"I only sharpen to what's needed for the task"

[D_W]

Damn it.... I can't think of any more salt hating creatures #-o

You have to make it more relatable. Like a recent heart attack survivor eating steaks soaked on the Bonneville salt flats.

 

[D_W]

Ok, here's a considered response from me.

If I was earning my keep as a full time woodworker, planing chiselling and sawing all day long, and efficiency was one of my goals, this discussion would matter to me. But I'm not. I'm someone who's happy to spend his time pottering in the workshop/playroom making things out of wood.

I even deliberately reduce efficiency by trying out different approaches - do I prefer using a wooden plane or its metal equivalent? Saw, plane or chisel a rebate? Tails first or pins? Gang cutting or singles? Rip by hand or by bandsaw? Radio 3, 4, or 6? Thing is, I can forget what the answer was before next time I need to know. Never mind!

In all of this, I sometimes try to do fine, careful work - such as my little walnut table - and then, I will be more careful about sharpening. I'll do it more often and I will also hone.

But if I am doing something more undemanding - like planing a piece of wood so it's the right size to mend a hole in the shed - I adjust my standards - so a plane or chisel would just get a quick rub on a fine-ish stone and get on with it. You could call that "sharpening to what's needed for the task" if you like. To me it's more about common sense than any sort of claim to be a superior worker.

I can easily spend more time making coffee or tea than I do sharpening, but I'm not going to stop doing either of those.

I don't disagree with any of that. The point here being that there is no time or cost consequence to get the gain.

If it was all about minimizing effort, we wouldn't be using hand planes for much of anything at all (we'd adjust what we're building to avoid them).

I'm taking the lazy man's view of this - I want the woodworking and sharpening to be as pleasant as possible and not take any longer than the minimum required. It's lucky in this case that the result doesn't really take any additional effort.

 

[D_W]

Ignoring all the baggage. I'll listen to someone who's open to trying a new idea that doesn't fit with their own preferences, and willing to change when the facts as they best understand them say they should.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I ended up doing this test only after someone else insisted on it. They had seen steve elliot's results (steve did a very thorough and intensive job testing the same thing, but the other guy who requested this and I were too lazy to follow the methods he used to sharpen). The other guy involved in this case pushed and made the claim that he wasn't skilled enough to perform the test and be comfortable with the results (he's an excellent amateur furniture maker, but avoided planing more than he had to for 30 years because he considered it too risky).

I still love the washita stone, and use it just before the brief fine edge finish, but having tested edges also for quality also found another one of my wants blown up. You often see people mention that synthetics make a fragile edge and the quality of the natural stone edge is better in terms of toughness. I didn't find it to be the case, and edge life and lack of defects with a 1 micron diamond finish were the same whether the wear removal was done with a washita or an eze lap before the polishing of the very tip of the iron.

Truth hurts sometimes!! I only spent about 14 years believing that I was getting some kind of probably quantifiable benefit by using a natural stone instead of an ezelap for the initial sharpening.

 

[Jacob]

I think I can hear the rumbling and thundering of a keyboard somewhere in the north, I think everyone should seek shelter.

I often pick up a plane or other tool and have a quick go on an offcut just for the pleasure of it but I don't do any tests as such, just go by feel. I'm basically lazy, so even if I've decided to do something all by hand only, I'm continually looking at how to get away with doing it the easiest way, which seems to be the opposite of what a lot people on here do.
PS But is definitely what all and everybody trying to earn a living would do as a matter of course.
Doing stuff the lazy way means aiming for an acceptable degree of error, rather than perfection.

Hope that helps!
PPS I'm doing a little project at the mo with freehand dovetails in a variety of woods (assorted offcuts) and the critical thing here seems to be chopping out with a chisel in crumbly softwood. A very very sharp chisel should help so I might bring on my little used fine Arkansas stones and see if it makes any difference.

 

[D_W]

I agree Jacob. In this case, the laziest way ends up being different than what I expected.

The story changes entirely if you use dirty or damaged or contaminated wood. In that case, just plan to sharpen a lot. I didn't find any iron, bevel angle, etc, that would tolerate any level of contamination within the wood or from outside.

I ran into this in practical application a couple of weeks ago planing limba for a guitar body.

https://i.imgur.com/SSoXNqi.jpg

If you click to enlarge that picture, you can see all of the little tiny bits of silica in the pores. You can literally vacuum them out, but the next stroke will expose more. Doesn't matter what sharpening method you use, the board itself (despite being soft) will literally abrade and leave a wire edge on an iron. One stroke of the wood and the next stroke leaves little lines all over the surface.

