Easiest system to sharpen?

[Craig D Peltier]

Hi, I was wondering if the easiest for the non experienced to sharpen chisels and planes is to use the Veritas sharpening system?
I have a bench grinder but I dont have guides for sharpening on it.I also have a very small Veritas like guide that seems to let the chisel and planes slip in it too much and its not very straightforward when setting angle and theres only two angles.I have two stones from rockler I use with it.Now im looking just for sharp and staright not perfect unless I can achieve this.

Thanks for your input.

[Mike K Wenzloff]

Hi, I was wondering if the easiest for the non experienced to sharpen chisels and planes is to use the Veritas sharpening system?

The Powered LV MK.II is a good system. It isn't a foolproof system--but then nothing is. You can burn your edges with the wrong technique. But it does work well and is fairly straight-forward to use.

Sharpening is a fundamental skill. I would recommend even if a powered system like the MK.II is used that one learns to hone by hand. It isn't hard per se, but unless one does it, one will never build the skill. After time and a little experience, I suspect many people end up skipping the powered grinders for all but edge repair.

Tools for Working Wood has a great article on sharpening by hand here:
http://www.antiquetools.com/sharp/

...Now im looking just for sharp and staright not perfect unless I can achieve this.

Sorry for being a bit cheeky, but sharp and straight [for edges requiring to be straight] is perfect <g>.


Take care, Mike

[Fred Gross]

I have a powered wet wheel sharpener. It has a vertical wheel that (obviously) does a hollow grind. I used to use it alot because I used to rehab a lot of handplanes and it was great for getting nicks out and blades square. I don't use it as often because I am not working on a lot of older planes as much. I initially used aluminum oxide sandpaper and 1/4" thick glass (ala Scary Sharp), but the number of planes and the amount of work required to get the plane irons in shape was really burning through alot of paper. I purchased a pretty extensive set of (6) 3M diamond plates as well Norton 4000 and 8000 waterstones. I've gotten my money out of them (over 200 plane irons sharpened from square one) and they show no sign of wearing out. I usually end up using just diamond plates and waterstones for sharpening/honing of my personal planes (free hand). I'll break out my wet wheel to remove a large chip/ding or if the hollow grind is gone. I do not use a sharpening guide...I have the two points of contact from the leading edge and heel of the hollow grind. I can just free hand the final honing, but it took alot of practice to get to that point.

I think a couple of diamond plates for sharpening, 4000/8000 grit water stones for honing and a good sharpening guide from Veritas or other reputable maker is adequate for most sharpening needs of plane irons & chisels.

[Don Bullock]

I have the same question. In the past I had a connection through my father to sharpen all my tools. Because I have little experience with the process I'm taking a seminar at the Woodworking show on Pomona, California this Friday. I also know that WoodCraft has classes on sharpening that I plan to take in the future.

[Fred Gross]

Palomar College also offers a sharpening workshop once in awhile. There's a fee, but it is an excellent workshop that covers planes, chisels, scrapers, and carving/turning tools. You can research it at www.palomar.edu. I belive it is listed under the non-credit courses.

Their credited courses are excellent as well.

[willie sobat]

I struggled with sharpening until about 10 years ago when I first read about sharpening with sandpaper. Now I have grinders, buffers and diamond plates, but for basic chisel and planes sharpening I still use sandpaper. Up until that time I was also using a honing guide. I only use it now if I need to reestablish a bevel on a tool that is way out of whack.

First, get some silicon carbide sandpaper (available in sheets and rolls, PSA and paper) in the following grits (or close) 100, 220, 320, 600. You can go finer but this is all you will need to notice a significant diference.

Next find a substrate to affix the sandpaper to. I intended to get some glass when I started, but to experiment I cut some pieces of melamine into 3" x 11" pieces and used spray adhesive to mount the paper. 10 years later I am still using the same melamine pieces.

Place the substrate in front of you oriented horizontally. Start with 100 grit for dull or damaged edges or 220 for touch up work. Place the back of the iron or chisel you are sharpening and place it in the middle of the sanding surface and sweep it across the surface from side to side until you achieve and even scratch pattern across the entire area you are working (it doesn't need to be the whole back, just an inch or so). Work your way through the grits, finish with 600. Next flip the tool over so that the heel of the bevel rests on the sanding surface. Then slowly roll it forward until you feel the bevel come to a rest on the sanding surface. Use the same side to side motion (be concious of keeping the face of the bevel in contact with the sandpaper) and work through the grits again.

This is not the only technique out there and I'm sure others will have diferent preferences, but this is the way I learned to sharpen. I was so excited that day that I pulled every tool I had out and sharpened it (including my wife's scissors). Hope this helps, good luck.

