My friendly neighborhood postman delivered a late Christmas present from the good folks at Lie Nielsen yesterday. My Rabbit Block Plane arrived in the afternoon.

I took it to the shop for examination and trials. A disassembly and wipedown commenced. I took the iron to the sharpening station for a touch up on my strop prior to trying it out. As I was assembling it I fumble fingered the iron and it flipped off the bench onto the concrete floor. I'll say that if I tried to get the iron to land edge first over 10 straight attempts, none would impact the floor as squarely and in as such a damage inducing fashion as this did. It was really ugly. Expletives were uttered.

The good news is that my new sharpening setup made short work of the repair. The 1000 Grid Trend Diamond Plate flattened the back and renewed the secondary bevel past the damage in short order. A few strokes on the 6K stone followed by the 16K stone restored the mirror finish. One more trip to the Shaptons for the Ruler Trick turned the back of the cutting edge to a mirror too. In no more that 10 minutes I went from an edge that was totally spoiled to one that was pristine. With my old method it would have taken much longer with much more effort.

The plane works really nice too