how to? camber a plane blade when sharpen on a WS3000???

[George Farra]

Hi everyone,I sharpen my plane irons via a worksharp. Having recently read an article by Chris Schwartz, id like to try putting a slight camber on my fore, and smoothing planes. Is the camber put on the blade during sharpening? Or can i introduce the camber after the worksharp???

[Tony Shea]

I personally don't use a worksharp so cant be of much help there. Although there must be a way to sharpen on the top part of the spinning disc on a tool rest right? You would need to draw the camber you want on the back side of the blade and grind accordingly.

BUT this grinding of the camber is only done for irons with significant camber such as a scrub, or jack plane that is used for initial hogging/flattening. For smoothing planes all the camber is done on your stones. Some people say that putting pressure on the corners of the blade on the finishing stone is enough. I personally have never found this to be enough camber, if any at all. I start this cambering proccess on my 1000 stone and just keep checking it on a straight edge. Easy does it as too much camber is not good. Just apply morre pressure on the corners of the blade when sharpening in equal amounts. It took me a while to get the hang of the right amount of camber for each plane. So be patient.

[Jim Paulson]

George,

I now use my worksharp to sharpen many of my plane blades. I've been successful so far in grinding the bevel first on the worksharp and then I work the camber into it by honing the blade corners. I use a Norton combination waterstone 4000/8000 and it gives me sufficient camber on my smoothing planes and jointer planes. Since the jack plane for me involves more camber, I use other sharpening technique like the scary sharp method or a grinder, before I hit the water stones.


I'll add to what Tony said about applying pressure, in that I also tilt the iron on corners when I'm working it on the stone to achieve sufficient camber. You don't really need that much camber anyway, just enough to prevent tracks forming at the corners. I haven't mastered the zip zag deal, but I get the camber by working the corners and the middle. It helps to check the progress with a decent square so your camber is slight (a couple thousandths), but effective.

Jim

[Bill White]

I'm confused. I am assuming that you are refering to a radius on the plane iron. Am I correct? I always thought that camber was referencing an angle. Where am I going wrong?
TIA.
Bill

[Jim Paulson]

Bill,

Camber is basically the curvature along the blade edge. When folks talk about radius on the plane iron they are referring to the amount of curvature that radius gives when you scribe a line with a compass. I sometimes make a template for camber based then on a certain radius. Hope that helps.

Jim

[Bill White]

Gotcha. Now I'm clear about my question in a previous post. Thanks.
Bill

[Matthew Dworman]

For blades narrower than 2", st the guide opening to maximum and just rock the blade from side to side while sharpening the bezel. For blades over 2" set the guide opening narrower than 2" so that the blade rests on top of it. Again, rock the blade (I think "Pivot" might be a better term) side to side.

[Charlton Wang]

You can put a camber on the plane using the worksharp. I have a pretty wicked camber that I put on the blade for my jack plane for initial rough planing (scrubbing). You can either use the rod guide to create the camber and then simply sharpen as you would without a camber afterwards or you can use a cambered roller honing guide to try and achieve the same thing.

[Jim Koepke]

I haven't mastered the zip zag deal

I am not even sure if I have heard about the zip zag deal…

My understanding of this is a blade with camber is only at the corners to prevent tracks. A blade that has radius is over the full width of the blade.

I may be mistaken.

Here is my post on another way to camber a blade:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?158373-My-Camber-Blade-Round-Tuit-Finally-Came

jtk

[George Farra]

Thanks everyone. Very helpful info, as always :)

[Jim Paulson]

Hi Jim,

I don't usually have curvature along the whole width either when it comes to camber. The exception is when I sharpen jack plane blades. For my LV LAJ, I ground the camber because with the low angle the camber had to be more pronounced.

In terms of the zig zag method of adding camber on the waterstones, Deneb with Lie Nielsen demonstrated that technique on a You Tube video a while back. He just applied alternate pressure on each corner and worked down the stone, going back and forth. The cool thing is that it doesn't require a guide.

Jim

[John McPhail]

I like to establish the radius with a bench grinder, it makes sense to me to remove the most metal during grinding, to save the most amount of work. Later during honing I can adjust the curve slightly, but it's mostly about maintaining the curvature I want. The iron I use in my Jack plane for scrubbing gets a fair curve that's really deep. The iron I use on my jointer gets a much more gradual curve that has a pretty wide flat area in the middle, and my smoother iron is even more gradual with an even wider flat spot.