The same was true of this piece of rosewood - the pores were filled with silica. Hit or miss - the next blank may have none and work beautifully. I did the bulk of the material removal on this neck with a draw knife before a nicholson supershear, scraper and sanding.

https://i.imgur.com/t3NvfAd.jpg

Edge retention is a lost cause with both.

 

[Trevanion]

Who are you and what have you done with the real Jacob?

 

[MikeG.]

I'm not interested in the results, particularly, but I'm interested in the tests. My first degree was a BSc, so the scientific method is a priority for me. At the very least I need to see a properly described method, a hypothesis, an objective set of measurements, falsifiable results/ claims, and repeatability. It would also help if the guy doing the test wasn't an advocate, or if he was, that the tests were at least blinded. The original "foot-planed" test didn't fulfill many of those criteria, particularly the "objective" part. When you can develop an objective test such that there is a measurable point at which the blade is blunt (ie all blades are tested to precisely the same degree of bluntness) then come back to us and let us know. Until then.............meh...........whatever.........

 

[Jacob]

I agree Jacob. In this case, the laziest way ends up being different than what I expected.

The story changes entirely if you use dirty or damaged or contaminated wood. In that case, just plan to sharpen a lot. ....

I'd use a scrub plane. This is exactly what it is for (there's a clue in the name!)
It works by cutting down through the dirty layer and doing most of the work deeply gouging into the clean wood underneath.
Also about the easiest plane blade to sharpen - scoop and twist - nicks don't matter if you've hit a nail etc. And the least skill required to make it work - they were all having a go with one on a bit of old joist, when I did my demo.

Who are you and what have you done with the real Jacob?

My sharpening is all about doing it the easiest, quickest and cheapest way - believe it or not!

 

[That would work]

Just found an Arion vulgaris in my Zea mays... He's alive but looks a bit dull.

 

[lurker]

I think I can hear the rumbling and thundering of a keyboard somewhere in the north, I think everyone should seek shelter.

being not from the UK, I can only guess Jacob lives north? :lol:

He lives in the midlands, (actually the southerly quarter of the U.K.) which happens to be north of where most of the U.K.’s narcissists live.

For what it’s worth, I like your posts, and give consideration to what you say.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Mine veers towards Jacob’s but with the proviso that, I don’t give a damn if people don’t agree with me.

 

[D_W]

You may want to buy a jump to conclusions mat.

The first footage planed test absolutely satisfied those and was repeatable by everyone. It was controlled as follows:
* each iron used in the same plane (pictures taken at every step for every iron). One iron had to be used in a separate plane, but it wasn't really a subject of the test, it was provided by an individual curious about its performance.
* each iron used in a rotation on the same board so that no plane encountered a more favorable section of the test board (rather than planing each iron to dullness and then switching). The range of rotations for each plane was 5 to 10, depending on their longevity. It could be stated that the longer-lasting irons may have encountered a more favorable board section since the early irons only planed the part of the board planed early on
* shavings were checked for thickness and weight for each (to ensure that the amount of work done by each was not biased)

The test board was checked for flatness periodically to ensure that it didn't become concave. Unskilled planers plane the ends off of boards. I will gradually plane them concave, as will most skilled hand tool users.

The edge durability tests were ancillary to everything, so they didn't get the same rotation. Instead, they started with a separate board (planing only the sap area of quartersawn beech in the same board) and bookended the test with fine abrasives to make sure the last iteration yielded a result about the same as the first (that is, that the spot in the board after several inches of planing showed the same results as the edge of the board).

I also took pictures with a microscope, but there was a motive for those. We assumed ahead of the test that the dulling would occur with more defects in the irons with coarser abrasives, but I didn't find that. The results of all of the tests were recorded both for surface quality/uniformity as well as longevity. Why? Because I am a proponent of uniformity from the standpoint that it's needed to finish a surface straight off of a plane. If a certain iron or method can't retain uniformity, then it requires resharpening to plane a finished surface.

In clean wood, I didn't notice any issues with surface quality until irons were quite dull.

I sharpened with a guide (which I almost never do) despite the fact that i hate it because each starting edge needed to have identical geometry. Each starting edge was viewed end to end under a microscope to make sure there were no starting defects.

I found, as many will, that not all edges were as finished as I expected. That's of no consequence day to day if an edge is uniform - razors are actually maintained that way, but for this test, it was unacceptable.

You may have missed in all of this (I wouldn't use the word concern - it's more polite than what you're really after, but lets assume that your issue with potential bias is a matter of concern), the conclusions in every test were different than I expected.

