# When to replace a plane blade



## Jacob (27 Feb 2021)

Just dug up this pic of a blade I saved.
The hard laminate extends beyond the slot so the blade can be used down to the last fraction of an inch.
Plenty of use still left in this one!


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## Inspector (27 Feb 2021)

Actually more if you want to use it to cut tongues.  

Pete


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## marcros (27 Feb 2021)

A microbevel would extend the life. Veritas jig often recommended.


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## Cheshirechappie (27 Feb 2021)

That needs polishing on the back, too. A mirror finish to just shy of the maker's stamp should do it.


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## Jacob (27 Feb 2021)

Cheshirechappie said:


> That needs polishing on the back, too. A mirror finish to just shy of the maker's stamp should do it.


OK if you say so, will do!
Do you mean the face? That's where the maker's mark is. If that's the back what would you call the other side; the back of the back?
For those that don't know; calling the face the "back" is a code that modern sharpening nuts use to identify themselves, like a secret hand shake!


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## TominDales (28 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> For those that don't know; calling the face the "back" is a code that modern sharpening nuts use to identify themselves, like a secret hand shake!



Its the trend of 'modern sharpening nuts' that has caused so many old plane blades to get so short. Unless one hits a nail, I am one of the 'old fashioned 'nuts' that prefer just a light rub by hand on a stone and hone on a strop. I still have plenty of life left in a 40 year old no. 4


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## Jacob (28 Feb 2021)

TominDales said:


> Its the trend of 'modern sharpening nuts' that has caused so many old plane blades to get so short. Unless one hits a nail, I am one of the 'old fashioned 'nuts' that prefer just a light rub by hand on a stone and hone on a strop. I still have plenty of life left in a 40 year old no. 4


They are persuaded to grind and polish them to destruction and also to buy several blades for each plane! Different bevel angles yer know - in case of the dreaded gnarly bit of Australian kookaburra!
Never give a sucker an even break!


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## D_W (28 Feb 2021)

I've heard this comment many times ,but of all of the short blades I've ever received, none have been sharpened recently. 

Far more common is the modern woodworker who uses 2 hundredths off of a few of their blades. 

The modern sharpening nuts are generally doing the opposite when they're using tools (I've fixed, refitted, repaired a fair number of tools) and not even staying ahead of edge damage or stray scratches. 

The fast consumption of tools hand sharpening was done by people using carborundum and india stones. 

There's no shortage of blades, though, and this has come up on the american forums by people who designate themselves preservationists or something, decrying the constant consumption of blades - you'll have to show me the pictures of short lie nielsen blades, though, or short modern stanley blades. 

an educated guess at sharpening would be less than a thousandth per cycle by beginners, and amateurs, and they're at the head of the list for not sharpening enough because it takes them too long. I'm calculating a full sharpening every 20 minutes (which they don't do) to create 700 straight hours of planing labor to get a 2" bit to the slot. It'll never happen.


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## TominDales (28 Feb 2021)

I take your point (D_W) wholeheartedly about beginners not sharping enough, saws and planes alike. I was fortunate to have an old school teacher who took the trouble to show and let us make a bit of a mess. Hand tools are not sold with good enough instructions and encouragement to sharpen. Also these extra hard finishes encourage buy and throw away, which suits certain volume suppliers. So one way of looking at it, is the sharpening craze is a least shedding light on this subject.


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## D_W (28 Feb 2021)

Sorry, not to be too crabby about it. 

I went through that phase when I first started, but make my own irons now. I had occasion to see how fast steel leaves an iron and generally if you really want to be stingy, a super fine finish at the tip will give about 30-50% more edge life for medium fine to fine work. 

But would also guess that as I dimension by hand, to work through a set of try plane, jack and smoother irons, I will need to dimension at least 10,000 board feet of hardwoods. 

(The phase that I went through when I started was trying to be as absolutely sparing as possible with everything). Now, I've made so many irons I couldn't use them in four lifetimes of full time work).


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## D_W (28 Feb 2021)

TominDales said:


> I take your point (D_W) wholeheartedly about beginners not sharping enough, saws and planes alike. I was fortunate to have an old school teacher who took the trouble to show and let us make a bit of a mess. Hand tools are not sold with good enough instructions and encouragement to sharpen. Also these extra hard finishes encourage buy and throw away, which suits certain volume suppliers. So one way of looking at it, is the sharpening craze is a least shedding light on this subject.



I've made and given away lot of irons and now some chisels. I have sold a few irons when I've had excess and nowhere for them to go and don't have good insight as to why nothing comes with sharpening instructions (old stanley irons flatly showed how to sharpen an edge and remove the burr - simple as that), but have thought that if I keep making chisels and maybe more plane irons, It may not be a good idea for me to ship them sharp as someone could sue me. 

Plus, I could send chisels and irons sharper than anyone has ever seen, and they would still complain that I didn't use whatever their favorite method was to do it. 

I decided that if I could ever wear an iron out, I would celebrate it, but I can't keep track of the large pile of house made stanley style irons so none stays in my favorite plane long enough to get much wear. I can track the length lost, though (a thousandth or so) and then extrapolate that to time spent in the shop. I figure you could smooth around 10k board feet of hardwood even with bad technique - by the time you got part of the way through as a beginner, laziness would take over and teach sharpening economy (the smallest amount needed to get a sharp iron and keep it there). 

The state of the user world though is pretty well described by the fascination with sharpening and dovetails. Both would be afterthoughts in the first year anywhere.


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## TominDales (28 Feb 2021)

D_W, I'm pretty new to this forum, so guess there are a few touch points on subjects with entrenched opinions, I guess sharpening and dovetails are likely to be two of them!. I was taught to do lapped and secret dovetails to reduce the appearance of the joint ( I think it was perceived as an indication of skill NOT to show the joint). Now the fashion is to show that it is joined with a proper through-joint and not bolted together with kreg or Ikea fasteners - not that they don't have their place in the world - he hastens to add. But increasingly, modern furniture shows the tenon and dovetail joint stark naked, so-to-speak. I like it in moderation,as I like to see wood in all its glory. No doubt these topics bubble up on the forum from time to time. Thanks for your insights TT


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## D_W (28 Feb 2021)

you and me will get along fine! I'm more of a toolmaker than anything else, but I like a narration from a friend of mine here in the states (he did the work making a harpsichord on video for colonial williamsburg). 

In the video, the narrator said something like "one seldom wants to see such joints" 



No dovetail is too fine for me to dream of a moulding to cover it with long grain.

I'm not a fine maker by any means, but interesting lines and long grain look nicer to my eye. I can make a fine plane, though.


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## Jacob (28 Feb 2021)

TominDales said:


> ..... I was taught to do lapped and secret dovetails to reduce the appearance of the joint ( I think it was perceived as an indication of skill NOT to show the joint). ......


When I first started pulling furniture apart I was really surprised about how many half lapped DTs were hidden within . You can see them on drawer sides of course but until you pull it apart you wouldn't know that the solid sides of a chest of drawers were DT'd together but concealed by plinth below, moulding above or other strategy.
Another surprise was the evidence of extreme haste - saw lines over-cut, housings under-cut, dovetail pinholes obviously freehanded, always odd angles, sometimes with irregular spacings not even laid out, and so on.
They were just a utilitarian and extremely efficient way of joining timbers. 
Making them a feature to be looked was another decision altogether and relatively uncommon, but fashions come and go.


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## D_W (28 Feb 2021)

Except for the cheapest of stuff, which may have been nailed, I'm sure a lot of those joints were cut in haste because someone with taste had design and proportion in mind. What we have now is exposed joint furniture with thick drawer sides and blocky proportions. It's perfectly executed and has no potential to be attractive. Too bad. 

Our little spats about sharpening are nothing compared to the lack of taste in furniture/design in general and the need to show off everything at every step of the way rather than sharpen aesthetics and proportion first at the same time as learning to execute joints. 

Anyone remember the unintentionally fat and bulky pieces on antique shows that were perfectly executed? I don't, unless the subject matter is an intentionally fat person or object (like a buddha or something).


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## TominDales (28 Feb 2021)

Jacob said:


> When I first started pulling furniture apart I was really surprised about how many half lapped DTs were hidden within . You can see them on drawer sides of course but until you pull it apart you wouldn't know that the solid sides of a chest of drawers were DT'd together but concealed by plinth below, moulding above or other strategy.
> Another surprise was the evidence of extreme haste - saw lines over-cut, housings under-cut, dovetail pinholes obviously freehanded, always odd angles, sometimes with irregular spacings not even laid out, and so on.
> 
> Hard to imagine that not so long ago it was ALL made by hand and it would have been in haste as they were often paid by piece work. A fast joiner wont even mark up much of the joint except some guide lines and then just cut roughly equal spaced pins and use them as the guide for marking the tails. As with so much these days we have to have precision and absolute symmetry, but the variation is what makes hand made so much more interesting.


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## Sgian Dubh (1 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I decided that if I could ever wear an iron out, I would celebrate it, but I can't keep track of the large pile of house made stanley style irons so none stays in my favorite plane long enough to get much wear.


That's kind of interesting, David. It made me think about the number of plane irons I've worn out. I can think of only one, and that is the iron from what was my first purchased plane, a brand new Stanley or Record no 4. As I recall, I bought the plane in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and the iron was worn out towards the end of the 1980s - my boss at the time said he's buy it for me which I suppose was unexpected enough for it to stick in my mind. I didn't see any need to celebrate, but I was pleased to retain functionality. I still own that plane, but since the early 1990s it hasn't been used anywhere near as intensively as it was in its first couple of decades and there's still quite a bit of meat left on the replacement iron which, by a rough count, must be close to 32 years old. I put that longevity discrepancy down to the fact that towards the end of the 1980s and into the late 1990s I acquired three more smoothing planes, all better performing than my old original plane which has sort of been relegated to occasional use, I suppose, whereas before it was my one and only smoothing plane.

I may have worn out one or two more plane irons, but I don't remember, and that may be because if I did get replacement irons the cost came out of my own pocket, something I'd perhaps prefer to forget, ha ha. Slainte.


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## Jacob (1 Mar 2021)

TominDales said:


> Hard to imagine that not so long ago it was ALL made by hand and it would have been in haste as they were often paid by piece work. A fast joiner wont even mark up much of the joint except some guide lines and then just cut roughly equal spaced pins and use them as the guide for marking the tails. As with so much these days we have to have precision and absolute symmetry, but the variation is what makes hand made so much more interesting.


