It was a good haul this X-Mas... I picked up some backup spokeshaves, a Swedish drawknife, a standard drawknife, a jack plane, and a set of wood chisels. Unfortunately, a lot of these tools came from Harbor Freight, and while the price was right... the blades are NOT use-ready. So I need to learn to sharpen.
I just tried using wet/dry sandpaper upon a slab of granite -- 400/600/800/1500 grit -- on a spokeshave blade. The results? Blah. Probbaly time to invest in sharpening stones.
Anyone have any recommendations, or useful instructions?
Replies
Silicon carbide (wet dry paper) has sharper crystals than diamond, so while it's 1 step
down in hardness, it cuts a lot faster. Diamond is just slightly more convenient --
cuts dry, no need to hunt down and stick the right paper on your surface plate / plate
glass. Stay with the wet-dry paper. To speed up honing, use a skate type jig such as an
Eclipse (less than $20), and only hone the edge, not the entire bevel. Grind to 25 degrees
and hone to 30. Stropping with a buffing wheel charged with red rouge or chrome green
compound takes off the burr and leaves a long lasting, glass smooth razor edge.
I agree with all that has been said here. I use fixtures to sharpen all my tools even drill bits.
The only thing I can add is I strop my tools like the old Barber does. I take a piece of thick hard leather and glue it to a board or disc to use in my drill press. Then add a little oil and red buffing compound. Buy stropping it takes the feather edge off that the stone produces and leaves a razor sharp cutting edge.
Cheers
Bob
Mark, Also a great site for sharpening. Thanks for sharing.
Don
Heres another article on chisel sharpening, it has some good tips and another idea for building your own sharpening guide like this. (Similar to the ones in the very good article Don provided a link to above.)
Hi Scotty.
I rather like slate water stones. They are often relatively inexpensive and will get a very good edge. They are not as hard as stones such as the Arkansas stones (the slate ones are much cheaper though), so you need to be a bit more careful of them or they will need redressing.
At some stage you are likely to need to do more than can be achieved with a water or oil stone. Might be worth keeping a lookout for a double ended bench grinder at a good price. I have one with an extra wide white aluminium oxide wheel on one end. The wheel is very resistant to glazing and is ultra-fine, yet removes metal quicker than most fine wheels.
Hope this helps a bit.
Don Thompson said:
Scotty, Whenever possible I'm a believer in jigs, even if homemade they will make the task of sharpening and keeping sharp edges easier. Insert quote here:" Well, I've been free hand sharpening for years and my steel is so sharp it will....(perform some extraordinary task), blah,blah,blah" Good for them. For the rest of us mere mortals sites such as
http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/station.html#jig
can aid in getting a repeatable honed edge. There are many more on sharpening on the web. And yes, the investment in decent stones are worth it. A bit of time building some jigs will also be a worthwhile investment.
Don