In durability by iron type, I assumed that the PM-V11 results on MDF would not be producible on wood, that carbon steel would have demonstrably better surface quality and uniformity through wear, and that other established more-difficult-to-sharpen irons would outlast the V11 (whereas Lee Valley's results showed it among those irons, despite being relatively easier to sharpen).

The outcome was, instead, that LV's test results in MDF were reliable in clean wood. But, I also found that it's not a free lunch thing - LV's irons grind and coarse hone about half as fast as carbon steel. They finish sharpen easily because the steel doesn't hold a wire edge like high wear vanadium steels. It's (very) high carbon and high chromium.

My favorite ( a hard tempered O1 iron ) fared about half as well as V11. To my surprise, surface brightness with the alloyed irons was generally brighter than high carbon steel, which probably has something to do with the sentiment that HCS yields better surface quality. The surface is slightly less bright, so very minor quality issues aren't as easy to see.

I expected the planing resistance from high carbon steel to be less than the "dull feeling alloyed irons", but that also wasn't true, except steels with a lot of vanadium have a lot of resistance in wood. Chromium yields the opposite. I didn't expect that.

I expected that I would be able to come up with some one step sharpening regime with a natural stone or a slightly coarse synthetic abrasive that would last as long as the micron sized synthetic abrasives. Again, the results were the opposite, instead demonstrating a much greater advantage to a small strip of microfine edge than I expected.

The results of the entire test were not as I expected.

I went to college for applied mathematics (and graduated) with a statistics intensive concentration and work mostly with hand tools when I do woodworking. Nobody is more suited for the test (well, i'm sure there is someone or hundreds of someone in the world, but a matter of will to do it is important).

I was suspicious of prior results from other sources for the following reasons:
* they only tested initial wear (we use a plane until it needs to be sharpened most of the time, not just for initial wear)
* the tests were performed by someone with economic interest
* the tests were performed by unskilled users or a robotic machine, and in a material that wasn't wood to "accelerate results"

You can't assume that the wear in one material is the same as it will be in clean wood.

You can't even assume that the wear will be similar in two boards from the same tree. In fact, one of my sapwood boards yielded over 4000 feet of planing with a test iron and another yielded 1700 with the same iron. Even minor changes in grain direction can cause a lot of distortion in results, so I had to use good wood (quartersawn beech, and only the sapwood) that was very uniform and that I had saved for plane handles. The differences in feet planed in for two different test boards with the same iron were shocking. The proportional relationship held (the board that yielded 1700 feet for V11 and slightly greater than 800 for O1 yielded 2000 feet planed for 01).

 

[D_W]

I'm not interested in the results, particularly, but I'm interested in the tests. My first degree was a BSc, so the scientific method is a priority for me. At the very least I need to see a properly described method, a hypothesis, an objective set of measurements, falsifiable results/ claims, and repeatability. It would also help if the guy doing the test wasn't an advocate, or if he was, that the tests were at least blinded. The original "foot-planed" test didn't fulfill many of those criteria, particularly the "objective" part. When you can develop an objective test such that there is a measurable point at which the blade is blunt (ie all blades are tested to precisely the same degree of bluntness) then come back to us and let us know. Until then.............meh...........whatever.........

Separate and aside, I'm posting the results. I don't have much interest in persuading people who don't like what they are, or who alternate between "That's too much information" and if you don't post it "it's unreliable".

My original footage planed test, as described above, satisfied every criteria you listed. I'm not an advocate really for anything other than cap iron use (that wasn't part of the test aside from the fact that the cap iron was set for everything other than endgrain in order to make the results more uniform (prevent tearout and keep the cut even with every iron, even as the irons were dulling).

I didn't describe bluntness above - It's determined as the point where a plane struggles to stay in the cut for half of the board repeatably. That was a concern (to me) ahead of the test, but it occurs within a footage window of about 50 (from first failure to stay in the entire cut). It also has to occur with a hand on the plane rear handle only so that no addition downforce is applied.

As I was posting results, someone who had an all-japanese paper from Kato and Kawai about downforce and wear was following up with the results from that paper. They were the same, except in the test of steels by the two japanese professors, they were using a planing machine that could continue to plane long after clearance was gone. We cannot do that with hand tools. Their test showed that downforce created by the plane iron decreases approximately linearly until it's zero and then goes in the other direction. I didn't know this fact at the time I was performing my tests and requested to not know anything of the K&K details until I was done. Loss of clearance and downforce doesn't actually feel linear.

if a plane is pulling itself into a cut with four times the downforce needed, twice as much as needed feels the same. It's only as clearance issues near that one starts to notice the start of a cut isn't as easy, and the point of easy use vs. fighting the plane occurs very fast. I perceived the change in downforce different than the K&K results, but they had a machine and I'm sure they're right.