Yep. Except I'd do pin holes first and pins second. All the drawers I've ever looked at are done that way with the drawer sides sawn as a pair clamped together - so all the little variations (or mistakes) show up same on each side like a mirror image.
Replacing irons - I've done it once on a 220 block plane. It got a lot of use doing site work.
I've bought a couple of blades I didn't need, Hock and Japanese Smoothcut, under pressure from the endless wittering of the enthusiasts, to see if they really were superior. They weren't particularly.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> That's kind of interesting, David. It made me think about the number of plane irons I've worn out. I can think of only one, and that is the iron from what was my first purchased plane, a brand new Stanley or Record no 4. As I recall, I bought the plane in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and the iron was worn out towards the end of the 1980s - my boss at the time said he's buy it for me which I suppose was unexpected enough for it to stick in my mind. I didn't see any need to celebrate, but I was pleased to retain functionality. I still own that plane, but since the early 1990s it hasn't been used anywhere near as intensively as it was in its first couple of decades and there's still quite a bit of meat left on the replacement iron which, by a rough count, must be close to 32 years old. I put that longevity discrepancy down to the fact that towards the end of the 1980s and into the late 1990s I acquired three more smoothing planes, all better performing than my old original plane which has sort of been relegated to occasional use, I suppose, whereas before it was my one and only smoothing plane.
> 
> I may have worn out one or two more plane irons, but I don't remember, and that may be because if I did get replacement irons the cost came out of my own pocket, something I'd perhaps prefer to forget, ha ha. Slainte.



thanks for that account, Richard. I'm confident I could wear an iron out if I could limit myself to using just one, but curiosity gets the best of me and I make another. It would take somewhere around 10-15 years of avid amateur work to do it, though.

Your account matches what warren has said. It's a wild guess to figure out how much warren is actually planing, but he does mention from time to time trying to make production items entirely by hand a few decades ago. I've seen him mention two or three times that one of his planes is on its third iron. I suspect that economic reality switched him to carving and repair a few decades ago, though.

I can almost guarantee that if I said to most amateurs that they'll get about 2000 sharpenings out of an iron, and 1000 if they tend to nick the iron off and on, many would still worry about "how long will that be?". How can I make that double? Most will never see 100. This is a stack sitting on top of my file cabinet. 7 irons. I think all but the bottom two, I made. They are all good irons, and some are great (less dependent on me, and more dependent on what they're made of - 1084, O1 and 52100 are kind of slam dunk good steels for irons - 1084 being a bit shorter wearing than the latter two, but in a "it only planes 1000 feet of maple instead of 1350" way. They're good steels because all they need is a heat to critical and can't be messed up that easily - heat, quench, temper in an oven - nothing special needed (no computer controlled cycles and stainless wraps or inert atmospheres, etc).


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## Sgian Dubh (2 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I can almost guarantee that if I said to most amateurs that they'll get about 2000 sharpenings out of an iron,
> 
> This is a stack sitting on top of my file cabinet. 7 irons. I think all but the bottom two, I made. They are all good irons, and some are great (less dependent on me, and more dependent on what they're made of - 1084, O1 and 52100 are kind of slam dunk good steels for irons - 1084 being a bit shorter wearing than the latter two, but in a "it only planes 1000 feet of maple instead of 1350" way. They're good steels because all they need is a heat to critical and can't be messed up that easily - heat, quench, temper in an oven - nothing special needed (no computer controlled cycles and stainless wraps or inert atmospheres, etc).


David, you're way ahead of me on metallurgy for plane irons and chisels. For some reason I've never found a need to get excited about the subject. When it comes to plane irons and chisels I have always simply sharpened and used whatever variety of steel the tool came with. And I've got a bit of a mix of tools, e.g., Stanley, Record, Clifton, Spiers and a couple of pretty useless Norris jobs, and an old wooden plane or two, and my collection of bench and carving chisels is a right old dog's dinner of old examples (forty or fifty years old) to I've no idea back through the 20th and 19th century. 

Some seem to perform a bit better than others through things like edge retention, resistance to chipping, lack of folding over, and ability to regrind and sharpen without overheating or taking a long time. They all work and I'm used to all their little quirks regarding those listed performance criteria, and some I've probably forgotten.

The point I'm getting to is that I've nearly always taken an interest in those discussions where metallurgy gets discussed, where frequently you are a major participant. I usually find those sorts of threads interesting enough to follow all the minutiae and sometimes the nit-picking between participants. Yet, somehow none of those discussions seem to ever inspire me to change any of my plane irons or seek out new 'better' chisels. I just keep doing away sharpening and using whatever steel came with my tools. What a boring old stick in the mud I must be, ha ha. Slainte.


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## Jacob (2 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> David, you're way ahead of me on metallurgy for plane irons and chisels. For some reason I've never found a need to get excited about the subject. When it comes to plane irons and chisels I have always simply sharpened and used whatever variety of steel the tool came with. And I've got a bit of a mix of tools, e.g., Stanley, Record, Clifton, Spiers and a couple of pretty useless Norris jobs, and an old wooden plane or two, and my collection of bench and carving chisels is a right old dog's dinner of old examples (forty or fifty years old) to I've no idea back through the 20th and 19th century.
> 
> Some seem to perform a bit better than others through things like edge retention, resistance to chipping, lack of folding over, and ability to regrind and sharpen without overheating or taking a long time. They all work and I'm used to all their little quirks regarding those listed performance criteria, and some I've probably forgotten.
> 
> The point I'm getting to is that I've nearly always taken an interest in those discussions where metallurgy gets discussed, where frequently you are a major participant. I usually find those sorts of threads interesting enough to follow all the minutiae and sometimes the nit-picking between participants. Yet, somehow none of those discussions seem to ever inspire me to change any of my plane irons or seek out new 'better' chisels. I just keep doing away sharpening and using whatever steel came with my tools. What a boring old stick in the mud I must be, ha ha. Slainte.


What you haven't tried PMT 747 honed at 33.5º?


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## D_W (2 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> David, you're way ahead of me on metallurgy for plane irons and chisels. For some reason I've never found a need to get excited about the subject. When it comes to plane irons and chisels I have always simply sharpened and used whatever variety of steel the tool came with. And I've got a bit of a mix of tools, e.g., Stanley, Record, Clifton, Spiers and a couple of pretty useless Norris jobs, and an old wooden plane or two, and my collection of bench and carving chisels is a right old dog's dinner of old examples (forty or fifty years old) to I've no idea back through the 20th and 19th century.
> 
> Some seem to perform a bit better than others through things like edge retention, resistance to chipping, lack of folding over, and ability to regrind and sharpen without overheating or taking a long time. They all work and I'm used to all their little quirks regarding those listed performance criteria, and some I've probably forgotten.
> 
> The point I'm getting to is that I've nearly always taken an interest in those discussions where metallurgy gets discussed, where frequently you are a major participant. I usually find those sorts of threads interesting enough to follow all the minutiae and sometimes the nit-picking between participants. Yet, somehow none of those discussions seem to ever inspire me to change any of my plane irons or seek out new 'better' chisels. I just keep doing away sharpening and using whatever steel came with my tools. What a boring old stick in the mud I must be, ha ha. Slainte.



All of the ones I've outlined here are basically "plain" steel except XHP if I mentioned it. The only real reason to replace any iron is if it's too soft or overhard. Even the latter may be solvable by the average individual by experimenting with the oven. 

I'm interested in an iron from a maker's perspective, and to some extent in using them - If I'm a maker, then I"m going to go to the point of finding out what works best (just as a furniture maker may know a whole lot about drawer design. The person who buys the furniture is looking to open the drawer and close it. If you tell them about the next stylish way to make drawers, and theirs holds their socks (bill's words) and opens and closes, they'll say "that's nice"

Kind of like that here. (one exception)

I prefer the plain stuff for irons, though - the modern stuff wins idealized contests and also does better if you're planing brass. hah. 

exception - if you dimension by hand, then irons that nick or chip or dull unpredictably are kind of like having the same thing occur in a machine planer, and I know well enough to know that people don't like that. 

I haven't seen anyone who dimensions by hand talk much about edge life because any decent iron has edge life proportional to sharpenability.


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## Sgian Dubh (3 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> What you haven't tried PMT 747 honed at 33.5º?


No. Never come across such a blade, ha, ha. And 33.5º is too steep by 0.5º. Slainte.


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## Sgian Dubh (3 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I prefer the plain stuff for irons, though - the modern stuff wins idealized contests and also does better if you're planing brass. hah.
> 
> exception - if you dimension by hand, then irons that nick or chip or dull unpredictably are kind of like having the same thing occur in a machine planer, and I know well enough to know that people don't like that.
> 
> I haven't seen anyone who dimensions by hand talk much about edge life because any decent iron has edge life proportional to sharpenability.


I'd say your last comment has most relevance to me, i.e., edge life proportional to its ease of sharpening. The truth is I've always found that whatever the makers have chosen for their cutting edge steel in planes and chisels have, for the greatest part, been good enough for me. In my early days I had to do a lot of basic dimensioning of rough sawn wood using hand tools, but that's a relatively rare activity for me now. Machines take out the drudgery of that task, i.e., table saws and bandsaws, plus planers and thicknessers. But yes, it would have been, and surely still is, a thankless task to undertake basic dimensioning with planes that won't hold an edge for a decent period, or an edge that chips or folds too easily, along with being difficult and slow to sharpen after an inconveniently short period of use. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post I do find the discussions about the 'best' steels for plane irons and chisels interesting, and maybe saws too, but those discussions have had no practical impact for me as a furniture maker. I think that's down to the factors I've mentioned, i.e., all my plane irons that came with the tool (plus a replacement or two), and chisels seem to work fine for me. I therefore don't really have any motivation to explore tool steel that might, or might not, perform marginally better than what I use now. True, if all my plane irons and chisels are, or were, sad shonky examples that performed terribly perhaps I'd have motivation to find something better, but that's really not the case.

I'm happy to observe with some interest from the sidelines, leaving all that metallurgy stuff to people like you that have a real interest in the subject. Maybe one day something in those discussions will make me go out and get a new iron in some sort of fancy steel for one of my planes, but I suspect that's very unlikely. Slainte.


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## Just4Fun (3 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> The truth is I've always found that whatever the makers have chosen for their cutting edge steel in planes and chisels have, for the greatest part, been good enough for me.


The same for me. I have never replaced a plane iron in any plane, even cheap planes. However, I have one plane iron that is, even to an amateur like me, noticably better than the norm. This is a Swedish iron that dates back to soon after 1900; it is currently in a wooden plane that may well not be that old. This iron sharpens nicely, cuts very well and I love using it. I can't comment on how well it holds an edge because I don't measure things like that but I haven't noticed any issue there.

From this I conclude that standard irons are good enough for me but I do recognise that better irons are possible. So if I ever had to replace an iron I might consider an "upmarket" option, but I am unlikely to replace an iron unless & until forced to do so.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

There are certainly measurable differences between the irons, and by feel, you can tell what you're using when you get used to certain things (coincidentally, I've sharpened a lot of razors, and I've never really loved the eskilstuna steels in razors, but they make nice chisels and plane irons). 

