The final polish

[Evergreen]

Sean

From all the advice above, you will undoubtably obtain a very shiny, ultra sharp cutting edge. But you need to ask yourself - how long will that very shiny, ultra sharp cutting edge last? If it lasts only a couple of strokes on the wood, you may not find it worth the effort.

So my few words of advice would be to reserve the "special" sharpening treatment for your tools that hold their edge best and that usually means the ones made of specific high quality steels, hand forged, etc.

Regards.

 

[Digit]

or you could even cut up one of SWIMBO's leather handbags to use as strop - Rob

Christ! You believe in living dangerously don't you? :lol:
The only strop I've ever had resulted in my old man giving me a 'belt' around the ear! :lol:
But joking apart, I reckon I'm going to have to give it a try, when I finally get the new shop up and running. I've got a three and half foot wide door to make and 16ft of window frames as well, but till the machines are all up and running its 'taters' out there!

Roy.

 

[ivan]

These bars of compound are wax based and you can grate them when SWMBO is not looking and dissolve in white spirit for easy application to leather or (say) maple or mdf. Tilgear sell several grades (but not the green chromium dioxide one) The substrate controls teh degree of edge dubbing you're likely to get.

 

[seanybaby]

Good point evergreen. Now i can justify some LN chisels and A2 blades :lol:

I have been playing around, and my blades have got sharper, i think :roll:

For the strop i used a piece of old leather from a suitcase. It's about 2mm thick and quite stiff. Does it matter what kind of leather used? ie soft, hard, thick thin?

 

[woodbloke]

seanbaby wrote:

For the strop i used a piece of old leather from a suitcase. It's about 2mm thick and quite stiff. Does it matter what kind of leather used? ie soft, hard, thick thin?

reindeer skin :lol: ....hat,coat,etc - Rob

 

[katellwood]

Interesting reading on this link,

For what its worth my sharpening regime starts with a Black 12" DMT diamond plate followed by a red plate both for flattening the back and creating the bevel. recently I have been using a honing gauge

For the final polish I have flattened the endgrain on an offcut of 9" x 3" Iroko, flattening with an extremely sharp block plane, (do not sand as sanding fills the pores of the wood preventing the polishing compound filling the same).

I then rub a white polishing compound into the endgrain and polish in the same way as sharpening on the stones, lubricate the compound with a splash of white spirit or alternatively WD40. Polish the back as you would on the plate, however for the bevel pull the blade back in the honing gauge a few milimetres, this creates a micro bevel. When placing on the end grain block sharpen on the pull stroke for a few strokes before polishing on the push stroke, if the compound turns black then the polish is doing its job,

If you are unfortunate enough to get a dig in this is easily repaired by refacing the end grain and refilling with polish

Never failed for me

 

[Joe]

I don't know if anyone is still watching this topic, but I wanted to ask - is it a really bad idea to use the leather honing wheel on a Tormek grinder rather than a traditional strop?

 

[Paul Chapman]

Joe, the danger is the possibility of rounding over the edge. A sharp edge depends on two flat surfaces meeting, so you ideally need to keep the blade flat on the strop - this is easy on a flat strop but rather difficult on a wheel.

I do, however, use a wheel for honing some shaped blades (eg beading cutters from a combination plane). I hone the bevel side on a wheel but the flat side on a flat strop.

Cheers :wink:

Paul