Did someone say sharpening?

There are many ways of doing just about everything when making; none more so than sharpening. 

Gadgets, processes, videos, courses, books, philosophies, material science insights, metallurgy both inaccurate and based on something like science, and then of course more gadgets. 

And words. So many words.

Over the last 30 years, I am much less sure than when I started. But I know a lot about what doesn't work or might work in a given situation and not in another. So here are my dictums of sharpening.

1. Sharpen often. Too much is never enough.
2. Check your sharpening surfaces - they need to be flat or you will be eternally unhappy. 
3. Flat - not flattish. If you're a chippy* maybe not so much but blunt = more brute force to make the tool function.
4. Unless you are a member of The Holy Order of OCD, develop a sharpening process that delivers your needed level of sharp in the shortest time. 
5. Gadgets are good - once you've figured out where they do work well, and what they most certainly don't do well or at all. For you. 
6. If your process is suddenly not doing what it used to do, check all the steps and parts.
7. The person recommending a gadget and/or process is using their own tools or blades all set up in a certain way. Your circumstances will be different. 
8. Most gadgets aren't worth the postage, much less the purchase price.
9. Not all gadgets are made equal - and I mean those from the same manufacturer. Batches vary in quality and when middle management take over the manufacturing line.... 
10. Buy and read and read again Chris Schwarz's Sharpen This. 

So when I first stumbled into woodworking, it was Japanese chisels and Stanley honing guides reproducing a 25 degree bevel on King waterstones. Diamond lapping plates were around but generally not used for anything other than coarse initial lapping of blade backs. You flattened your stones on wet and dry sandpaper on a hefty piece of 10mm float glass.

And I wandered along happy in my naivety for years. Sure some weird blades from joinery planes resisted being squeezed into the Stanley honing guide (looking at you #71 router bits), but the process worked. I made shweesh noises with my planes and kept those Japanese carpenter chisels sharp all under the restraints of running a business.

Then I went to art school. To study woodworking.

Using honing guides was a sign of moral decay. One had to Find the Bevel. Whereas sharpening had been a few minutes work, it now became as excruciating as sitting cross-legged for 3 hours. And about as useful. 

It wasn't that sharpening without using a honing guide is impossible; it just takes time to get the hang of it, and to deal with and diagnose the consequences of poor process. The dreaded rounded bevel for example. And at art school, you do not have time. You have insane deadlines to make objects to the highest standard involving processes and techniques that are, well, potentially arcane and utterly alien to you. 

Suffice to say, I drifted on the seas of uncertainty for some years afterward, lashed to the mast, refusing the siren call of the Stanley honing guide from its place of shame in the bottom of a tool box. 

Eventually I caved in and used a couple of cheap flimsy things, including the ubiquitous Eclipse knockoffs. If you need to use one, watch the Fine Woodworking video on how to modify them so they are fit for purpose. And I kept going with the King waterstones. 

I've always used a 6" or 8" grinder free hand with a white oxide wheel. Light touch, lot of eyeballing and checking. Water dunking in summer, and I am a bit partial to drawing the heat on the cast iron surfaces of my machinery in winter just because I can. So everything get a primary bevel of 25 degrees.

If you don't already have it, I reckon go with a cast iron or steel tool rest on a grinder. The Wolverine is the ants pants, but even a home made jobbie welded up by Cousin Brad is better than aluminium. You get both the mass and the heat sink benefit.

And then I add a micro-bevel of 35 degrees using the honing guide. Ignoring those Japanese carpenter chisels which stay at their 25 degrees of full bevel.

These days, I can afford what I should have bought years before. I totally agree with Schwarz's point about stick to what works. But there is a but. Sometimes what works doesn't work. And having a couple of options can be damned handy.

So I've got the Lie-Nielsen honing guide + long jaws for spokeshave blades. Superbly made, bomb-proof, and with the narrower wheel, allows for creation of whatever degree of camber you want on your blade.

I rarely use honing guides on diamond plates (more on those later) but Lie-Nielsen do state in the instructions not to use them with diamond lapping plates. 

The other limitation is that the inside profile on the jaws is made specifically for their own chisels and plane blades. There are a lot of chisels with different lands, as well as tapering down the length of the chisel blade which compromise or prevent use of the LN honing guide. 