But are they material? I have paid a lot of attention to toolmaking from the amateur maker's standpoint, but to efficiency and comfort in dimensioning from the dimensioner's standpoint because I wanted to nail down how to make dimensioning enjoyable - I've done it for the majority of what I've made in the last 10 years and plan to do it as long as I'm physically able. Little things make big differences there. There are two that are monstrously more important than premium plane irons, though, or even good ones. All I really care is that an iron doesn't chip or fold. Anything in the performance gap between those two, I don't really care about (prefer not to have irons full of lots of vanadium that become very difficult to grind and sharpen, but none of the "chrome vanadium" tools actually have much vanadium in them - they have little bits and its for hardenability. Specialty lathe turning high end steels, etc, have lots of vanadium in them for people who like to turn dirty stumps, etc). 

The two things that are important:
1) learning to use the cap iron. It halves dimensioning time in wood that's anything other than dead perfect
2) learning to sharpen faster

#1 drastically increases how much wood you can take on a stroke for all middle and fine work, and decreases the need for surface quality dependent on sharpness (uniformity becomes more important). Any decent oilstone will plane anything, even the mid grade ones. Anything, really anything, too - figured bubinga, whatever. 

#2 is obvious. once clearance is running out, squeezing more distance out of a plane is very undude when it comes to effort. Sharpening has to be accurate, too, but it's hard to be in the cycle of results and not notice when it's not accurate enough. 

Optimizing something like plane iron steels, etc, is kind of a waste of time if it ignores either of the two above. Wear and honing/grinding are related, but there are a whole bunch of other conditions if you're going to maximize laziness (having a whole setup that, for example, both allows fast sharpening but automatically keeps ahead of nicking without doing extra work). 

I target a minute to sharpen from totally dull, but to get as good of sharpness as I can get. 

Though I like to talk about these details and make tools, I'd call replacing irons that work well a waste of time. Going for a certain feel or characteristic as a matter of interest is something else entirely, though. Kind of like buying expensive furniture. It's not something I'd do, but there have been generations of woodworkers who have benefited from it. 

(just for fun reference, my softest older irons are freres and dwight/french (which I think was a US maker). You can almost roll a burr on them, and they may not be very good smoothers in hardwoods - ...ok ,they aren't. But they're wonderful in a try plane or a jack plane because they refresh with almost no effort. Learning to get the greatest volume of work done with a soft iron can teach a lot of useful things that carry over to the more typical good irons (like pre-70s stanley irons. Stanley's 1950s and earlier efforts in the US are wonderful in a cycle of real work). 

I made and sold a coffin plane last year (just to try a wear design). Someone on another forum gave me a couple of eskilstuna irons that someone had. To my disappointment, the iron that I had chipped easily even though it didn't seem ungodly hard. I put it away and didn't think about it until I listed the plane. 

Someone finally bought it on ebay (chipping mentioned and all - everything will sell if you wait long enough) - and I decided being much farther along that I"d offer to temper it back a little and reharden it if necessary - the buyer agreed. I tempered it back for half an hour in a toaster oven and it was sweet as pie to use. That's going back to mentioning the territory between tough enough (soft enough) and strong enough (hard enough). Good irons generally have a pretty big spread between those two. 

There's no way I could measure a volume of work now being competent with planes and dimensioning and point to changing irons (other than outright defective) to improve results or time spent, though. Fascination with planing twice as long is an agreement between the dealers and the people with a 7 minute sharpening routine.


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## Sgian Dubh (3 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Fascination with planing twice as long is an agreement between the dealers and the people with a 7 minute sharpening routine.


David, some of what you said in that post kind of went over my head. But I had no trouble understanding the bit about setting the cap iron for dimensioning. before that though, there's getting the cap iron to be a good fit to the flat face of the blade, and a decent profile to direct the shavings up and away. Poor fit equals shavings becoming trapped between the cap iron and the blade - that'll take all the pleasure out of planing. And if the curved outer profile of the cap iron isn't great the shavings can do weird things frequently leading to clogging and time devouring clearing out blockages. Correcting both problems takes a bit of time, but it's time well spent, then it's just a case of working out the right distance for setting the gap between the cutting edge and the leading edge of the cap iron - coarse planing to initial dimensions can become almost enjoyable again. I'm not a big fan of that activity because it's generally far too time consuming in the work I've always been involved in - the machines win on that front. 

As to the seven minute sharpening routine (and longer for some people), well, hmm? That's okay if there are no real productivity requirements, but I've never really had that luxury. As I think you know, for the majority of my honing I have a Sharp'n'Go methodology of one stone, a bit of flipping on the palm of my hand and back to work, all rather driven by the need to generally get stuff out of the door asap. Final planing, when required, prior to finishing does generally get me to do the sharpening a bit more thoroughly, I've been known to use two stones, one finer than the other prior to a bit of final stropping, and now sometimes a bit of buffing. Slainte.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> David, some of what you said in that post kind of went over my head. But I had no trouble understanding the bit about setting the cap iron for dimensioning. before that though, there's getting the cap iron to be a good fit to the flat face of the blade, and a decent profile to direct the shavings up and away. Poor fit equals shavings becoming trapped between the cap iron and the blade - that'll take all the pleasure out of planing. And if the curved outer profile of the cap iron isn't great the shavings can do weird things frequently leading to clogging and time devouring clearing out blockages. Correcting both problems takes a bit of time, but it's time well spent, then it's just a case of working out the right distance for setting the gap between the cutting edge and the leading edge of the cap iron - coarse planing to initial dimensions can become almost enjoyable again. I'm not a big fan of that activity because it's generally far too time consuming in the work I've always been involved in - the machines win on that front.
> 
> As to the seven minute sharpening routine (and longer for some people), well, hmm? That's okay if there are no real productivity requirements, but I've never really had that luxury. As I think you know, for the majority of my honing I have a Sharp'n'Go methodology of one stone, a bit of flipping on the palm of my hand and back to work, all rather driven by the need to generally get stuff out of the door asap. Final planing, when required, prior to finishing does generally get me to do the sharpening a bit more thoroughly, I've been known to use two stones, one finer than the other prior to a bit of final stropping, and now sometimes a bit of buffing. Slainte.



I quite like your routine. I'm a fanatic for outcome more than routine, but I like that your process uses a stone that's fast enough to get the job done and you've mentioned that you were coached (and do coach) to work the back first at the beginning and then at the end. If one is focused on outcomes (based on what I see coming through when I offer to fit tools), the cap iron is never prepared quite the way I would (I have a blinding fast process for that now, and just do it), sometimes the bevel comes up short, but the back work on the iron at the tip has come up short in every instance except for one. 

The 7 minute comment was quoting someone who had more or less a 7 stone progression on another forum and flatly stated that they found the process quite quick (at 7 minutes!!) and that sharpening any other way would not yield a good result. It wasn't warren, but I like one of warren's lines "don't confuse you can't with can't", paraphrased. 

One of my favorite things to suggest to people who are having trouble with freehand is to grind and use one medium stone (like a washita or one grade of ark below the black or trans type) and a leather strop. About 75% report edges better than they've had before (despite concerns that the stone they're using won't be fine enough). They weren't finishing the job prior. 

If someone were paying me, I'd use machines to dimension. Counting time and dollars would enter into the equation quickly. Unless I could figure out how to convince people that something was better if it's dimensioned by hand (despite being a fan of hand dimensioning, such an explanation escapes me). 

if I weren't a toolmaker, I'd replace irons in tools that needed them with precision ground O1 - never would've needed to look further. Fascination with others and need are two different things (even so, if I tried to sell my chisels to an anonymous type platform like etsy, i couldn't go on and on about the various little bits that make files just a bit sweeter than O1 -10 people would buy "O1" (they'd recognize it) for everyone 1 who would be swayed by other things. )

And the work done with either chisel is the same. Just like sock storage in nice furniture vs. cheap drawers that work.


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I quite like your routine. I'm a fanatic for outcome more than routine, but I like that your process uses a stone that's fast enough to get the job done and you've mentioned that you were coached (and do coach) to work the back first at the beginning and then at the end.


For most sharpening I use either the fine side of a combination oilstone, or a ceramic stone which I think is meant to be 800 grit. It just depends where I'm working which stone I use. I don't think I was taught to start with working the flat side of a plane iron or chisel first, although during my training the need to keep the flat side of the tool flat was emphasised. I think, if I remember it right, that my routine evolved into spending ten or so seconds working the flat side first. I seem to remember thinking when I started that routine that it was simply a 'good idea' because it needed doing anyway. So, the routine for me is work the flat side a bit, flip over and work the honing angle as long as necessary, then remove the wire edge on the flat side, and finally flip the tool back and forth on the palm of my hand, which I guess is akin to stropping. I did learn that flipping thing from my first teacher, and I've never lost the habit. Anyway, that does it for I guess 100% of my chisel work, and probably 90% of all the planing I do.



D_W said:


> The 7 minute comment was quoting someone who had more or less a 7 stone progression on another forum and flatly stated that they found the process quite quick (at 7 minutes!!) and that sharpening any other way would not yield a good result. It wasn't warren, but I like one of warren's lines "don't confuse you can't with can't", paraphrased.


Well, taking up just about 1/8 of an hour to sharpen just one plane iron or chisel does seem excessively slow for routine run-of-the-mill sharpening. Imagine if the poor sod had four plane irons or chisels to sharpen all at the same time. Nearly half an hour poncing around on a five minute task like that in a busy workshop probably wouldn't make you popular with the boss, ha, ha.

Incidentally, I think we've done and dusted this topic in this thread now. Slainte.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> ......
> 
> Incidentally, I think we've done and dusted this topic in this thread now. Slainte.


It ain't over til the fat lady sings....
I do that quick bevel and face thing very frequently, and hand strop, sometimes leather strop.
If you are doing a lot of planing it's an excuse to stop and it doesn't really take up any time at all because it makes the planing easier. It's vaguely equivalent to sharpening a pencil.
Once you've sussed how easy freehand sharpening is it's all the attention the plane is going to need, for the life of the blade - many years in fact.
One concession to modern plane fetishism which I've indulged in is several Clifton 2 piece cap irons - you get a lot of sharpenings in before you have to move it.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> Well, taking up just about 1/8 of an hour to sharpen just one plane iron or chisel does seem excessively slow for routine run-of-the-mill sharpening. Imagine if the poor sod had four plane irons or chisels to sharpen all at the same time. Nearly half an hour poncing around on a five minute task like that in a busy workshop probably wouldn't make you popular with the boss, ha, ha.
> 
> Incidentally, I think we've done and dusted this topic in this thread now. Slainte.



