Sharpening technique nightmare

[Fidel Fernandez]

I don’t know what I am doing wrong. I am getting better at sharpening my planes and chisels. The edge is really sharp and I am able to plane maple, hard maple, etc. I got thin shavings out my LV LA BU Jack plane and I am extremely happy with it.

I am using the JP as my smoother and the wood is like silk, I love it but I always have a problem with ridges at the end. I researched how to avoid the ridges and tried to incorporate into my sharpening technique. I know if you have a blade with a straight edge you will have ridges so the goal is to have a crown type bevel so you are planing without the both blade corners.

Well, I saw a video from Fine Woodworking, read about David Charlesworth how to get the crown and some others. I tried it this weekend and I think I have to start from scratch again because I am getting more ridges than ever. I was putting more pressure on one side and then on the other, I also was rocking the blade with the help of my honing jig.

When I was working with the 1000 water stone (Norton) I was able to see the crown forming on my edge but the weird thing is I didn’t see it when I had a ruler behind the edge. See picture attached.
I kept going with the 8000 water stone and I was able to see a crown on the shiny edge but not when I had a ruler behind the blade.

When I took the pictures I noticed the corners still there and they are more pronounced than before. What am I doing wrong?

:confused: :confused: :confused:

[Danny Burns]

Are you using a jig, and if so what jig?

The LV Mark II jig has an extra wheel that has a convex surface that is suppose to help create a concave blade.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=54181&cat=1,43072,43078&ap=1

This simple inexpensive jig works very well since it's wheel is very narrow.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=60311&cat=1,43072,43078&ap=1

A crowning plate is another route to go.

http://www.japanwoodworker.com/dept.asp?dept_id=13288

And then there is the reverse crowning plate that will make your stones concave, and then you use them to sharpen your blades.

http://www.japanwoodworker.com/product.asp?s=JapanWoodworker&pf_id=87.010&dept_id=13288

[Tri Hoang]

I think for a smoother, a few extra strokes on left and right edge while adding a little pressure there would do. I normally only have to do this on the 4000/8000 stones, not the 1000. Make sure that your waterstones are flat, though. That's seem to be a more critical factor in my sharpening process.

I suggest that once you've got a wire-edge, use a marker pen to blacken the entire edge. You can then tell whether the extra strokes/pressure on the left/right edge actually hone away enough material.

[Griph0n Brown]

Quite the cosmic vortex.

I'm having the same problem with my new Lee Valley nortons. I've just been at the point of abandoning them or trading them in. I just got the stones and the cambered roller a week or so ago and started work on the #4 iron. Feeling pretty good I worked my way up throught the stones (all 4, 220 to 8000) and got so excited I popped the blade in and went to work on a piece of maple and.... horrible cut lines. I pulled the plade and held it up to the light with a square and found I had a reversed camber. CRAP. BUT..

In the last couple of days I've gone back to glass and paper for the lower grit and used the stones for 4000 and 8000, AFTER tossing out the Norton flattening stone and working the Nortons on paper and glass. My first attempt seems to work on my # 5. My second attempt on the #4... not so good, but I'll try again tommorrow. (Sorry Mr. Lee but it's a Canadian Statutory Holiday, actually I'm a teacher, my whole lifes a holiday)(Sorry just read an old thread, bad joke).

I think I'm working the edges of the waterstones to hard and giving the stone itself a camber. I think that's reversing the camber on the blade. Maybe I was being too enthusiastic with finger pressure with the new jig roller.

I think I'm a little more under control now and I can see a little frown on the microbevel on both blades like I think I'm supposed to, but the four just won't work like the five.

Still pottering about with them, the scraper fixes up the ridges, but if anyones got some ideas....

[Fidel Fernandez]

Are you using a jig, and if so what jig?

