Out of square Narex 8116

[Jacob]

It seems that this will always be a contentious topic with camps here and there. But what I would say as a beginner is that the process of dismantling and refining the god-awful grind on most castings and cutters makes me really get to know the tool that I've gotten off ebay or wherever - and this is worth it.

Well yes but the god-awful grind on most castings has little bearing on performance as long as it is flat overall. Distorted castings may need flattening but roughly ground surfaces are self correcting, or can be brought up to speed with a quick swipe of 400 grit wet n dry and a squiggle of candle wax.
No need for mirror finishes!
That's a lot of planes in your snap. Best to concentrate on just a few essential items IMHO or it starts looking like ADHD!
What first got me alarmed about the flattening hysteria was somebody on here a few years back who was flattening his new and expensive set of Blue Spruce chisels.
He though this is what you are supposed to do. He was getting upset because they were getting worse instead of better. He was a total novice and had been following cra p advice from some berk on youtube!
Too many berks on youtube . Even sensible Sellers goes on about "initialising" chisels etc. It's contagious.

 

[yetloh]

I would rather subscribe to the the Kingshott, one of the old boys, school of sharpening, flatten and polish the back of a chisel. You only have to do it once and it works for me. I really don't like convex chisels which you will end up with if you continually just paying attention to the tip and use wonky stones. Plane blades do not matter so much as long as the very edge area is polished and the CB seats nicely.

Jim Kingshott never recommended anything without very well thought through reasoning and and practical experience and experiment behind it. As he would say, sharpness is nothingness meaning the coming together of two perfectly flat and smooth surfaces. All of my chisels are flat at the edge and along the edges (but only done once) because they are Japanese and therefore hollow ground. I achieve this with honing guides and Japanese water stones, for a mirror finish on both surfaces and Jim Kingshott's nothingness; it works very consistently well for me and is the method I was taught by a maker of very fine furniture with a lifetime of experience and experimentation, who used it himself. My point in saying all this is that we all have our own methods which we establish over time and give us the results we need or want. With absolutely no disrespect to site chippies, they do not want or need this level of precision and sharpness, you cannot pare truly flat with a convex back on your chisel, this is unimportant to a site chippie but it is to me, as is the best possible edge. No matter how long Jacob bores us to death by banging on about his own methods being best and the rest of us wasting our time it will make no difference to me except that I will ignore his posts. This is a shame because he often talks good sense; if only he could learn when to let a point go - dare I mention torsion boxes?!

Jim

 

[Jacob]

.. I will ignore his posts.

Feel free! I go on about it a lot because a lot of beginners get told that these things are essential which makes a pointless chore from something simple like sharpening a new chisel, and may even wreck them in the process
Also nobody has ever explained why chisel faces should be dead flat and have mirror finish. There isn't a reason.

...; if only he could learn when to let a point go - dare I mention torsion boxes?!

Jim

You brought it up - I haven't mentioned them for ages! Oddly enough they don't seem to get mentioned quite so often.

....you cannot pare truly flat with a convex back on your chisel,.....

But the flattening is advised for new and hence slightly concave ground chisels.

 

[Trafalgar]

Most decent chisels don't need "flattening" per se. They're slightly concave on the flat face and backing off the burr will automatically produce polish at the cutting edge.

It is not physically possible to rub steel on fine honing media and, over time, not produce polish. It may not be a mirror, depending on how fine one's finest stone is, but it will certainly be much brighter and smoother than the day it was made.

Whether or not "polish" is needed is moot. It's going to happen anyway.

Anybody who's figured out how to rub tool steel on a fine honing stone and not impart some degree of polish should alert the Nobel Prize committee. You've succeeded in defying the laws of material physics.

 

[Jacob]

Most decent chisels don't need "flattening" per se. They're slightly concave on the flat face and backing off the burr will automatically produce polish at the cutting edge.

It is not physically possible to rub steel on fine honing media and, over time, not produce polish. It may not be a mirror, depending on how fine one's finest stone is, but it will certainly be much brighter and smoother than the day it was made.

Whether or not "polish" is needed is moot. It's going to happen anyway.

Anybody who's figured out how to rub tool steel on a fine honing stone and not impart some degree of polish should alert the Nobel Prize committee. You've succeeded in defying the laws of material physics.

Exactly. Old and well used tools are likely to have a polish, and other signs of use. But to apply a similar polish to a new tool is merely to fake age and use!
Polish them by all means but it's not a practical necessity.

 

[Jacob]

..... you cannot pare truly flat with a convex back on your chisel, ....

PS forgot to ask- what is it that you "pare truly flat" with a chisel? It's not really a "flattening" or finishing tool.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

What else do you pare something flat with? Do tell.

 

[yetloh]

I've had my say and feel no need to repeat myself.

Jim

 

[Jacob]

What else do you pare something flat with? Do tell.

Mainly plane, spokeshave, draw knife, other knives, etc
A "paring" chisel is a long chisel which is useful for reaching the parts that these tools can't.
Most chisels are used for various chopping purposes and not for "flattening".

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'd enjoy watching you pare something flat with a draw knife. Maybe you could make a 72 hour video of it - I could relieve the abject boredom of next weekend watching it.

 

[Lefley]

I'd enjoy watching you pare something flat with a draw knife. Maybe you could make a 72 hour video of it - I could relieve the abject boredom of next weekend watching it.