Oh, Richard! This is a sharpening/tool topic, it must have 90% of its life left ahead of it. All it takes is someone to bicker and this could go for 150 posts! hah!

Your comment about 1/8th hour reminds me of something that I actually did. Not much has changed in sharpening western tools, but I kept a couple of japanese planes for a while (I still have a bunch, but I kept two in top shape and seasonally adjusted). If nothing ever happens to the edge of a japanese plane, then you can resharpen them entirely by hand, neatly, in an annoying 3-4 minutes. 

But, at one point I as using one of my planes and the iron was dull and it took a little longer than the above (figure 6 minutes) I don't know what was wrong with it, but it needed more grinding. I decided to do it the "right way" and ground it a bit harder back and fully refreshed the whole thing plus a little depth. It took about 9 minutes. I planed just a little and the iron chipped again (I was finish smoothing). Now, I have about one minute of planing in place and about 15 minutes of honing and my hands ached from grinding the iron. I ground out the chipping *again*, honed the iron and put the plane away. Now, I'm at about 23 or 24 minutes and one minute of it was planing (and I put the plane away after that). 

If sharpening takes that long, sooner or later one will run into silica or dirt or whatever else, and get demoralized.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> ......Now, I have about one minute of planing in place and about 15 minutes of honing and my hands ached from grinding the iron. I ground out the chipping *again*, honed the iron and put the plane away. ......


Grinding freehand on a flat stone is much easier if you make a little handle. Say 10" of 2" x 1/2" with a hole for the bolt. You can put a lot of force into it with both hands. Even heavy woody blades become grindable without power assistance.
Do it Paul Sellers style. Fast and furious leads to slightly rounded bevel but that's OK. Honing the same way can defer the need for grinding indefinitely.
I added a knob to this one. Just a bit of pallet wood, a bolt and a spare door knob.

I tend to ignore the odd chip in the edge - they get honed out eventually and it don't affect planing performance unless final finishing with a plane.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

japanese plane, jacob. Short fat iron, you hold the butt of it in your palm and put finger pressure on the (enormous) bevel. They're referenced flat on the large bevel and anyone with appropriate laziness will at least bias pressure toward the edge. A 38 degree bed means there's no forgiveness for any rounding, but the reality is, the fight for clearance makes for no forgiveness for anything. chipping stops around 33 degrees in hardwoods, and those planes don't give the room to do that (5 clearance will feel like a dull plane at the start, even if it planes a clean surface). Totally different animal, anyway. 

I have a gadget like that for flattening irons, though. Nelson Plane Setup

not only keeps fingers from getting stiff, but keeps them from getting blistered by heat.


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## CStanford (4 Mar 2021)

Grinding doesn't shorten a tool unless you need to take out a nick, it only thins by virtue of the hollow it imparts. People who routinely grind and produce a burr at the grinder have a fundamentally flawed misunderstanding of the process. The grinder is not one's enemy.

There, that ought to keep this one going for a while...


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## Phil Pascoe (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> For those that don't know; calling the face the "back" is a code that modern sharpening nuts use to identify themselves, like a secret hand shake!


Like the "modern sharpening nut" that taught me in the 1960s, you mean?


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

CStanford said:


> .... The grinder is not one's enemy.


It is if you only have 6" bench grinder - they end up looking as though nibbled by rats and easily get over heated. 
Even a Pro-edge will over heat. I had one briefly but sold it on when I realised I could manage quite well without it- not least because of the 12" disc which came with my lathe


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## CStanford (4 Mar 2021)

I remember a thread on another forum years ago that went into dozens of posts about whether the "bevel" was actually a "bezel."


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## CStanford (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> It is if you only have 6" bench grinder - they end up looking as though nibbled by rats and easily get over heated.
> Even a Pro-edge will over heat. I had one briefly but sold it on when I realised I could manage quite well without it- not least because of the 12" disc which came with my lathe



Not at all. Even a wheel dressed (worn) down to 5" or so will put a hollow on a thin plane iron that doesn't go all the way to the edge - just takes a couple of passes. Grinding takes a light touch. The wheel, and electricity, do all the work. Anybody with white knuckles and knotted forearms at the grinder is working way too hard. You hardly need to press at all. Just offer the tool to the wheel with the minimum amount of pressure needed to maintain control.

Your method works Jacob, it just substitutes the honing stone for the grinder. The stones take the wear that the grinder otherwise would have. This is precisely why grinders were invented in the first place.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> japanese plane, jacob. Short fat iron, you hold the butt of it in your palm and put finger pressure on the (enormous) bevel. ....


You need to work on the design of your blade holder then. Basically a saw kerf in the end of your piece of scrap - as seen often, particularly with short spokeshave blades difficult to hold. Doesn't need to be a tight fit or bolted on - the pressure of using it keeps the blade in place.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

CStanford said:


> Not at all. Even a wheel dressed (worn) down to 5" or so will put a hollow on a thin plane iron that doesn't go all the way to the edge. Grinding takes a light touch. The wheel, and electricity, do all the work. Anybody with white knuckles at the grinder is working way too hard. You hardly need to press at all. Just offer the tool to the wheel with the minimum amount of pressure to maintain control.


Basically I don't grind thin irons at all (or small chisels), except for remedial work. That's the whole point of thin irons and the Stanley/Bailey design; easier and quicker to sharpen.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

CStanford said:


> ...
> 
> Your method works Jacob, it just substitutes the honing stone for the grinder. The stones take the wear that the grinder otherwise would have. This is precisely why grinders were invented in the first place.


We were barred from using the grinder in the two places where I had any formal training. And you wouldn't take one on site. Yes the stone takes the wear but they still last for life!
PS re "hollow grind" is this why people get chipped blades? There isn't much room for a hollow grind on a thin blade, without resulting in a weak edge.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

they're tapered the opposite direction (about 3/8th thick at the top, probably a 16th less at the business end). There are gadgets to hold them to grind them (both the flat side and the bevel side). They're a waste of time, though I have one of them for flattening (more or less a metal bar with a loop and a wedge to hold the tapered iron it. 

At any rate, You have to hone and use japanese planes to follow why this isn't the same as western blades or spokeshave blades.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Basically I don't grind thin irons at all (or small chisels), except for remedial work. That's the whole point of thin irons and the Stanley/Bailey design; easier and quicker to sharpen.



There's a second part to the grinder (though it's still quicker), and that's accuracy. The grinder leaves the edge on, the edge remains more accurate. It may be possible to get the same accuracy by hand, but not nearly as quickly.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> There's a second part to the grinder (though it's still quicker), and that's accuracy. The grinder leaves the edge on, the edge remains more accurate. It may be possible to get the same accuracy by hand, but not nearly as quickly.


No it's really quick - you just hone at 30º as near as you can judge. Hardly needs thinking about at all.
It's good practice to try to manage without a grindstone for sharpening. Just for metal work such as re shaping or repairing a blade.


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## CStanford (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> We were barred from using the grinder in the two places where I had any formal training. And you wouldn't take one on site. Yes the stone takes the wear but they still last for life!



Yours is a viable method. So is grinding on a wheel. Once somebody understands what the grinder is supposed to do, a 30 second explanation at most, it's clear sailing. Either method works. It just depends on what tool you'd rather see do the heavy lifting -- a grinding wheel, or honing stones. Wheels were invented for a reason - they aren't some outlier anachronism. Somebody 'got it.' What else can one say?


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> It is if you only have 6" bench grinder - they end up looking as though nibbled by rats and easily get over heated.
> Even a Pro-edge will over heat. I had one briefly but sold it on when I realised I could manage quite well without it- not least because of the 12" disc which came with my lathe



burning edges isn't much of a problem on any grinder, but it can be done easily with the wrong wheel or a heavy hand or both. It's fairly difficult to burn an edge on an _8"_ full speed grinder with a 24 grit tool room wheel. I literally used that combination about a month ago to set up a group of used japanese chisels to dump on ebay. 

Then a couple of weeks later browned a chisel on my sandpaper lap, just to see if it could be done. 

Tormek has sold a lot of really slow sharpening machines based on the notion that dry grinding will result in heat or edge problems. It's sort of an odd thing that we'll spend time learning to master some skills and write off others without really trying.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> ...
> 
> Then a couple of weeks later browned a chisel on my sandpaper lap, just to see if it could be done....


Of course it can be done, if dry. Wet n Dry paper works much better and faster, wet. It's designed and intended for wet "grinding".


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> No it's really quick - you just hone at 30º as near as you can judge. Hardly needs thinking about at all.
> It's good practice to try to manage without a grindstone for sharpening. Just for metal work such as re shaping or repairing a blade.



Jacob -I've seen more of this and more different ways than you have. I have no problem sharpening by hand, but you're in the weeds for two reasons:
* I'd have a stanley iron ground on a crystolon stone before you could tighten the nut on your jig
* the japanese plane is different. I intentionally managed grinding them by hand because it's pretty, but it goes way beyond what you're doing. The grind has to be about 25 degrees on a slab that's over 1/4th thick. It's not "really quick". You're aiming for a bias around 10 degrees of clearance at the tip after the last step. 

I use a grinder most of the time on chisels and irons for two reasons - speed and accuracy. I don't know if the former really amounts to much, but in combination with the latter, it amounts to a lot.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Jacob -I've seen more of this and more different ways than you have. I have no problem sharpening by hand, but you're in the weeds for two reasons:
> * I'd have a stanley iron ground on a crystolon stone before you could tighten the nut on your jig
> * the japanese plane is different. I intentionally managed grinding them by hand because it's pretty, but it goes way beyond what you're doing. The grind has to be about 25 degrees on a slab that's over 1/4th thick. It's not "really quick". You're aiming for a bias around 10 degrees of clearance at the tip after the last step.
> 
> I use a grinder most of the time on chisels and irons for two reasons - speed and accuracy. I don't know if the former really amounts to much, but in combination with the latter, it amounts to a lot.


OK, do it your way!


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Of course it can be done, if dry. Wet n Dry paper works much better and faster, wet. It's designed and intended for "grinding".



This is again incorrect. silicon carbide paper is made for alloy steels. It's not a great choice for grinding because it's intended to break down at speed on belts, but under pressure it crushes quickly. white alumina paper is faster at grinding and maintains its coarseness (and speed) better. 

Silicon carbide will work better only if something nasty is in the steel (like a lot of vanadium or a lot of chromium). I've tried them all. I'm sure you're older than me, but you have spent less time hand grinding and finishing metal than I have. And I'm *really* lazy. When something takes more effort, I notice it.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> OK do it your way!



