50 Deg angle in Eclipse Honing Jig?

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

I admit to being a bit obsessed! ....

No, I would never have guessed this, Jacob. :lol:

But when you were away, we did miss you ..

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[David C]

A minute 25 degree back bevel in a regular (B/D) plane results in an effective pitch of 70 degrees.

I have found this extremely useful for planing dense, interlocked grain, exotic timbers. Also does a wonderful job on English Yew.

This equates to a 58 degree sharpening in a bevel up plane.

The sharpening of the back bevel is considerably easier than the very steep sharpening for the bevel up plane.

Best wishes,
David Charlesworth

 

[Jacob]

.......but try as I might (and I have tried - VERY often, 'onest) I just end up with a rounded bevel when I try without the honing guide. AND I have the hollow in my stones to prove it!

......

You've put your finger on it.
Freehand honing;
Rounded bevels are unavoidable and perfectly OK as long as the edge isn't over 30º ish. Rounded bevels are the norm with nearly all other types of tool hand sharpening except jigged woodwork tools.
Hollow stones are avoidable but perfectly OK. In fact quite handy for a repeat camber. That's why nearly all very old 2nd hand stones are hollow - it's not a problem.
If you don't accept rounded bevels and hollow stones, freehand becomes very difficult, as you have found.

 

[ED65]

...once again - I must point out that for me personally, I HAVE tried for a LOT longer than your quoted 20 minutes and it STILL just hasn't clicked!

Yes this is the type of thing that has been consistently pointed out to Jacob and he just hasn't hoisted it in. Funny because it's something that shouldn't even take him 20 minutes to learn :lol:

The simple fact is that some people don't take to freehand honing and haven't just struggled with it for months but for years. While I think freehanding should be everyone's eventual goal (for routine honing) anyone who wants, or needs, to use a jig should do so. Because if it's the difference between properly sharp edges of the right profile and something other than this there's really no discussion.

• • •

Now to bring this back to the original thread topic, in this specific case because it's only a microbevel that's wanted, and because the jig was not currently capable of the angle desired, there was (and continues to be) a very strong argument in favour of doing it freehand. Like I said, two strokes is all that'll be needed; very very difficult to screw up two slow strokes on a very fine abrasive, especially if done edge-trailing as Derek recommends.

The OP should at least try to do it. If he tries and succeeds that's great and it may be the first confidence builder for more freehand honing. If he tries and fails no biggie, back to the Eclipse to re-establish the 45° primary and he's lost a few thou of steel.

 

[MikeK]

Because they are problematic.
Freehand sharpening hardly gets a mention in any of the old literature, except a sentence or two of beginners advice, because it's something you'd learn how to do in 20 minutes somewhere near the start of your career.

Ugh...I can't remember the number of times I heard similar drivel about sharpening drill bits after I bought a Drill Doctor. The most common comment was "you have to learn how to do it free hand the way I did when I first started out." When I ask "why", the answer is always the same..."that's just the way it's done." Bull s**t. If techniques and affordable tools now allow a way of performing formerly manual tasks, why not take advantage of them? At my point in life, time is a resource I can't create or recover.

The fossils had no problem taking a worn out 3/8-inch bit and making it useful again in a matter of minutes using the bench grinder. However, this skill was developed many years before the Drill Doctor, and similar tools, existed and shortly after vegetation started turning to oil. After one admonishment for using the Drill Doctor, I asked one of the old timers how long it took him to crack the code on sharpening drill bits. He told me it took a while and an unknown number of drill bits before he figured it out, but by now it's second nature. He reluctantly told me that if something like the Drill Doctor existed back then, it would have saved a lot of time an aggravation. By contrast, I mastered the Drill Doctor in about 20 minutes using one 3/8-inch drill with repeatable success for any other drill.

 

[Jacob]

...once again - I must point out that for me personally, I HAVE tried for a LOT longer than your quoted 20 minutes and it STILL just hasn't clicked!

Yes this is the type of thing that has been consistently pointed out to Jacob and he just hasn't hoisted it in. Funny because it's something that shouldn't even take him 20 minutes to learn :lol:
........

It takes 20 minutes to learn but then a few years to perfect it - ditto jig use. In fact I went the jig route like everybody else for a long time. It was many years later that I suddenly twigged how to actually do freehand - the key thing being to accept rounded bevels (dip as you go) and to accept hollow stones (or just least less than perfectly flat). Suddenly became really very easy. *
Nobody should take offence - just take it or leave it. I'll keep repeating myself whenever the topic comes up but feel free to ignore it!

*PS this detail really is the key - discard all notions of primary/secondary bevels and flatness.

 

[Rorschach]

I learned to sharpen chisels freehand as a kid, I only had a couple of oilstone, no money for guides, probably didn't even know they existed.
Once I got my first jig though I never freehand sharpened chisels or planes again, why would I, the jig is super fast and easy to set up, the results are perfectly consistent , I love it.