[Jon Toebbe]

Sharpening is a fundamental skill. I would recommend even if a powered system like the MK.II is used that one learns to hone by hand. It isn't hard per se, but unless one does it, one will never build the skill.

Truer word have never been spoken. I've been rehabillitating several old planes and putting my Marples Blue Chip chisels through a workout chopping mortises (not recommended, I'm making mortise chisels from O1 bar stock right now). In other words: I've been doing a lot of sharpening lately.

I use sandpaper, and had been using the (melamine) kitchen counters until SWMBO chased me out of the kitchen, complaining about the spray adhesive (and the mineral spirits used to remove it). Recently, I scrounged a couple of nice 8 inch square blocks of polished marble from a shop that deals in countertops. They had a bunch of scraps, broken pieces, and samples of discontinued products stacked near the dumpster, free for the taking. I put some of those self-adhesive rubber feet on the bottoms to keep them from skittering and voila! a pair of nice flat, portable sharpening "stones."

60 grit automotive sandpaper does a great job of getting an old plane iron flat, and removing knicks in blades of all kinds. It's not as fast as machine grinding by any means, but it doesn't introduce any unwanted hollows in the bevel and it gives you lots of practice in maintaining a consistent bevel. As Mike said: it's not especially difficult, but it does take some practice.

So I guess the point of this rambling post is: now you have a convenient excuse to buy an old, rusty plane and put it back in working order. As though we need excuses...

Jon

Yeah, there's a slope... but the grade seems so gentle...

[Larry Williams]

Craig,

The truth is there is no easy quick way to start sharpening. The single most difficult part of sharpening is initial preparation of a plane iron or chisel. Unfortunately, that's where you have to start. It's not easy or fast and this has given rise to a lot of gimmicks and nonsense. The other thing you're faced with is the volume of noise out there touting a lot of gimmicks and supposed short-cuts.

Joel's piece on sharpening, posted above, is okay as far as it goes but it misses the real trade practices leading to successful sharpening.

The real secret to success at sharpening comes from repeatability. You don't need gimmicks or jigs for that. Repeatability comes from keeping your sharpening stones flat and the tedious initial flattening of the back of your chisels and plane irons. With this repeatability based on flatness each sharpening becomes prepping for subsequent sharpening. The amount of metal removed in proper sharpening is incredibly small. From dull to truly sharp is a couple of minutes. If you add a bunch of sharpening paraphernalia and gimmicks all you do is slow yourself down and make sharpening harder.

I use three stones in sharpening. A medium India, a Translucent Hard Arkansas and a coarse diamond stone that's only used to maintain the other two. The two oil stones, contrary to what people say, do wear but they also get dull. Very briefly using the coarse diamond stone on both oil stones before each sharpening keeps the oil stones flat and fast cutting. First dress the fine hard Arkansas then the coarser India stone. Leave the resulting slurry on the stones, it only makes them cut faster. I also use a leather strop to remove the final wire edge.

You might want to invest in water stones or even coarse silicon carbide sand paper for the initial flattening. Water stones take a lot of maintenance to keep them flat and I've never found any sandpaper sharpening system that doesn't dub edges and corners. You'll want to do the final flattening of your tools on the oil stones.

Once you have your tools conditioned, sharpening becomes easy and is no barrier to work at all. You'll find sharpening done this way pleasant, quick and a lot easier than struggling with a dull tool.

It's best to just suck it up and do the initial flattening. It pays big dividends later.

I'd say more but this is too long already. If you want to know what I think about grinding there's a WoodNet post on that at:
http://tinyurl.com/39mk8e

[Jim Belair]

If you get Leonard Lee's book on sharpening (by concensus about the best around), he has a table that lists the order in which you should buy things as your sharpening skills and needs grow. Sort of a "get used to paddling around in the shallow end before you jump in the deep end" thing.

Jim B

[Derek Cohen]

Craig

The points made by Mike (that a machine is great for grinding a primary bevel, but that one will always benefit from handskills) and Larry (that well-prepared and familiar media is going to serve you better than the latest gimmicks) are important points to keep in mind. Sometimes I heed these and sometimes not ..

I have tried many methods, generally finding Japanese waterstones to provide the best edge, but they are messy and require a dedicated sharpening station (which I have, but it gets dusty and piled with .. things). I occasionally return to sandpaper - well I use it anyway to flatten the backs of blades - but it is just as messy, only a different messy.

One solution is not to let your blades get so blunt that the edge needs to be re-ground. But to do this, I want the sharpening media at hand, so I can pick it up and put it down wirthout being distracted.

Set up and preparation are extremely important - not only the backs of blades, but also the primary bevel.