The LV Mark II jig has an extra wheel that has a convex surface that is suppose to help create a concave blade.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=54181&cat=1,43072,43078&ap=1

This simple inexpensive jig works very well since it's wheel is very narrow.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=60311&cat=1,43072,43078&ap=1

A crowning plate is another route to go.

http://www.japanwoodworker.com/dept.asp?dept_id=13288

And then there is the reverse crowning plate that will make your stones concave, and then you use them to sharpen your blades.

http://www.japanwoodworker.com/product.asp?s=JapanWoodworker&pf_id=87.010&dept_id=13288

Hi,

I am using the inexpensive jig. The problem is that I can see the crown within the bevel but the edge still straight. I keep the stones flat. I follow the advise from Rob Cosman and after every use I flatten them out.

It is just the bevel getting crown but not the edge, what could be the problem? See attachment.
:confused:

[Sam Takeuchi]

It's possible that you are stopping short of actually cambering the blade. Even if bevel begins to have the cambered shine, there is absolutely no point if the blade edge isn't cambered. If you continue with it, you may start dressing the edge to the desired crown.

Another possibility is your honing jig. I don't know what you are using, but is it possible that the honing jig's design prevents you from putting adequate pressure on corners? And what kind of stone are you using? Maybe the stones are too soft and corners are digging into the stone without cutting much, distorting the stone surface at the same time.

[Peter Scoma]

I've gotten a few old stanleys whose blades had essentially been given a 1/16 to 1/32 roundover on the edge. I'm wondering if this isnt the way to go. Surely you lose some of the blades width but there seems to be no way of making track marks with this method.

PS

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Fidel

Cambering BU blades requires a little more work than BD blades - not a great deal, however, for smoothers and jointers. It is really only when you want to add camber to a jack plane to be used as a traditional jack that you need to add more. Still, for a BU smoother, you need to add more camber than you would for a BD smoother.

There are other factors: the bevel angle you use complicates creating this camber (makes is MUCH harder if you try it on a full high angle face). This is discussed in some length below.

My full article on this (with illustrations): http://www.inthewoodshop.com/WoodworkTechniques/TheSecretToCamberinBUPlaneBlades.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

[lowell holmes]

Or you can follow Chris Schwarz's recommendation and file the corners of the bu iron. I did it with an old coarse stone. My bu jack leaves no tracks when smoothing with it.
A recent article in FWW showed how to set up a conventional jack plane with a cambered iron and how to plane an edge that square to the face of the board. I cambered mine using the LV MK2 jig with the cambered roller attached. The plane will absolutely square an edge by moving the camber in the iron over to center on the high side. I could never do that before.
:)

[Matt Hankins]

I always put my camber on the blade at the grinder and then hone on a stone. You have to be slow as you are going to remove some steel. I have seen old blades where the two edges are just ground off, but this will cause tracking as well. The blade should curve fairly evenly, but the lateral adjustment will make up for any amount of out-of-centerness(a new word?) The technique works for me, but it is really a matter of doing it a bunch of times until you can get consistant results. Hope that helps a little.

Matt

[Richard Magbanua]

I have a LN low angle jack that I use for about everything even smoothing. I got an extra blade that I have cambered for smoothing. I guess the basic idea is to camber it enough so it doesn't leave tracks. Therefore, just keep cambering it until it doesn't leave tracks. Check it with a square to see how it progresses and to make sure it stays relatively square. I use a cheap honing guide and when I created the camber I pressed down on the side of the blade and took more strokes there as I did the middle. I don't know how many more, I just checked it as I went.

[Mark Roderick]

Sounds to me as if your stone wasn't flat. And that could be because of the Norton flattening stone. I got one and it was ridiculously out of flat, which of course made the stones out of flat.

But don't throw away the stones. Just flatten them on something that's flat.

[Danny Thompson]

Looking at the pic it appears you may be getting a camber on your primary bevel, but not your secondary microbevel. Is that possible? Put your blade back in the jig and check whether the tip of the microbevel is making it to the stone. If not, reset the angle and try again.