I've done it your way. I'd go so far to say as I've functionally mastered it. I have no idea why I'd do it that way if it doesn't work better. I get that you're trying to be helpful here but the real point was method specific to japanese planes (there's no room for rounding) and the large size of the bevel that's also flat making sharpening a pain in the ding if there's any nicking (really, it's a nuisance on those planes in general unless you give in and hollow grind). 

If you haven't sharpened a japanese plane in the cycle of work, you're not going to follow why comparing a stanley iron doesn't make sense.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> This is again incorrect. silicon carbide paper is made for alloy steels. It's not a great choice for grinding.....


I guess you haven't tried it. 
Has to be wet - I use white spirit. The cheapest paper backed is best as it lies very flat on a wettened impervious surface, without need to stick it down - I use my planer bed. It's brilliant for flattening plane soles too.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

I don't know why you always go down this road. I tried 60, 90, 120 grit paper, both glued down and wet to shorter glass, to 18x12 granite and to my long lap.

I have an oilbath stone setup (in that case, it works wonderfully - there's always more stone below the top layer so crushing a thin layer of abrasive and making it
"sharp" but slower isn't a concern).

The way I flatten (planes) and grind (planes or making new chisels) on al-ox is faster that what you're doing if you're using silicon carbide. Loose paper creates other problems, whether it's held down by water, naptha, mineral spirits, whatever. As far as grinding bevels, the problems are minimal, but a bevel exacerbates crushing the grit. I've got literally 40 sheets of 60 grit silicon carbide paper I'd just give you if you were near here.

It was worth trying, but it's less good than al-ox PSA roll for slow/high pressure on tool steel. Actually, outside of hard grinding wheels and crystolon stones, I don't know where it's better (ceramic alumina belts on a belt grinder are far better than silicon carbide, but they, too, are poor for hand grinding).


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> I don't know why you always go down this road.


Because it works, is fast and cheap.


> ...... Loose paper creates other problems, whether it's held down by water, naptha, mineral spirits, whatever. .......


Not if you know how to do it. In fact it solves problems - it couldn't be easier.
You drop paper-backed wet n dry into a pool of white spirit, splash more on top and away you go.
This is what it looks like when you start. After a minute the paper is wetted down very flat and won't shift. Keep it wet with more white spirit. I suppose water would do just as well but not on my planer bed!
For a bigger plane you just put down another sheet next to it.
The paper is reusable and best kept between boards to keep it flat.
Cloth backed paper won't work it won't stick itself down.







PS this is an "SV" brand plane and is the tattiest plane I've ever handled. It was 99p on Ebay but was quite usable after a bit of work.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob, this is almost turning into folly. I make tools. In the last week, I've made ten chisels. I flatten them by hand. If your way was better, I'd do it. It's find for you to recommend things other than I recommend, but people following your advice will be going backwards. It's possible for them to use the setup that I have and flatten a plane like you're showing to within a couple of thousandths in about 5 minutes. It's possible to grind the back of an iron without dubbing, or grind a bevel flat if desirable on the al-ox. The al-ox dulls but the grit remains large dull large grit is faster than crushed small grit.

You're suffering from lack of exposure, and without going bonkers into the tiny details, I've literally tried all of the aluminas narrowing down what really works best. The friable aluminas aren't great for this, even though they're far better on a high speed belt machine. I spend appreciable amounts of time doing this, not once in a while partial flattening of an old plane.

if you look over toward the nelson plane thread, you can see the pitting in the iron. I removed all of it and had an iron flat enough for an india stone in 5 minutes.

I can't stop people from taking your advice (nor is it my place). I can tell you that my method is definitively better ,and the difference between you and me is that I've probably done your method more than you have, but I've done my method dozens of times more. If you were at a bench next to me measured both in time and to a standard, you'd fare poorly.

If you and I tried to do something fitting or making a door on a house, I'd fare poorly. But I'm smart enough not to push there.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Jacob, this is almost turning into folly. I make tools. In the last week, I've made ten chisels. I flatten them by hand. If your way was better, I'd do it. It's find for you to recommend things other than I recommend, but people following your advice will be going backwards. It's possible for them to use the setup that I have and flatten a plane like you're showing to within a couple of thousandths in about 5 minutes. It's possible to grind the back of an iron without dubbing, or grind a bevel flat if desirable on the al-ox. The al-ox dulls but the grit remains large dull large grit is faster than crushed small grit.
> 
> You're suffering from lack of exposure, and without going bonkers into the tiny details, I've literally tried all of the aluminas narrowing down what really works best. The friable aluminas aren't great for this, even though they're far better on a high speed belt machine. I spend appreciable amounts of time doing this, not once in a while partial flattening of an old plane.
> 
> ...


OK I don't make tools but I do use them a lot. I would expect to do things differently if I was making them.
You may not realise it but you don't actually give much useful practical advice to a person who merely wants to _use_ the tools!
PS I had a look at the Nelson plane thread. If I was desperate enough to want to use it wouldn't have bothered with all that flattening of the pitted edge I would have just lifted it a touch and imparted a mini bevel on the face, far enough to fit the cap iron too. AKA the ruler trick but easy without the ruler.
Come to think - thats very much what you did, only a longer mini bevel.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

You're incorrect, but you probably don't know enough to know that. 

When someone has asked about flattening irons, I generally say "PSA roll and a glass shelf replacement from a glass supplier, as cheap as you can find". 

All of this detail comes out when people like you assert that you know better. 

The nelson plane thread is different - it's about setting up a near 200 year old wooden plane to plane anything. If you're just hacking away at door jambs, that kind of setup won't matter. If you're jointing hardwoods and then getting into nonsense about "now, I'll have to have another plane for difficult wood, one with a high angle" then you're wasting time. 

You said yourself that you've done most of your work with power tools except early on. It's hard for you to gauge how much efficiency is gained with 45 minutes of setup work if that's the case. You're not looking to learn, that's fine. I meet a lot of people who know too much to learn anything. They know that "it's a waste of time" to learn to do things better than a certain point. 

When I get the question about how something should be done, and I offer the short answer above and it's met with armchair experts who have done a hundredth of what I've done, but they're sure that my advice is poor because Paul Sellers did something else, I get enough of it quickly. 

You'll note that I don't offer much advice re: things I don't know very well. I'm just not interested in "this is OK, so let's all do OK and ignore someone who knows more about this".


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## Sgian Dubh (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Oh, Richard! This is a sharpening/tool topic, it must have 90% of its life left ahead of it. All it takes is someone to bicker and this could go for 150 posts! hah!


Okay David. I'm out because actually participating in never ending sharpening threads become a bore to me, but it seems you're correct and there might be 150 or more posts yet to come. 

On the other hand, I sometimes quite enjoy all the circular bickering and point scoring that such threads tend towards before they hit rock bottom, ha, ha. Slainte.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> On the other hand, I sometimes quite enjoy all the circular bickering and point scoring that such threads tend towards before they hit rock bottom, ha, ha. Slainte.



We have a saying here. "I went to a hockey game, and they did nothing but play hockey the whole time. I want a refund."


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> ........
> When someone has asked about flattening irons, I generally say "PSA roll and a glass shelf replacement from a glass supplier, as cheap as you can find".


Yes to the glass shelf, I have several pieces too, but my planer bed is longer. Paper backed wet n dry, used very wet, cuts better than PSA dry and lies flatter. That's what it's for primarily - it brings a precision grinding surface into the home workshop. I first encountered it years ago trying to flatten cylinder head faces on my first motorbike.


> All of this detail comes out when people like you assert that you know better.


I think I know faster, cheaper and easier


> .....
> You said yourself that you've done most of your work with power tools except early on. It's hard for you to gauge how much efficiency is gained with 45 minutes of setup work if that's the case.


I've done masses of hand planing - last big one was some very large window 12' stiles too big to manhandle over a planer and some 4x4" newel posts about 20 pieces in all with the longest about 14'. Both cases two faces by hand and the other two through the thicknesser


> You're not looking to learn, that's fine.


Seems to be your problem not mine. It's never too late!


> When I get the question about how something should be done, and I offer the short answer above and it's met with armchair experts who have done a hundredth of what I've done,


What have you actually made?


> ...... sure that my advice is poor because Paul Sellers did something else, I get enough of it quickly.


Paul Sellers just happens to have done a vid most closely resembling trad sharpening - though 2 oil stones more normal than 3 diamond stones he uses.

PS another big advantage of wet n dry is that you can lift your paper and swap it for finer/coarser, at the drop of a hat. n.b. I always use the whole A4 size sheet which means a wider impermeable surface than a "shelf". A glass cupboard door is better. 2 A4 sheets end to end will do the sole on a #8. If its a bit concave you can put them further apart and just grind the ends


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> PS I had a look at the Nelson plane thread. If I was desperate enough to want to use it wouldn't have bothered with all that flattening of the pitted edge I would



This is a fair comment if you're intending to use the plane a couple of times. I put in the time commentary because I'm setting this plane up once, and more from maker's fascination will track how much it moves. It probably won't move much. 

The amount of time I spent on the iron, an extra two or three minutes to work most of the pitting out, will be recovered in a half dozen sharpening sessions and length of time between sharpenings. The illustration of that in five minutes is also a matter of "I need to take a shortcut" reasoning vs. "I need to buy a special stone for this". No, a $20 glass shelf and $2 worth of PSA roll will do this, but it'll do several dozen chisels before I need to change it, and a bunch of other things. 

And there's no reason to come up short. What you don't see beforehand is deep pitting right in the apex and on the bevel side (which needed to be squared to set to the cap iron - i wouldn't do it if it didn't need it). The reality is you would have spent more time than I did in both of these - on the bevel side, needing to take a couple of hundredths off of the iron (Which is a LOT) was aided by a ceramic belt grinder. total time on all of it was about 10 minutes. It's good for life now and will plane anything without ever clogging. 

All of these little bits are easily glossed over as "that's rabbit hole". it's bad advice. A better question is how can I do that well and quickly and only once. Shortcut applies if the answer to that question is "you can't, you can shortcut quickly or take a long time". 

You couldn't have ground the pitting out of this iron and squared it in ten minutes by hand, let alone had it sharp (add about 3 minutes to the 10 above for finishing the job after flattening and correcting the bevel and setting the cap edge).


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

If it came down to numbers of and volume of work done with this, Jacob, you wouldn't fare well. If we took equal time, the plane would pop out with my suggestions in permanently good shape. 

If we had to work to an equal standard, I'd do three of these to your one. wetted sheets of wet and dry are extremely poor performing compared to the PSA roll on a glass shelf. You're flopping on the shore because you've never compared to two, but gotten by with one. Getting by is OK. confusing it with experience and a better suggestion is dopey. 