 

[thetyreman]

whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?

 

[Jacob]

whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?

No, sod the client, but presumably you would care if you spent longer than you needed to, or bought kit which didn't pay for itself

 

[thetyreman]

whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?

No, sod the client, but presumably you would care if you spent longer than you needed to, or bought kit which didn't pay for itself

actually I don't care about how long it takes, what I do care about is the quality of my work, if it takes me say 1 minute longer to sharpen up, that's not much extra time, it's industrial era thinking that time is money, it comes from factories and mass production which seems ridiculous to me when you're a small workshop say on a self employed basis, especially in the age we live in today, but I've never made a living from it doing it fulltime and don't really plan on doing that either.

p.s sorry to go off topic.

 

[AndyT]

I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense.

In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:

1 - The new "PMV111" steel used by Veritas does keep an edge longer than the carbon steel used for the last 250 years.
2 - Sharpening to a very fine grit is worthwhile - the edge lasts longer and the finish is better.
3 - These differences are not often noticed because
(a) most of us don't hand plane for long periods with frequent sharpenings and
(b) some boards of the same species will blunt an edge much quicker than others.

Is that a fair summary?

 

[D_W]

whether you're making money from it or not is sort of irrelevant, just use a sharpening method you're happy with and stick with it, if I'm a prospective buyer or client, do you really think I'd care if you took one extra step to sharpen on a 2000 grit stone instead of 1200 then stropping?

I get the sense that you're not in favor of what is, but that's OK. When you're making something and you find a way that you like to do it, go ahead.

I don't think most clients of any makers could identify a planed surface vs. sanded, and if they could, I don't think they could identify the difference if the sanded surface was burnished.

This isn't about customers - it's about doing better work with no extra effort (actually less).

Bias is important to me because there's no requirement for a marketer to release unbiased results. They can run 5 tests and show the results of the test that they've chosen.

This test ended up costing me several hundred dollars (actually, I bought the base steel that V11 is made of and made my own irons after it, which i didn't expect to do), and I am sure that I will not make any money or ever recoup the costs. There was an offer to set up a patreon-like effort to complete it, but I refused for obvious (to me) reasons.

 

[D_W]

I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense.

In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:

1 - The new "PMV111" steel used by Veritas does keep an edge longer than the carbon steel used for the last 250 years.
2 - Sharpening to a very fine grit is worthwhile - the edge lasts longer and the finish is better.
3 - These differences are not often noticed because
(a) most of us don't hand plane for long periods with frequent sharpenings and
(b) some boards of the same species will blunt an edge much quicker than others.

Is that a fair summary?

It is. I do a lot of handplaning, sometimes several hours a day (of planing, not several hours that involve some planing, but just planing) on weekends, and I didn't notice the difference in ease and wear because I settled into a routine.

As you get better at woodworking, you also extend the amount of work you can do between sharpenings because you get more efficient. I confused how well I was getting along with carbon steel (due to getting shorter and shorter and more economical in sharpening, too) with it being just as good as anything else.

I also confused how well I got along with just a washita stone as it being at least as good as anything else.

I wouldn't advocate anyone go buy things (getting faster at sharpening and better at it is more important than what steel is used), but I might go so far as to say that folks using a fairly unrefined edge may appreciate a $9 or $10 vial of 1 micron diamonds used on their substrate of choice, replacing one effort (stropping) for another (just kissing the very edge and back of a tool in about the same amount of time).

I hope none of this would ever be confused for advocating expensive micron and submicron stones. They are no better than loose abrasive, either in speed or results.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I'm trying to work out why David's efforts are not appreciated as much as they might be. He's gone to considerable effort and expense.

In trying to distil his posts to a couple of simple messages, I think I get to these:

1 - The new "PMV111" steel used by Veritas does keep an edge longer than the carbon steel used for the last 250 years.
2 - Sharpening to a very fine grit is worthwhile - the edge lasts longer and the finish is better.
3 - These differences are not often noticed because
(a) most of us don't hand plane for long periods with frequent sharpenings and
(b) some boards of the same species will blunt an edge much quicker than others.

Is that a fair summary?

What a relief for a man who only wants to 'read what's necessary for the task'!

 

[MikeG.]

........My original footage planed test, as described above, satisfied every criteria you listed........

You are joking, I assume.