Paring something flat with a draw knife is like me making a road perfectly flat with a skid steer . Not the right tool for the job. You could do it if you were really good but a road grader would do it years before a bobcat or skid steer could do it.

 

[gold_bantam]

Relative beginner here. I appreciate and understand the theory of flattening and would absolutely love to have very flat irons and chisels. But last year, trying for the nth time to flatten my chisel backs on glass with wet and dry paper, I have finally let go of the idea and trust they must be flat enough, even if I did get dreaded rounded corners. Paul Sellers made it look so so simple. But I can still slice cleanly through end grain pine. So there is definitely a comforting wisdom in Jacob's perspective. I would be crying in the corner by now if I hadn't let go of the principle, and it's let me continue with a past time I truly love. If you can flatten well and enjoy doing it then go for it. I've promised myself that if I buy chisels in the future they will be new and from somewhere reputable so I can send any back that aren't slightly hollow.

 

[Jacob]

To put it another way, when and what did you recently "pare" with a chisel, and would it have been made difficult if it had not been flat and with a mirror finish?
For me it would be some trad panelled cupboard doors I made recently - occasionally trimming the face of tenons for a good fit with a long paring chisel, though a shoulder plane works wonders here (and for the shoulders too). Needed to be "straight" obviously, but neither perfect flatness nor mirror finish would add anything to the experience.

 

[John Brown]

Flat earth, flat chisel. That's my motto.

 

[Jacob]

Relative beginner here. I appreciate and understand the theory of flattening and would absolutely love to have very flat irons and chisels.

They look nice but it's not really necessary!

..... I've promised myself that if I buy chisels in the future they will be new and from somewhere reputable so I can send any back that aren't slightly hollow.

All the new chisels I've ever bought (not that many) have been ground slightly hollow. It makes them very easy to sharpen and a new chisel is usable in about 10 seconds. That is, if you do it freehand of course and don't fiddle about with the gadgets and machines they are trying to persuade you to buy.
A lot of the advice from the various gurus is nonsense and should be treated with extreme scepticism. The catch is that some of it makes logical sense but that doesn't mean it's actually useful.

 

[Lampost46]

Jim Kingshott never recommended anything without very well thought through reasoning and and practical experience and experiment behind it. As he would say, sharpness is nothingness meaning the coming together of two perfectly flat and smooth surfaces. All of my chisels are flat at the edge and along the edges (but only done once) because they are Japanese and therefore hollow ground. I achieve this with honing guides and Japanese water stones, for a mirror finish on both surfaces and Jim Kingshott's nothingness; it works very consistently well for me and is the method I was taught by a maker of very fine furniture with a lifetime of experience and experimentation, who used it himself. My point in saying all this is that we all have our own methods which we establish over time and give us the results we need or want. With absolutely no disrespect to site chippies, they do not want or need this level of precision and sharpness, you cannot pare truly flat with a convex back on your chisel, this is unimportant to a site chippie but it is to me, as is the best possible edge. No matter how long Jacob bores us to death by banging on about his own methods being best and the rest of us wasting our time it will make no difference to me except that I will ignore his posts. This is a shame because he often talks good sense; if only he could learn when to let a point go - dare I mention torsion boxes?!

Jim

Not RAE Jim Kingshott?

 

[thetyreman]

I genuinely don't understand the huge resistance to flattening the backs of chisels, it won't take more than a few minutes at best, and even if it took 30 minutes that's not 30 minutes wasted for a tool you will use the rest of your life, the chisel will never perform to 100% of it's capability until the back is as sharp as the bevel side, an edge is two highly polished edges meeting together not one, on my narex richter chisels it probably took 1 minute per chisel to go through the grits on diamond stones and they are much better than the factory grind it came with.

 

[Jacob]

I genuinely don't understand the huge resistance to flattening the backs of chisels,

See @gold_bantam post above. And there have been others in the past struggling to achieve perfection and even spoiling good tools

it won't take more than a few minutes at best,

Depends on the chisel. I've got a cheapo Axminster chisel set where perfect flattening would have taken a day by hand. Had them years and you can still see the machine marks, but luckily it doesn't matter!

.... the chisel will never perform to 100% of it's capability until the back is as sharp as the bevel side, an edge is two highly polished edges meeting together not one,

yes but only matters at the edge and a few mm back from it. How would you know you had achieved "100% capacity"?

on my narex richter chisels it probably took 1 minute per chisel to go through the grits on diamond stones and they are much better than the factory grind it came with.

Yes but I doubt there'd be any tangible improvement in performance, compared to just sharpen and go. A minute seems fast! - I had a Narex paring chisel and had a go at perfect flattening but would have been an hour or more. I had expensive Ezelap 3 stones back then and half believed the flattening story. I sold them on.

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

Sharp always trumps all! I would suspect for every tool truly made flat, there are probably three worse off (For example, loose sandpaper on unflat substrate or stones not truly flat).

But if it makes you feel better, have at it!

 

[yetloh]

Sharp always trumps all! I would suspect for every tool truly made flat, there are probably three worse off (For example, loose sandpaper on unflat substrate or stones not truly flat).

But if it makes you feel better, have at it!

Of course the stones need to be flat, that's a fundamental starting point, but it's hardly brain surgery.

Jim