Cheapest way to flatten chisels?

[bridger berdel]

Flatness of chisel backs is a good thing and helpful..... sometimes. In some cases having a very gentle convexity to a chisel back geves you a fine control of lifting the edge off of the surface or even to avoid diving.

[Patrick Chase]

Flatness of chisel backs is a good thing and helpful..... sometimes. In some cases having a very gentle convexity to a chisel back geves you a fine control of lifting the edge off of the surface or even to avoid diving.

The counterargument is that you should always use the right tool for the job. For the sorts of uses you reference that would be either a carving chisel or a bench chisel on its bevel.

[Aaron Rappaport]

Here is the link to hollowing out the back of your chisel with a bench grinder in order to make it easy to flatten it: http://timmanneychairmaker.blogspot....d-chisels.html . He describes it a lot better than I did. I've found it to be an incredibly fast and cheap way to flatten a back. You certainly can't find a cheaper abrasive per use than a grinding wheel.

[Benjamin Amadon]

Hello,

I'm in the same boat with a few vintage Stanley 750 really badly out of flat and I started experimenting a combination of techniques that seems to work fine and pretty quickly.


First I check the flatness with a surface plate and engineers blue. Then I remove the high spots with a Dremel that has a grinding wheel attached. Then I check again and repeat. This video gives good information of the process

When I have enough high spot I switch to a sanding disk on the Dremel and repeat the same process to get rid of the potentials hills and valley created previously.

When all is done I switch to a Lapping plate with 90x grit. I just received Veritas lapping plate tonight and tried it. Well I'm impressed how quick it goes without any dubbing. I worked with wd40 to lubricate. On my first trials I had the grit breaking down too quickly (less than a minute). Then I decided to put less pressure and the results were very nice. Low pressure had no significant impact on speed but allowed the grit to keep on for much longer until it started to break down and bring a nice matt grey.

I really like this method that brings the blade ready for polish. In the past I tried diamond plate but they wear, sandpaper but it wears and creates dubbing at low grit, water stone but I had loading and section

I think I will experiment with diamond paste soon on Veritas honing plate.

Also I not too worried about my lapping wearing, I know it will but when it will arrive, I will control it on my surface plate and hand scrape it

Benji