I have two methods I now use. Both are rapid and produce razor edges in a minute or two. Both involve working with microbevels. One involves a microbevel on a hollow ground edge, and the other involves a microbevel on a flat primary bevel.

The hollow grind is first completed on a 6" high speed grinder (60 grit white Norton wheel). This only needs to be done once in a while. Following this I will freehand the edge. This method suits BD planes blades and most chisels.

The hollow grind acts as its own jig. It is relatively easy to balance a widish blade on the outer edges of a hollow grind, while balancing an edge on a flat face is actually quite difficult. This is where one "rocks" the blade and grinds a rounded edge.

The second method for preparing a primary bevel is a flat grind, and this is completed on a bench belt sander (120 grit). Precision is unimportant here (a few degrees less is better) - that comes in the microbevel stage. The microbevel that follows is done with a honing guide, such as the LV Honing Guide Mk II. This method suits BU blades, Japanese and mortice chisels. It also suits those who are not confident to freehand sharpen.

I am quite lazy so I much prefer to freehand blades on the media, and so I find that I am slowly hollow grinding more and more BU blades as well.

Which ever method you use, having established the primary bevel, the remainder of the process is a follows. This takes but a minute or two:

40 micron (400 grit) diamond stone > 10 micron diamond paste (a "pea"-sized amount spread on a 8x3" piece of planed hardwood = instant diamond stone) > 2.5 micron diamond paste > and finally a leather strop (from Tools for Working Wood) spread with Veritas green rouge (.5 micron). Whenever the edge needs to be refreshed, I just pull out the leather strop.

I can re-use the same application of diamond paste several times. If the hardwood appears to be wearing, just replace it. But I have not had to do so to date.

No mess, no space, hardly any time, very cheap to maintain, razor sharp results. This works for me.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Eddie Darby]

http://www.lapsharp.com/

Easiest!!! ...BUT...

This is also not the cheapest, but it blows the MKII out of the water!

This machine will lap the back of the blades to a mirror finish, which is half of the battle! The machine can also be used wet, and I have even seen people hook up a water stone to this unit. The foot switch helps with proper registry of the blade. Both directions is nice for knives, and the slower RPM means less chance of burning the edge.

[Maurice Metzger]

I think one way to decide what's the easiest sharpening method is to figure out what's the most enjoyable method *for you*. If you enjoy using hand tools you'll be spending a fair amount of time sharpening, so in my opinion it helps if it is at least not unpleasant. The only way to find the best method is to try some out.

But that's just my opinion.

Maurice

[David Weaver]

Patience, some waterstones, a piece of plate glass, some wet and dry sand paper (try ebay for a pre-put together assortment so that you don't have to experiment with $100 of sand paper), and the leonard lee sharpening book.

You'll find out that the price for plate glass is shocking, but if you don't have a perfectly flat surface to use it on, you should get a thick piece. You'll need it either to back the sand paper or to flatten waterstones.

I can also recommend the David Charlesworth video for sharpening plane irons. If you watch that and read the leonard lee book (and see the pictures and discussion of the edge), you'll get good technique and understand the reason for primary and secondary bevels and why they are the angles they are. If you do it right, you can run the plane iron flat across the back your hand and the hairs will jump off as it goes by.

I personally still like the waterstones, up to 8000 or 12000 grit for the final bevel - the best. I get better looking results under a microscope (checking the edge), and I'm just comfortable using them. None of the stuff is cheap, but if you spend the money up front, you'll probably save yourself a lot of aggravation.

[James Owen]

Patience, some waterstones, a piece of plate glass, .....

You'll find out that the price for plate glass is shocking, but if you don't have a perfectly flat surface to use it on, you should get a thick piece. You'll need it either to back the sand paper or to flatten waterstones. ......

You don't necessarily have to buy an expensive new piece of glass. Often glass shops will sell their off-cuts very cheaply or even give them away. That's how I got mine (a 12" W x 30" L x ¾" T off-cut piece). It certainly can't hurt to ask.

Another relatively unknown outside the glass-working trades tidbit: (according to the glass shop guy that gave me the above-mentioned piece of glass) nearly all modern US-manufactured glass is float glass, so it's all pretty flat. No need to spend big bucks for a "specialty" piece of glass....

As far as my sharpening set-up goes, it's real low-tech and not very expensive: two man-made combination water stones, a flattening stone, a couple of water stone slip stones, a set of ceramic hones, and a mill bastard file for removing chips and such.

A couple of other good sharpening books: Tom Lie-Niesen's book on sharpening, and Ian Kirby's book on sharpening with water stones. Both excellent books with very detailed information and lots of photos showing techniques, etc., described in the text.

[Craig D Peltier]

Thanks for all the replies and the time taken to explain. I have alot to absorb and will be reading through.Much appreciated!