How much of the face do I need to hone?

[Casey Carr]

I've got a few planes now that I need to actually get serious about sharpening. Okay, a couple, but I'm "watching" a couple others that a friend has bought that needs to be hidden from prying eyes at his house.

I've got a 4.5 and a 60.5, and the friend bought a 4 and a 7. I've yet to start on my 4.5, but I've got the back of the 60.5 flat and mirror shiny. Can still see a scratch here and there under 10X magnification, but can see a nice reflection otherwise. Using a Veritas Mk. II honing guide, I've gone over the face of the blade with an 800 grit waterstone and have drawn out the burr on the cutting edge. This is on a 25 degree setting and haven't touched the micro-bevel yet. Do I need to continue on with the 4000/8000 stones on the entire face? Or is it pointless to hone the entire face of the blade since the micro-bevel is what will actually be doing the cutting? I'll definitely go to the 8000 on the micro-bevel, just wasn't sure whether doing the entire face had any benefit.

And how do I get rid of the burr? Flip it on it's back and repeat the process I used to flatten the back? My buddy sent me a PDF from Lie Nielsen that I can't seem to find on my own that says to place a thin ruler on the edge of your stone, then put your blade on it and hone it by stroking it on and off the edge of the stone. By honing it on and off the stone, they claim you avoid the risk of rounding off the front edge of the blade. I just hadn't ever heard of this method. Thanks for any help!

[Jim Koepke]

Casey,
There is a plethora of sharpening threads here on the creek.

As to your question about just doing the micro bevel on the finer grits, I see no reason why it shouldn't work. There is another current thread on sharpening. I write a lot more there, but please note, it is not my practice to use a micro bevel. Even though, sometimes that is effectively where my blade sharpening may stop.

There is a recent video where someone asks Franz Klaus (think that's who it was) "at what angle should a chisel be sharpened?" His answer was, "sharp, the angle is sharp."

jim

[Don C Peterson]

Polishing the entire surface is just wasted effort IMO.

I don't personally use the "ruler trick" generally, but I have when I run into a plane iron with a non-flat back. Unless you really want a back bevel the ruler trick is strictly about saving time, not improving function.

You get rid of the burr by moving to finer and finer stones and taking lighter and lighter strokes on both sides. I finish up with a strop.

[Casey Gooding]

Take the burr off on the fines medium you polished the back with.
After you have ground the primary bevel, I would raise the honing guide to 30* (since you used a 25* primary) and hone on the 1000 stone, then raise the bevel with the little knob on the side two degrees and move on to the 8000 stone. Always polishing away the burr on the 8000 stone.

[Casey Carr]

All right, so the thing with the ruler trick is that it puts a micro-bevel on the back of the blade. That makes sense.

So it sounds like the easiest way to finish this is to put the micro-bevel on with the 4000/8000 stone, taking light passes to finish up and remove the burr. Thanks!

[Sam Takeuchi]

If the back of the blade, or at least near the edge is flat, you don't necessarily have to go with 'ruler trick'. you can just rub the back (or only flat area of the back) until you can't feel the burr anymore. Ruler trick is nice to skip on back flattening, but if the back of the blade is already flat (either because you've done it or came flat, like LV blades...they are really flat), skip the ruler. Just one less process to be concerned about in that case. Either way, I think near the edge of the blade should be flat anyway. You don't want gunk jamming up between cap iron and blade.

As for face bevel, if you are going to add micro bevel, do the face until your next higher grit can easily add micro bevel at the edge, meaning it is able to remove any trace of the previous grit without too much effort or time. If you have 4000/8000 and 1000, I'd just do the face with #1000, and then do the micro bevel with 4000 and then 8000. After that, I'd simply strop or hone on 8000 occasionally until it needs to go back to the stone (meaning the edge is crapped out and needs more than stropping or honing).

A bit off topic. I haven't particularly considered micro beveling as a way to give edge added durability. I simply find doing the whole bevel every time I need to sharpen as a dull chore. I'd rather work with 1/100" of metal along the edge than the whole face. Not so much of a problem with O1 blades, but for A2 and M2, especially thick ones, doing the whole face every time isn't a fun task. For these, hollow grind really eases the process

[Jim Koepke]

A bit off topic. I haven't particularly considered micro beveling as a way to give edge added durability. I simply find doing the whole bevel every time I need to sharpen as a dull chore. I'd rather work with 1/100" of metal along the edge than the whole face. Not so much of a problem with O1 blades, but for A2 and M2, especially thick ones, doing the whole face every time isn't a fun task. For these, hollow grind really eases the process

Actually, it is quite on topic of how much of the face to hone.

To me the funny thing is with a honing guide it is not real hard to hone the full bevel if one has not allowed the blade to get real dull.

By hand, depending on the bevel, it can be a bit more difficult to put a micro bevel on a blade.

jim