When I do try to make a simple suggestion, like "I've tried just about everything, done hundreds of flattenings of planes, irons and chisels and for $33 or so US equivalent you want a shelf and a roll of PSA 80 grit" and that's disagreed with, and then explanation of it is called going on too long. 

Just dumb.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> We were barred from using the grinder in the two places where I had any formal training.




A poster on the US forums has a funny response for this.

You can't do isn't the same as can't be done. The idea of weak edges from a hollow grind is equally dopey, but I've seen that accusation before from a few other people who hadn't actually tried hollow grinds.

Confidence and simple assertions are really easy when lacking experience.

(minor edge chipping that leaves lines on work is about 1 or 2 thousandths. Very heavy chipping caused by silica stops a plane from working when the chips are 3 or 4 thousandths of an inch deep. I couldn't get the back edge a microbevel on the screen taking a look at these through a microscope. 

Translation - believing that nonsense will have someone wasting time eliminating chipping in the first 10th or 20th of a bevel by working metal after the back side of it. The chipping continues. Addressing what's happening in the first several thousandths stops the chipping. 

Solving the problem is easier than supposing it twice.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> ..... you've never compared to two, but gotten by with one.......


Wrong again.


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## doctor Bob (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> We were barred from using the grinder in the two places where I had any formal training.



I remember working for Old Charm furniture and bringing in an electric driver, they all shat themselves and I wasn't allowed to use it. Excuse was it was handmade, which was rubbish as they had massive industrial equipment. The truth was it was piece work and they didn't like paying me more.


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

doctor Bob said:


> I remember working for Old Charm furniture and bringing in an electric driver, they all shat themselves and I wasn't allowed to use it. Excuse was it was handmade, which was rubbish as they had massive industrial equipment. The truth was it was piece work and they didn't like paying me more.


The thing about the bench grinder wasn't about being trad for it's own sake - it's more that as a trainee if you don't know what you are doing you are very likely to spoil a blade or a chisel and get through them very quickly.
But more importantly you need to get to grips hands-on with sharpening so that you really do know what you are doing, with or without a machine.


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## doctor Bob (4 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> But more importantly you need to get to grips hands-on with sharpening so that you really do know what you are doing, with or without a machine.



Why's that then, I tend to hand sharpen, but couldn't give a monkeys how my chaps sharpen as long as they achieve a good edge.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2021)

doctor Bob said:


> Why's that then, I tend to hand sharpen, but couldn't give a monkeys how my chaps sharpen as long as they achieve a good edge.



Because you're results oriented rather than ideals oriented! Hah!


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## Jacob (4 Mar 2021)

doctor Bob said:


> Why's that then, I tend to hand sharpen, but couldn't give a monkeys how my chaps sharpen as long as they achieve a good edge.


Site work mainly. Often nowhere to put down your piece of plate glass and fiddle about like a berk for hours with jigs. Could end up having on-site sharpening arguments and nobody getting anything done! 
And it's generally handy just being able to do things the simple way.


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## doctor Bob (4 Mar 2021)

Time is money for me, if they use a jig, they are very familiar with the set up and it's seconds not hours. I think you're doing something wrong if it takes hours, have you read the instructions?


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## Exluthier (5 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Basically I don't grind thin irons at all (or small chisels), except for remedial work. That's the whole point of thin irons and the Stanley/Bailey design; easier and quicker to sharpen.



I quite agree; the hollow grind is a heresy, and should only be necessary after damage to an iron, which shouldn’t happen anyway!


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## D_W (5 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Site work mainly. Often nowhere to put down your piece of plate glass and fiddle about like a berk for hours with jigs. Could end up having on-site sharpening arguments and nobody getting anything done!
> And it's generally handy just being able to do things the simple way.



Who cares about site work.99% of what's discussed here is in a shop.


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## D_W (5 Mar 2021)

Exluthier said:


> I quite agree; the hollow grind is a heresy, and should only be necessary after damage to an iron, which shouldn’t happen anyway!



Good grinding doesn't remove the edge, so it's not really a matter of damage or not. Not that it isn't a good way to grind an iron off square and refresh if there is damage.


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## Jacob (5 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Who cares about site work.99% of what's discussed here is in a shop.


Except for the large number of people who also fit their work, or repair in situ, etc
And it's generally handy just being able to do things the simple way, even in the workshop.


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## D_W (5 Mar 2021)

"simple way", very paul sellers. Using several stones instead of a grinder and one stone. 

There's nothing complicated about a hollow grind, or any grind. 

It'd be fairly hard to find a site worker who had to regrind a fresh iron in a given day. But you can create all kinds of false problems. I got two planes from a site worker (a joiner). He used a single stone to sharpen them, but they were terribly sharpened. They would've husked wood, but would've been unsuitable for cabinet work. I don't suppose he had to use the planes that much as they were old and both still had their original irons partially consumed. A third plane had no iron at all - a bullnose plane, nor a wedge. I guess it was just good intentions that sometime it would be used. 



Featured Builder - George Wilson



This guy refreshes his chisel grinds with a simple 6" grinder. I talk to him quite often (this page is probably 25 years old now). I can just imagine him rolling his eyes about rolling bevels over leaving wavy edges to do it "the simple way". The guitars are only a tiny slice of the things that he made, and still intermittently makes. At one point, he made all of the specialty tools at williamsburg, and most of the planes and saws, and any other projects the general trades weren't capable of doing, several harpsichords, and he's got a gaggle of violins and violas in professional symphonies in the US.

I'd imagine if there was some advantage to not using a grinder, he'd know it. Nothing expensive or goofy, just a flat front grinder that sears used to sell.


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## Jacob (5 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> "simple way", very paul sellers. Using several stones instead of a grinder and one stone.
> 
> There's nothing complicated about a hollow grind, or any grind.
> ......


If you do it the simple way, with thin blades you don't ever need to grind at all.
More or less the whole point of the Stanley Bailey design in fact: quick and easy to remove/sharpen/replace/adjust
Odd that modern sharpeners having been given this brilliant design have set about making it all more difficult!
Big wheels are better - grind less hollow. Best of all is flat to convex (more metal, stiffer).


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## D_W (5 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> If you do it the simple way, with thin blades you don't ever need to grind at all. More or less the whole point of the Stanley Bailey design in fact.
> Big wheels are better - grind less hollow. Best of all is flat



All of this is conclusions in your mind, but the only thing you've shown is tools with uneven grinds and edges that wouldn't be suitable for smooth planing.

For some people (hollow grinding at the same angle as they hone), a shallower grind would be worse.

But, like you said, you were told to do something years ago and not allowed to do anything else, so how would you know? Heavy on assertions, low on proof or explanation. 

Grinder takes less time, provides a better result.


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## GerryT (5 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> All of this is conclusions in your mind, but the only thing you've shown is tools with uneven grinds and edges that wouldn't be suitable for smooth planing.
> 
> For some people (hollow grinding at the same angle as they hone), a shallower grind would be worse.
> 
> ...


 
Evening all.

I’m new to this forum so I don’t want to step on any ironclad toes.

You see this sort of sabre rattling on nearly all woodwork forums and if it stays as such then there is no harm as most sabres are blunt through the use of improper sharpening methods anyway.

It‘s good to argue a point that one has experience of or in and it would seem that some of the protagonists in this thread appear to be in that position.
But is there really any” best“ways to sharpen a tool ?
Sure, there may be more efficient ways, quicker ways, or preferred ways to sharpen, but if all methods end up with a sharp enough edge to plane or pare wood then what’s the issue?
I sharpen by hand ...and now and again by Wetstone grinder.
I enjoy the freedom that hand sharpening can give me but I’m not adverse to using any other method that gives me the edge I want/need.
But if folk want to use a grinder or house brick to sharpen an edge then so be it.
I know Jacob here is often denigrated for his “odd” methods but I don’t see them as quite so odd.
Similarly I don’t much like a hollow grind but that’s my “oddity” and there are times when I will do one If I takes my fancy.

I’m not so sure that a grinder is faster and gives “better “ results as said by D-W but in some situations it may and in some it may not.
Surely there are no absolutes when it comes to sharpening except to get a sharp edge .
It‘s good to discuss and to compare methods and the proof of the pudding is in the eating but no method should be said to have a monopoly.

Anyway that’s enough for a first post on this forum.
Good evening to you all gentlemen .

ps:Maybe the use of “gentlemen” is not applicable when it comes to sharpening but it’s good to give it the benefit of the doubt .


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## Inspector (5 Mar 2021)

Welcome to the forum Gerry but please PLEASE  don't bring common sense and curtesy into the discussions. It just isn't right at all and reduces these multi week threads to just a few days. 

Pete


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## D_W (5 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> I’m not so sure that a grinder is faster and gives “better “ results as said by D-W but in some situations it may and in some it may not.
> Surely there are no absolutes when it comes to sharpening except to get a sharp edge .



Though Jacob's methods do get questioned sometimes, to stamp him as the guy who proposes things and they get shot down vs. the other way around would probably not have good historical basis.


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## Lons (6 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> I know Jacob here is often denigrated for his “odd” methods



Welcome to the forum Gerry.

I'm not sure the above is correct it's more that he tends to preach that his methods are the only "correct" way of doing it, as you say who cares as long as the edge is sharp. Jacob's methods work for him and that's great and doesn't mean he's wrong but neither does it mean we all want or need to do it that way

I'm as happy using my Pro-edge as I am my Tormek, the bench grinder and diamond and oil stones, each has it's place depending on what tools I'm using at the time. Fastest and cheapest methods aren't the only criteria unless you need to churn stuff out on a production line, for many of us it's a hobby not employment.


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## Jacob (6 Mar 2021)

Lons said:


> Welcome to the forum Gerry.
> 
> I'm not sure the above is correct it's more that he tends to preach that his methods are the only "correct" way of doing it, ......


Not fair comment really. I just say what I think. Basically I preach _against_ the "correct" mob.
If I say to a new chisel owner "just hone it quickly at 30º it's never so easy as when brand new" I get pages and pages saying that this is nonsense, impossible, references to flattening, polishing, Rob Cosman et al.
Semi religious zeal, general guru worship, gadget salesmen, should be resisted.


> ......Fastest and cheapest methods aren't the only criteria unless you need to churn stuff out on a production line, for many of us it's a hobby not employment.


If you want to do it slowly and expensively that's entirely up to you, but fastest and cheapest is what a lot of people want. If nothing else it means you can spend more time/money on other bits of the project - maybe even finish it in time for Christmas!
Fastest/easiest also tends to mean the thing gets sharpened more often and does a better job
PS I should add - over the years I've picked up all sorts of useful tips from other forumites (usually of non guru status) e.g. difficult grain needs uber sharpeness and very close cap iron. The more ideas that get kicked around (and sometimes kicked out) the better.


