1k stone, yeah. I have a 3000 on the other side which I suppose I could have used too, was just practicing and having some fun for the time being (as I say don’t even have a bench built yet)
when you say some bias in the edge do you mean put a slight curve on the corners? I’ve seen that some people do this to avoid track marks
I think I might de-rust and restore the plane early next week. Off work and will be a relaxing thing to do, so may get some autosol then and have a go at polishing it some more.
No, I mean rather than using things like "the ruler trick" or any of that kind of thing, to ensure that your back polishing gets all the way to the edge, put down-pressure on the stone that you're using by pushing down at the edge of the chisel. Chisels and plane irons flex, even though it's not a huge amount of flex. you want to put your fingers more or less where you want the abrasive to do the most work, so right at or near the edge.
When you see videos of someone flattening the back of a plane iron or polishing it, you'll often see them pushing down an inch or so from the edge and all they're doing is focusing the pressure under their fingers.
You have two types of bias with sharpening - angle bias (when you intentionally find the angle an edge is at and then just tip it a tiny bit further more in your favor) and pressure bias.
This sounds like overanalysis, but I have a laziness bias. You want to do a great job as fast as possible with as little effort as possible. That's what makes really sharp practical rather than "i could keep working and get this really sharp, but it's good enough for now". Supreme sharpness with the biases (and eventually no gadgets) is a 1 minute process at the most. When it becomes 3, 4, 7 minutes or whatever, it's a matter of doing work where it doesn't need to be done, and that leads to not doing work where it needs to be done. Focusing all of your hand work just at the tip, to, frees you from the nonsense that you'll see from people about needing a very fast stone (that usually ends up being some kind of small abrasive that's aggressive and could be loosely bound, so you can only use it in one direction).
The significance of really quick but really good sharpening is it will draw you to sharpening often, but it won't take long enough to break your concentration on whatever you're working on.
That in combination with remembering that there is no necessary correlation between money spent and time/speed fineness. All of the most expensive sharpening gadgetry is subpar compared to the loose closely graded abrasives or common pastes (there's no need for special honing pastes or any high priced nonsense). Most of the for-pay gurus will direct you to a retailer that they favor or some kind of stones or guides that they see being successful (maybe both for them and the user when their pocket is involved) in putting students off with something that's workable to start with (but not very good in the long run in the cycle of actual work).
The way you've sharpened your chisel there, you'll soon learn that you can grind the bulk and adjust squareness ever so slightly wherever it's needed honing freehand. When you come to do something like a skew iron, which seems to vex tons of people, or a gouge, you'll do the same thing, and with a skew iron, in reference to the tool, make small easy adjustments if they're needed at all. When you start seeing things like skew grinding jigs, skew honing jigs and fixtures and such things, you'll be glad you avoided all of that and as long as you work all the way to the tip, your edges will be as good (probably better) vs. most guide honed edges. The guide takes away your biases as mentioned above - they work in your favor to increase the edge quality and decrease the effort.
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