The only freehand sharpening I do I guess is knives on the tormek, I like their jigs for profiling an edge, but after that I tend to touch up freehand until its needs re-profiling again. I also freehand my "beater" chisels, but they are freehanded on the bench grinder so we are not tlaking fine edges here! :lol:

If you want to sharpen freehand, go ahead, I would never tell people they have to do things one way or the other. I will never accept that it is easier or faster though. I could teach someone to use a jig to master sharpening a chisel in 2 minutes, you can't do that freehand.

Oh and as an aside, a friend of mine (trained joiner but gave it up soon after) was only taught to sharpen freehand during his apprenticeship, he could do a fair job of it. He used my chisels on a job we did together and immediately wanted to re-profile all of his as he thought the jig sharpened edge was much better. I did them for him as a thankyou for his help, he was over the moon.

 

[AES]

Steady on fellas!

ED 65 wrote, QUOTE: Yes this is the type of thing that has been consistently pointed out to Jacob and he just hasn't hoisted it in. UNQUOTE:

Now I MUST pause and think twice here before typing further, BUT if one looks back at Jacob's 2 posts in reply to mine, he has indeed shown a sign of moderating his stance to allow for others of a lower skill level than his own.

To the best of my knowledge and recall, this has never happened with Jacob on this Forum before, so credit where credit's due, eh guys?

Thanks for that Jacob.

The only trouble is that as far I'm concerned, although I can't tell the difference between angle of, say, 48 and 52 degrees, what I HAVE learnt from painful experience is that no matter how "sharp" I can bring an actual edge, if it's bevel is a bit curved and not flat like I understand it's supposed to be, then the chisel (or plane) doesn't cut as cleanly as if its bevel is flat.

That's why I use a honing guide (I'm "lucky" enough to have one of the original Eclipse tools, from the '70s I think).

Ditto the post above about the Drill Doctor. Though I did learn during apprenticeship to sharpen drills free hand (we never learnt about sharpening wood working tools then, there were no wooden aeroplanes in the RAF, not even in my day!), I can only do it on drills down to about 6 or 7 mm. And having bought a cheapo drill grinding "machine" from Aldi, the fact is that coupled with my poor eye sight and dithery hands, I can now produce a quicker and more consistent result on the Aldi cheapo than I can free hand. As the previous poster said, consistency is the key in my eyes.

So as also already said, if there's a simpler/quicker/"better" way, why not - notwithstanding a respect for the old time craftsmen. "Life's too short" (well mine is anyway)

 

[Jacob]

The only trouble is that as far I'm concerned, although I can't tell the difference between angle of, say, 48 and 52 degrees, what I HAVE learnt from painful experience is that no matter how "sharp" I can bring an actual edge, if it's bevel is a bit curved and not flat like I understand it's supposed to be, then the chisel (or plane) doesn't cut as cleanly as if its bevel is flat.

Whoever said it is supposed to be flat is wrong. A bit curved is perfectly OK as long as the edge is at the angle you want to within a degree or so (as judged by eye). There is no practical difference between 48 and 52 º.

Ditto drill bits - no prob down to 6mm or so but getting too small to see/control below that. If I had to I'd use a magnifying glass with light and a fine grit.

 

[D_W]

Because they are problematic.
Freehand sharpening hardly gets a mention in any of the old literature, except a sentence or two of beginners advice, because it's something you'd learn how to do in 20 minutes somewhere near the start of your career.

Ugh...I can't remember the number of times I heard similar drivel about sharpening drill bits after I bought a Drill Doctor. The most common comment was "you have to learn how to do it free hand the way I did when I first started out." When I ask "why", the answer is always the same..."that's just the way it's done." Bull s**t. If techniques and affordable tools now allow a way of performing formerly manual tasks, why not take advantage of them? At my point in life, time is a resource I can't create or recover.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I bought two DDs - the little one (which I gave to my FIL) and then the 750x or whatever it is. It encouraged me to learn to sharpen my bits on the CBN wheel freehand because of how aggravating and slow it is to use. It takes about a minute for me to sharpen a cheap HSS bit on the CBN grinder wheel now, perhaps less (if the first roll leaves the point split dead center, it may be more like 20 seconds, but sometimes I need to do it once or twice more).

Only the tiniest bits are excepted from that, but you can make the same move with those on a diamond card (they are equally obnoxious to do in a DD, anyway).

I agree on the time resource. I don't have time for getting out a drill doctor and plugging it in and faffing around with it. I must've wasted enough time experimenting with it to learn to sharpen bits freehand 10 times, but I didn't know it because the general "wisdom" on the internet is that you need to use a jig to do it.