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## D_W (6 Mar 2021)

Goofy, Jacob. I literally responded that I'd do something less than adjusting the entire chisel with 30, which is just slightly steeper but only a microbevel. You dismissed it as complicated and I provided proof as to why. 

Lons is right, you tend not to have the bandwidth to consider why something else might be better.

Each time time I've provided a short answer, you roundly disagree. Following it up with proof only elicits more certainty from you, despite no parity in experience, which is really odd. Especially when your assertions in some cases land on "It's not allowed", which have nothing to do with the OP.


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## thetyreman (6 Mar 2021)

I don't understand the bickering? I know jacob uses his methods and leave him to it, I use my method, nothing to argue with, nobody's making anyone use one method of sharpening, I mostly agree with what jacob says especially regarding not using microbevels, we just have to accept there's a lot of ways to skin a cat, for me it's the end result that matters.


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## Jacob (6 Mar 2021)

D_W said:


> Goofy, Jacob. I literally responded that I'd do something less than adjusting the entire chisel with 30, which is just slightly steeper but only a microbevel. You dismissed it as complicated and I provided proof as to why.
> .......


What proof?
Yes you can hone a 25º ground chisel at a very slightly higher angle and produces a "microbevel".
You seem not to have noticed, but if you hone it at 30º this IS a slightly higher angle AND produces a micro bevel.
I didn't suggest "adjusting the entire chisel".
You could of course aim for less than 30º but this will take slightly longer, for no particular gain. You'd do 30º next time!
Hope that helps! 
PS After a lot of honing I tend to end up eventually with 30º edge but rounded bevels. Could be seen as an infinite series of "mico-bevels", which should keep micro-bevel fetishists very happy! More bevels than you could shake a stick at!


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## Sgian Dubh (6 Mar 2021)

My prayers are answered. I thought perhaps this thread had faltered into huffy silence without reaching at least a partially satisfactory minimum goal of 100 posts - now that it's been rescued from its moribund quiet, there's hope for at least 200+ posts. Keep the claims and counter-claims going folks so that I can sit on the sidelines richly entertained by the inevitability that no-one will change their mind about anything. Slainte.


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## D_W (6 Mar 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> My prayers are answered. I thought perhaps this thread had faltered into huffy silence without reaching at least a partially satisfactory minimum goal of 100 posts - now that it's been rescued from its moribund quiet, there's hope for at least 200+ posts. Keep the claims and counter-claims going folks so that I can sit on the sidelines richly entertained by the inevitability that no-one will change their mind about anything. Slainte.



I think we're on the cusp of getting jacob to have a life change...

(you can change my mind if you can just alter what I observe)



..

......just kidding about jacob, of course.


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## GerryT (6 Mar 2021)

Thank you gents for the warm welcome though I think some of that warmth is coming from the heat produced by the thread .

I take Jacob’s point about “gurus” “religious zeal” and “salesmen to heart.
But, that’s always been the way of things.
In fact I think that Jacob may be a salesman of sorts, full of religious zeal himself for convex bevels and freehand sharpening (no offence and tongue firmly in cheek Jacob).

There’s no doubt that many of the folks commenting on this thread have vastly more knowledge than me but it’s worth noting that in terms of chisels and plane irons that sharp is sharp...isn’t it ?
How we arrive at that is a matter of preference and taste and how we go about doing work.
Jacob‘s “old school” approach is one of many and it may well be that it suits many of his day to day needs as a joiner..he does do nice work...I’ve seen his website 
But others do equally nice work by having their tools sharpened on a Wetstone or grinder or back of a bus.
Doesnt really matter folks now does it ?

I’m not keen (pun not intended) on self styled gurus or the like simply because they complicate things that should be relatively straightforward and they can put off many a prospective woodworker.
Just look how some set up for a video on sharpening where at the end of the presentation they proceed to plane nice thin shavings from an already prepared piece of timber that anyone with a butter knife could plane just as well.
Or the guru who videos himself sharpening freehand but when you look closely at his chisels and plane irons in use, they have a very distinctive hollow grind ...no names shall be mentioned but it’s absolutely true.

Most of it as all for show and promotion of their own branded gear.
Sharpening has become an industry not just in terms of stones and jigs etc but by the sheer complication of a task that has been performed for millennia without any of the gadgets and paraphernalia that the snake oil men are trying to sell.

Don’t get me wrong, sharpening can be done by any method that we choose and the result will be the same if we apply ourselves to that method be it freehand or machine.
There’s no shame in using a Jig or a Grinder or whatever if we want but we must understand the fundamentals of sharpening however we go about it.
Do we need backs of irons or chisels that we can see our face in ?
No, we just need it flat.
Is it detrimental to be able to see your face in the polished back of a plane iron ?
No, though it could be scary for some folk who haven’t left the shop for weeks on end .
Polarisation and the following of gurus and metal holy men is simply a lack of confidence in our own ability to do the job...which of course is what the guru wants.
If we distance ourselves away from methods other than the one we are presently using then we have little ground left for commenting on the methods we haven’t tried as to whether or not they are good or bad .

I’m off now and put on the tin hat which I sometimes use for honing irons...it puts a great camber on with the right technique.

Have a great afternoon gents.

PS: I joined this forum to learn, and there is certainly a wealth of talent on here to learn from.


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## D_W (6 Mar 2021)

All of the above could be me until you come to branded gear. I grind and then freehand the tip. 

and sell nothing except proof. Proof doesn't sell as well as gear, apparently. 

In the past two years, I managed to solve two problems - chipping in chisels and chipping on edges. Which people call tell me isn't a problem, but they're not being honest. Even our own richard here has mentioned lines on mahogany from silica. 

The method I mentioned is less effort. Does it matter? Not if you don't care.


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## GerryT (6 Mar 2021)

Hi D-W 

I wasn’t implying at all that you were selling anything.
If you understood my post that way then I can only apologise as you were far from my mind when I wrote it.
In fact I was responding to Jacob’s point about Gurus etc.

My point is that over complication of sharpening techniques are often a tool to get you to buy something that will not make it complicated when it wasn’t complicated in the first place.
I haven’t seen anything in your post that indicate that you want to sell anything in that direction or complicate the sharpening process.

These days people sit down and invent something to solve a problem that doesn’t exist .
They then try to convince you that something is a problem so that they can tell you they’ve solved the problem.
You only have to look at the plethora of “apps” that claim to solves problem that you don’t have.

Surely all chisels will chip depending on how they’re used or abused so I’m with you on that score.

As for your question “does it matter ?” I would answer that it may matter or it may not.
Driving to the shop is less effort, but then sometimes I just choose to walk.

By the way D-W you may be able to demonstrate to someone but you can’t really offer “proof” via post on a website, but I’m sure you know that .

all the best
Gerry


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## John Brown (6 Mar 2021)

Duracell_Wabbit?


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## Jacob (6 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> ...
> In fact I think that Jacob may be a salesman of sorts, full of religious zeal himself for convex bevels and freehand sharpening ..


Convex bevels are just a by product of my lazy sharpening, no virtue in them themselves, but no disadvantage either, as long as the edge is about 30º.
It's an issue because all the basic info has always said "avoid rounding over" but no mention is made of "rounding under".
Modern sharpeners have interpreted this as avoid rounding altogether - hence their obsession with flat bevels, or having several "micro" bevels.
"Micro bevel"is strictly a modern sharpening term which you won't find in any of the literature before about 1980 - which is roughly when jigs took off in a big way.
Basically they have over-thought the topic - not helped by jigs, which are problematic in themselves.
The gurus get in on the act first by persuading people it's difficult, second by pretending to have remedies - throughout history in fact!


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## GerryT (6 Mar 2021)

I think you’re right Jacob, though I’m not sure about not finding it in any of the literature before 1980.

Maybe the virtue is in the strength of the bevel when convex ?
When I hand sharpen/hone the convex bevel is barely visible but it’s there .
Never found it much disadvantage either compared to strictly flat ground bevel with micro bevel .

But I’m happy to let folk do what they want and if for a moment I thought one method was “better” than another then id certainly give it a go.

Just to throw another stone in the pond here is a little piece from Charles Hayward’s “The Woodworker“ magazine : 

“Another point in respect of grinding is: why aim at a flat bevel? Obviously, a hollow bevel is more desirable, for it means less rubbing when sharpening the cutting edge on an oilstone Firmer and mortise chisels are vastly improved by the slight hollowness in the bevels; it is a real treat to chop out dovetails, mortises, etc with them...”

Gulp !


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## D_W (6 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> By the way D-W you may be able to demonstrate to someone but you can’t really offer “proof” via post on a website, but I’m sure you know that .



Gerry, if you did what I suggest, it would work for you.

I've not yet run into someone who has said otherwise,, but it's very easy to not try it and dismiss it. I ran a plane iron durability test a couple of years ago and several people dismissed the results out of hand, too. I guess it's a bridge too far to try anything for 10 minutes vs spending 20 over time dismissing it ,and that's fine.

I dismiss people who tell me that I should dimension with machines because I literally don't care about it. If someone poses something easy, I generally try it. If they pose it about something I have no interest in, then, well, it just goes in one ear and out the other. Like my wife's discussion about how many different ways I could spend a few weeks organizing the shop. She's immensely organized and I"m sure her ideas are good. 
.....

From someone who has been making period furniture for a living for 40 years and who considered it not reasonable to expect to be able to use a chisel and not have it dull by chipping (the exclamation mark at the end was there, I guess, because he thought the result was odd). In the case of a chisel, if it stops chipping, then when are you going to sharpen it? Suddenly, not only is a single sharpening session potentially faster, but there is about 1/5th of them.


I
chopped with these chisels for about 40
minutes using a mallet vigorously to
chop out pins across a 20 inch piece of
tiger maple. I have a good magnifier
and continually checked for edge
breakdown. I saw no broken chisel edges
during this period!

(I also got an email from a guy who trims seams on plastic after it comes out of a mould. I proposed a novel method to sharpen chisels and he stated that it would be faster to trim them with a chisel, but the edges never held up. I didn't expect to hear from people who weren't working wood. This guy isn't even a woodworker, but he took a text description of the method, did it and his response was that he trimmed seams with a chisel and couldn't tell of any edge damage after a day).

I stole the ideas for modified edge geometry from knife people (keeping thinner bevels above the point where failure occurs, but steeper right at the point of failure), so there's no reason to assume it's not more widely usable.


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## GerryT (6 Mar 2021)

Hi D-W .

I’d certainly try anything .
But you will have to explain to me your method as I may have misunderstood.
Ive read through your posts on this thread but can‘t seem to see what your method is. Maybe I missed it .
So if you can point me to something I’ll be happy to read and try ...seriously.


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## G S Haydon (6 Mar 2021)

There is more than one way to do things.