Even if everything fits well and tightens down as you'd like on your chisels, the narrow wheel requires a lot of focus and care to make sure you don't rock or use uneven pressure which will stuff up your micro bevel. Being there in the moment does matter when you're sharpening, and staying centred on that wheel is critical.

So the second honing guide I'm using is the Veritas side honing guide. Its wider wheel helps eliminate rocking or uneven pressure when sharpening chisels. The inside profile is more generic than the LN guide so you can use it on a wider range of blades. And it's pretty cheap and cheerful. 

The Veritas honing guide is also able to handle a lot of the oddly shaped joinery plane blades say for the Stanley #78 or Record #778 without fuss. Very handy if you're doing a few metres of rebates and need to resharpen quickly and to the same reference face on the side of the blade.

My one annoyance with it is that Veritas have been a bit careless with the coating on the main body and both sets of profiles on the inner jaws are not crisp. It's a bit gloopy in there and can make ensuring your blade is properly seated a bit more work than it should be. 

I should tidy it myself with a file which would solve the problem. But complaining is so much more interesting. But yes I need to do it.

As for stones, I kept using those King waterstones until about 4 years ago. By the time I shifted onto something more glamorous, I'd gone through 2 #6000s and was half way through the brick of a thing #1200 and the #800 was very lopsided. 

A few diamond plates which didn't overly impress as they glazed and then blunted quite quickly. I hve a DMT #320 and #400 combo which is now mainly used for flattening the waterstones. They have ended up as burnishers rather than cutting on steels. And frankly I'm suspicious of how flat they are and they can deeply scratch a surface. I am not convinced they're the right piece of kit for the job.

I bought Suehiro Cerax #1000 + #6000 combos for 2 young chippy apprentices to get them started on the True Road to Sharp, and when demonstrating how to use their new honing guides, was blown away by how quick yet polite the Cerax stones were. So what else was out there?

I was of course seduced by the promises of the Shapton Glass stones and bought a #12,000 stone (from a men's grooming supplier - excellent price, but I really don't need the beard grooming products they keep trying to sell me. My drag king persona is not that hirsute). But yeah you got there before me. Nice to have but not really necessary. 

Schwarz very strongly suggests you stick with one range of stones. Apologies if I'm making a pretzel of his argument but this means that whatever the grading the manufacturer claims for its stones is then relative to each other. Makes sense. 

So I ignored that advice. A #6000 Cerax came up at another one of those excellent prices, and joined the workshop. But what about the Shapton Ha No Kuromaku stones? Spit and go. So I bought a #8000 and eagerly rushed it to the bench and...

This will seem very weird but the sensation of the blade dragging on the stone surface was deeply unpleasant. Think fingernails drawn down a blackboard. It has got better over time, or I've got more tolerant, but I went with a Cerax #1000 brick of a thing and couldn't be happier.

Lapping the back of blades is still a pain. Less so if you're buying best quality such as Veritas or Lie-Nielsen but for second hand blades and tools, I use my hefty lump of float glass and wet and dry. SIA blue thank you. But for smaller blades this isn't great. Waterstones are not a good choice. 

Don't ask me how I know, but yes there's a set of Japanese paring chisels in my tool chest that I learnt this lesson on. Key failing? Not being attentive to what was really going on with the tool surface. Second failing? Not researching what is traditionally the appropriate process for flattening Japanese tools. Third failing? Not understanding that you don't actually longitudinally push and pull, you grind or swirl the area you need to flatten.

So I'm waiting on delivery of a kanaban and rather than use waterstone grit, I'm going to try silicon carbide suspended in grease. Something like valve grinding paste. This may not work, or the time it takes me to sort out the right technique for hand lapping handtools (apparently we're talking 2 PSI) may be counter-productive. 

I have an unwilling victim. I bought an Australian made Stanley laminated no 5 blade at last weekend's Tool Sale in Sydney and while they are the bees knees, someone was very very careless with the linisher that day at Stanley and it has quite the dip in the middle. I've already spent too much time on the worn out diamond plate so I either buy another or try the kanaban. 

But hey. Part of the adventure of making is constantly analysing your process and making those adjustments where you can. Without spending a small fortune on yet more gadgets. 

* Chippy is the nickname given to carpenters in Australia.