Sharpening, Steel or both.

[D_W]

Thanks for the independent comment, scooby. I found the same, thus the recommendation. if abrasive is being used, it's honing. If one is going to hone, might as well keep it crisp and do it faster.

Bare leather is wonderful for a strop where the objective is to remove the wire edge or any straggling burr without changing what's there at the edge other than burr removal. It (leather) doesn't do much abrading on its own unless it's dirty.

 

[Jorny]

Probably sloppy english terminology from my part. What I usually do is that I take few swift passes with the carving knife or gouge on the wood with autosol to refresh the edge, or if needed a few quick passes on a small diamond sharpener.
I really like that I can use the same simple set up with autosol and a piece of scrap to try this unicorn method. It just makes so much sense, especially with all the spruce and pine I am chopping through right now (renovating my 1950's house).

 

[D_W]

The only real change over time to what you're doing is that you'll do work on the bevel with the diamond hone and only on the tip with the autosol.

There was a lot of bad info when I first started about how having only a few thousandths of bright polish would affect the results or edge life or whatever - it doesn't. As long as the deep scratches from the prior stone don't make it to the edge, there will be no problems. It's very effective and lazy. Which is nice.

And it's cheap and usable on everything -cuts off the need for some "fast and fine" stone, which is the draw where beginners get sucked in believing there will be something that leaves a 1 micron edge and cuts like a 10 micron abrasive.

 

[JohnCee]

Is there any difference when sharpening chisels for hand pushed paring and plane irons?

And also how would Veritas 01 and PMV11 block plane irons compare for planing ebony? Would PMV11 stay sharp longer? It's not for surface finishing, it's going to be sanded, the iron only needs to be sharp enough for a clean cut.

In my work, I find that planing ebony is where PMV-11 really comes into its own. It stays "sharp enough" much longer than O1. And to cleanly plane the horrible curly grain stuff that's often passed off as "AAA" grade fingerboards these days, "sharp enough" means "pretty damn sharp" ...