do that, though.
David
Confidence: That feeling you get before fully understanding a situation (Anonymous)
Member
It sounds like stiction. Sometimes it helps to add a drop of dish detergent to your water. That breaks-down the surface tension, especially with finer grit stones.
Member
I also have no problem free-handing wider blades. However I still prefer to grind a hollow, as this saves both time and wear on the stones.
Derek Cohen has a great many tutorials about sharpening on his Blog/site.
Just the other day I decided to put a 6" radius on a 1 1/2" wide Veritas PMI blade I bought for a Stanley 5 1/4, original blade was used up. I followed pretty much the same procedure Derek suggests on his site. I marked a 6" radius on the blade, using an old set of dividers with one side a pencil holder. I set my SB (Stuart Beatty?) tool rest at roughly the same angle as the bevel on the blade (yes it came with a Micro bevel, I just worked around it). My tool rest is rounded on the end facing the user, which I think helps in making convex bevels. Within just a few minuets I had a 6" radius on the blade with a near perfect shallow hollow grind all the way around. From there I took the blade to a Spyderco, medium grit and then a Spyderco ultra fine grit. In a very short time I had a plane blade ground for stock removal all ready to use.
I do not typically try to sharpen my blades sharp enough to shave hair. I want the blade to cut thin strips of paper easily. When I first started sharpening knives I read something written by Beau Randal, the custom knife maker. Mr. Randal explained that a knife sharp enough to shave has an edge that is thin and fragile that will dull/chip easier than the same blade with a slightly less tapered bevel. He was talking about steeper bevels being less fragile than more acute ones. I have learned since then that even a knife, chisel, plane blade with a steep bevel can be made sharper by honing the two edges as perfectly smooth as possible. Still I think there is an area of diminishing returns where fine honing a blade very sharp for rough work does not return the investment.
I am so happy to be able to sharpen so much faster than I use to. When I started reading about all the sharpening jigs, special stones, water wheel slow speed grinders.... on these pages, I took it all to heart and abandoned my old hand sharpening methods from younger years. I like the hand sharpening theme of this thread, because like David I have found that it has been my return to hand sharpening methods that has made sharpening more fun and much more productive.
I love my CBN wheel, even if others find them unnecessary. I have spent hours standing at a Tormek working the bevel on a thick bevel up blade, only to find as the hollow finally started to emerge that it was not in the correct place/orientation, probably due to incorrect pressure on a jig. Having the immediate feed back about what the wheel is doing to the blade has been invaluable in helping me to learn to grind bevels, particularly cambered bevels. I spent years trying to find a way to do this and never came up with anything that worked for me like the CBN wheels, but then I sharpen lots of tools for landscaping and construction work too.
Last edited by Mike Holbrook; 10-12-2015 at 1:58 PM.
Contributor
Some time ago this discussion regarding danger of grinding the hollow bevel came up. George Wilson kinda eased my mind that it really isn't all that dangerous. I have since tied it, freehand at first with trepidation of some nasty kickback, and then with a straightedge coupled to the blade in order to do a better job of making a consistent edge. To this time I have not had a kickback of any sort. I think it is because the angle of convergence of the bevel / tip and the spinning grinding wheel is pretty shallowHave never taken a cutting edge to a regular grinder. Scary stuff.
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