[Greg Crawford]

I just got my first SW Stanley :D, a 4 1/2. Now I know why it's called a sweet heart! I got a hock blade and chip breaker, mainly to preserve the original blade. I've never used a plane as a smoother before, just scrapers, so this thread is perfect.

Does a smoother need to have a radius across the entire cutting edge, or can the outside 1/4 to 1/2 inch just have a slight radius? I'm not experienced in this area, so please feel free to correct me. It just seems that a blade with a full radius on it would leave small troughs across the piece, and that if most of the blade was straight, with overlapping strokes, the piece would be flatter.

I'll be practicing this soon, as my workbench needs to have some dents and scratches taken out and the re-finished.

BTW, thanks for the great link, Derek.

Greg

[David Keller NC]

"It is just the bevel getting crown but not the edge, what could be the problem? See attachment."

Fidel - I may have an explanation for what you're seeing. You may indeed be putting a crown on the bevel, then removing it at the edge with the "ruler trick". If you think about it, when you place a ruler under the back of the blade and move it back and forth across the stone, it's the high-spot on the edge that will get removed. In this case, that's the high spot you want to keep - in the middle of the blade.

So, the solution here is to go ahead and use the "ruler trick" when prepping the back of the blade, then polish the bevel and establish your camber with left/right pressure on the blades corners. Then use a cloth or sponge to remove the wire edge (don't use the ruler trick to polish off the burr). Note that this should be done when you're at the final, fine honing stone. You're going to run into trouble if you use the ruler trick on an 8000 grit stone, then flip the blade and go through 1000, 4000 and 8000 grit stones on the bevel - the wire edge will be much too large, and when you work it off on a cloth, the resulting edge will be ragged.

This, by the way, is often missing in discussions on sharpening. If you hollow-grind the blade, it's not necessary to use anything but the 8000 grit stone to polish the bevel. Since very little metal needs to be removed to establish a highly-polished area at the very edge of the blade, the 8000 grit stone will do this very quickly, and in some cases it actually sets yourself up for geometry problems by increasing the number of strokes going through the 1000 grit, 4000 grit and 8000 grit stones.

[Fidel Fernandez]

Well, I have to admit that I have cheated. I ground my edge to the original 25 degrees. I don't like hollow bevel so I don't use a grinding wheel, I like to do it by hand. I got really good at this so I finish really fast. I am using the side sharpening technique, and in my opinion you sharp faster this way.

When the bevel was ready, I got my bastard file, and filed the edges to make them round. Then I made my secondary bevel and tested the blade.

It is working fine and I don't have the ugly ridges like before. :D

[David Keller NC]

"Does a smoother need to have a radius across the entire cutting edge, or can the outside 1/4 to 1/2 inch just have a slight radius? I'm not experienced in this area, so please feel free to correct me. It just seems that a blade with a full radius on it would leave small troughs across the piece, and that if most of the blade was straight, with overlapping strokes, the piece would be flatter."

Greg - What's often missing in the (raging) sharpening technique debates on the web is that it's "whatever works", not "this method is superior to all others". So long as the edge you get is easily able to cut slices of paper off of a sheet under its own weight, your iron is sharp.

And how a smoother is radiused doesn't really matter, either. Some of the older texts advise using a file to round off the corners, some recommend cambering the blade continuously across its front. It will make little difference which ever way the corners are prevented from laying down tracks in the wood, because a smoother, by definition, is set to take shavings no more than 2 or 3 thousandths of an inch in thickness.

One generally aims to take a shaving that's about 2/3 to 4/5 of the width of iron, and you simply overlap these shavings to smooth the board. Hand-planed pieces, no matter how the iron's cambered, will have subtle scalloping across the surface that one can feel or see by reflected light, but would be difficult to measure.

You can take these scallops out if you wish by sanding, but a lot of us feel that they should be left as evidence of a hand-made piece.

[Greg Crawford]

Thanks David. I guess I'll just have fun experimenting :-)