Flattening Waterstones

[Anonymous]

By the way, your LN chisels should be perfectly flat upon arrival - if not send them back!

I don't agree. They will be flat within the tolerance that LN provide them, you can improve on that tolerance at home.

Disagree all you want. I have 18 LN chisels and none of them could be 'improved' by hand flattening. When I checked them (CMM machine as used here ), they were already perfectly flat (forget about tolerances etc. as the LN tolerances on them are better than you can detect in the workshop).

One arrived 0.5mm out and was replaced immediately by Tom LN free of charge, and I kept the 'faulty one'

I have had a great many chisels over the years that required a lot of flattening (particularly AI), but the LNs do not.

 

[PaulO]

Disagree all you want. I have 18 LN chisels and none of them could be 'improved' by hand flattening!

Maybe your hand flattening technique needs some work then? :wink:

You can't say that they wouldn't be improved until you have tried it. I have done back to back paring tests, and I think they are improved by flattening. Mr Charlesworth agrees, but I suppose you could argue he has an axe to grind.

During the flattening process low spots are exposed, and LN chisels consistently show them at the corners. These low spots may only be 1 thousandth of an inch, but their presence will mean that when you sharpen/hone you will have varying degrees of sharpness across the edge.

Have you done any work on your LN plane(s), or are they perfect too?