Who is addicted to making your tools mirror sharp?

[Tom Henry]

I recently purchased norton water stones and the Veritas MKII. Now I am obsessed with making all my planes and chisels sharp until they are like mirrors. Hi...My name is Tom and I am a Neanderthal! :rolleyes:

[jerry nazard]

You could say that I am rather obsessive with keeping my tools sharp. I don't care about the mirror finish, just (to quote Ron Brese) FRIGHTFULLY sharp!

[Brian Ashton]

You could say that I am rather obsessive with keeping my tools sharp. I don't care about the mirror finish, just (to quote Ron Brese) FRIGHTFULLY sharp!

Ya but is the edge flat!

[Eric Brown]

My opinion is different from others in that I treat the edge and the bevel as two separate things. I think that the edge does the cutting and needs to be very sharp. I believe that the top side bevel should be polished to reduce friction of the shaving. This takes three steps. First I sharpen the main bevel. Then I strop either the bevel (BU) or the back (BD) until I have a polished surface. Last, I sharpen the cutting edge, with the last few swipes done sideways. Inspecting my edge with a 10x lens it looks great.
Works for me.

Eric

[Jim Koepke]

I enjoy the mirror polish on a blade, but if it cuts as well as I want it to, it doesn't matter if there is a haze or a few coarse scratches left, it gets put to work.

jim

[Tony Shea]

I am also obsessed with getting my blades extremely sharp and like the mirror polish as a gauge to get there. If it isn't polished to a mirror than I'm not done. But I don't want to get into the flat vs. mirror argument that seems to go on around here. I have a strong opinion one way but do not wish to get into it. Lets just say I have to get the mirror polish before I'm done with the process.

[Paul Ryan]

I am kind of in Jim's camp. The bevel has to be mirror sharp, cut your arm hair just by looking at them. But the back has to be smooth and flat but doest have to be like a bathroom mirror, if there are a few scuffs, scratches and so forth no big deal.

[Tri Hoang]

I like sharp tools but I'm not too concern with mirror polish. When sharpening plane blades, I'm more concern with a good symmetrically honed blade so that the shavings feather out nicely.

[george wilson]

This must be the counter thread to the matte finish one.:) I prefer a mirror edge,though that is only the micro bevel.