If you want a cheap honing guide you can use one It can be cheap or expensive, whatever floats your boat.








Draper Honing Guide 3-67mm | Toolstation


Restores a good cutting edge to straight or bevelled edged chisels and plane irons from 3 to 67mm.




www.toolstation.com





If you want an affordable start in sharpening take your pick. Norton India Oil Stone Sharpening Stone 204x50x25 Bench Stone Fine & Coarse IB8 | eBay









Shoun Japanese Combination Waterstone 1000/4000 Grit


Buy Shoun Japanese Combination Waterstone 1000/4000 grit online at Workshop Heaven. Friendly service, useful advice, next day delivery option




www.workshopheaven.com





So we're up to £40? Want to refine it further? A strop with some autosol Autosol Metal Polish 75g | Halfords UK

So we're at £50! Something to grind with is helpful for maintaining, restoring old tools etc.

Bench Grinders | Workshop Machinery | Screwfix.com Take your pick. If you're a coward like me, a water bath stone, if you're a hero a high speed. 

Now all in we're at £200. That £200 will cover you for decades if you're a hobbyist. With the age some pick up woodworking they'll die before they need anything else.

Sharpening is an essential skill, therefore there will always be debate. But let's be real, once you practice and find a method that allows you to finish off the tools you're done. Then move to buying wood, design and making.

As an aside I have taught a few off the street customers how to sharpen and it's nothing more than an hour or so. Once this Covid is gone, there is an open invite for a Saturday visit to our workshop for some free tuition. Just drop me a PM


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## G S Haydon (6 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> Hi D-W
> 
> I wasn’t implying at all that you were selling anything.
> If you understood my post that way then I can only apologise as you were far from my mind when I wrote it.
> ...




I think David might have an article in Popular Woodworking coming out about it.


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## D_W (6 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> Hi D-W .
> 
> I’d certainly try anything .
> But you will have to explain to me your method as I may have misunderstood.
> ...



Gerry, what I suggested is grinding at 25 and putting a tiny stripe at 34. 

That's a good start to getting at the method that graham posted above. I like proof and experimenting because I intend to work mostly or all by hand from here on out. I also have distaste for the folks who advocate something, show distaste toward (or deride) something else and can't prove why when the burden of proof is low. These are not hard things to try. 

The OP here has chisels at 25. A tiny stripe at 34 takes almost no time and holds up better than 30 degrees with less cut resistance at the same time. "tiny stripe" in this case could be a couple of hundredths of an inch long. 

When I was experimenting with the buffer method above (to find out why a buffer sharpened incannel gouge that I had cut better than one sharpened to a flat apex but didn't dent at the edge _despite taking large scratches on the back from silica, _I figured I should figure out where such damage would stop with a flat apex. 

I didn't know if it would be 31 or 48 or whatever, but found with a large range of chisels, damage stops at the tip between 32 and 34. When damage stops, you keep going. When you finish a smaller tip of a chisel, then you tend to get the fine finish right at the edge. Before any buffer, I'd started doing this rolling a tiny tip on chisels (to mortise plane bodies, so that I could continue working without faffing). 

At 30 degrees, a chisel takes a lot of damage. If it gets through the cut easier at first, it's gone in 10 strikes, so what's the point?

So, what I found is that if you get considerable damage at 34 degrees, the chisel is junk. Nothing avoids damage below 32 or so in medium hardwoods. The range is small. 

It's that simple. But the easy instruction at the beginning of this is throw out anything about resetting bevels, why bother? It doesn't help. Instead, if you're a spanking new beginner, hone a tiny stripe on the chisel with a finish stone at 34 degrees, go to work. When the 34 gets hard to hone, then address the bevel. It could be a while. 

Winston in the video above took the method I was talking about and ran with it, but it can be done for $3. Grind at 20 something (low) on $1 of sandpaper, put a secondary bevel on at 25 so as to make the 34 easy to continue doing and then use a very fine compound to do the last little stripe. I did it with a $1 stick of clearance buffing compound from sears (when they still existed). I didn't pay anything for the mid stone, and used scrap wood for the buffing bar. The sandpaper would need to be changed periodically (i covered what's best for grinding bevels with that already - coarse white or yellow alumina lasts the longest and stays coarse), any medium stone (more expensive is often more fine which is not more better) and then some kind of graded abrasive for the tip (nothing expensive - more expensive is not more better). 

I didn't know winston was taking my suggestions and running with them (didn't even know winston), but he did. 

Graham is right about PWW - there was an article in Feb 2021. Writing articles gets pay but puts the article behind a paywall, so the article was a condensation of a free article that I wrote testing chisels from a soft sorby to a japanese chisel, across flat bevel angles and then with the method shown. There was more similarity between chisels than differences, except the sorby was a bit too soft for my tastes (just sold them on ebay last week). I didn't take payment for the PWW article, but rather had the site where the original discussion occurred designated as getting the contract. Two guys who tried my method wrote the condensed article from my wider bits and their experimenting, the site owner is a professional editor (so he did the editing and shopped it around) and all of us pointed the money back toward the site. 

I make nothing, but the experimenting cost me something. 

I don't know if I get into this stuff without toolmaking. If I'm making tools and I can't make them at least as good as something I can buy, then I won't use them (BTDT), so finding out what makes them good is important. This sharpening stuff comes in on the periphery. 

As winston and bill were experimenting, they requested that I adapt the buffer above to planes. I resisted suggesting there was nothing to gain, but was wrong. I don't always use the method to sharpen planes, but found that with a $3 home depot iron here, I could plane cocobolo totally laden with silica in it and not damage the iron, leaving a bright surface on it (which means anything with silica - mahogany, limba, cocobolo, rosewood, etc, can be planed without buying some exotic iron - with no marks on the surface.). 

When I try to offer a simple suggestion - just put a 34 degree tiny stripe on the 25 degree bevel, of course it is ignored as stupid or derided. The question is two parts:
1) is the method I proposed better? Yes , of course it is. It's less effort, stops edge failure, removes more wood per chisel strike and lengthens sharpening intervals on chisels by a huge amount. 
2) does it matter and is it needed? No, if you don't care, it doesn't matter. If you don't care about sharpening more often, it's not needed. But to call it confusing and rabbit hole while giving someone a method that most don't master quickly (just roll a rounded 30 degree bevel on a chisel), that's not very smart. 

I'm pretty vocal about it because I make no personal gain. I just really like things that prove to be true and doable by someone, and the next person and the next person 

I've gotten a lot of tools with the "sellers" method or from people who "used to do it but moved on". What's that say about it?


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## GerryT (6 Mar 2021)

Thanks David for taking the time to reply at length..it’s appreciated and very helpful.
Its an interesting one alright.
I admit that I’ve never come across this particular method before but the idea of that very tiny convex bevel I don’t think is new .
There’s another well known guy who though he doesn’t use the buffing wheel to put on the tiny convex bevel nonetheless hones so that he makes the same tiny convex right on the edge of his chisel or plane blades.
I don’t know anything about his angles but I would imagine that he gets similar results if the outcome is the same convex right on the edge.

Anyway, I’m going to give your method a go as I’ve nothing to lose and I will let you know the outcome.
Like Graham said, there are a variety of ways to skin a cat ... Am I allowed to say that ?
Apologies to all Cat owners on here lest I’m reported to the Feline Police.


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## Lons (6 Mar 2021)

Jacob said:


> Not fair comment really. I just say what I think. Basically I preach _against_ the "correct" mob.


Most of us have seen enough of your sharpening arguments to make our own minds up but I thought my comment was fair Jacob.
That's not always the way you post even if it's what you mean but I've no intention of trying to push you off your sharpening soapbox, after all it's been many months since you've had the chance to get back on it.

You'll note that I didn't say your methods don't work, they certainly aren't my preferred methods and neither are you the only one on this forum who's been woodworking for 50 or 60 years. You have a great deal of knowledge and experience, it's just a pity imo that you seem to feel the need to ram it down everyone's throat as if it's gospel.


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## D_W (6 Mar 2021)

GerryT said:


> Thanks David for taking the time to reply at length..it’s appreciated and very helpful.
> Its an interesting one alright.
> I admit that I’ve never come across this particular method before but the idea of that very tiny convex bevel I don’t think is new .
> There’s another well known guy who though he doesn’t use the buffing wheel to put on the tiny convex bevel nonetheless hones so that he makes the same tiny convex right on the edge of his chisel or plane blades.
> ...



To quote a pro wrestler I heard once when someone asked him about his gimmick. "I think I stole it from someone else, I don't know who, but nobody comes up with anything original". I haven't seen the geometric bits specified anywhere , but it makes this easier without anything getting sloppy. It's less work rather than more. 

At the very least, carving tools are often buffed - is the geometry control this tight? I don't know, for some setups it probably is. Knives are cut to a thin bevel and then buffed on the tip.

it's not new. What I wanted to figure out was to make a way that it was better than the flat microbevel, else.....just do the flat microbevel, right?

To game getting a sense of the difference (if you're going to go all the way to buffing the tip), find a chisel that you consider marginal.

The microbevel came up as a matter of cross reference because the immediate assertion was "well, if you round the tip, a tiny microbevel would be better. "

It can be close.

This method in general is how I sharpened before, but doing the rounding by hand. The buffer just does it better than you can do by hand and completely eliminates the need for a fine stone, but the sharpness is at least as good (or better) than a fine stone.


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## Jacob (7 Mar 2021)

Lons said:


> Most of us have seen enough of your sharpening arguments to make our own minds up......


But some haven't.
Suggesting that a beginner should keep it simple seems a good idea to me, e.g. Graham's suggestion of Norton IB8 (coarse and medium oil stone good for general purposes).
30º is the default angle used by all - easy to visualise and to hit freehand. Rub the bevel up and down, round and round at 30º. Bring up a burr, turn it over flat and take off the burr. Speed things up on thicker blades by backing off a bit of the bevel on a grindstone at a shallower angle. That's all there is to it.
Later on add a finer stone and a bit of leather for a strop and that's it for life!

Our sharpening experts tend not to show much of their work beyond a few immaculate shavings.
Here's a few of mine. Take a look at these gorgeous golden curls!


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## D_W (7 Mar 2021)

Which ones show little work, Jacob? You've aimed that at me already, and it's a stupid comment because I show pictures of my work often.

You create copious numbers straw arguments but hold on to the straw arguments when they're proven wrong.


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## Lons (7 Mar 2021)

As I said Jacob, I've never suggested your methods don't work, quite the opposite in fact but they are very definitely not the only methods and it's a moot point whether the easiest as well.
As has been said by others, "sharp is sharp" it doesn't matter how you do it if it works for you and anyone with a sharp plane blade can make shavings identical to yours.


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