Lie-Nielsen Honing Guide Question

[Ian Guy]

Has anyone used the Lie-Nielsen honing guide with other brand plane (I.e., non-Lie-Nielsen) blades or chisel? If so, were they compatible with each other?

The Lie-Nielsen product description states that the honing guide jaws are designed for their blades, not other brands. That being said, the honing guide looks like it is a quality piece of equipment. However, I mostly have Veritas and Stanley planes.

I’m sure many out there do without a honing guide and think all others should as well, I appreciate that, but freehanding at a consistent angle isn’t my strong suit so I’ll use a homing guide.

[Derek Cohen]

hThe LN honing guide will work with any chisel that has the same design as their own. The two salient features are that the sides are parallel with one another and they are bevelled. The comment by LN is likely to warn that chisels with very thick lands may not fit, and that (all) side clamp guides are not suitable for blades which taper along their length.

I use a LN guide for Veritas BU plane blades.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Stephen Rosenthal]

Interesting that you bring this up. I’ve got a lot of Lie Nielsen chisels and planes as well as a few other manufacturers (Veritas, Stanley, Ray Iles). I just spent the better part of a week sharpening my blades, something I’ve been neglecting for a while. I’ve been using the Veritas Mk II honing guide with a few of their accessories and am not really satisfied with it. I purchased it before the Lie Nielsen guide was available, but not sure I’d invest in the LN guide because of the incompatibility with other blades and all the extra attachments required for different types of their own blades; if I did I’d be in for over $300. I’m hoping Woodpeckers offers another opportunity to purchase their sharpening guide. Some on this forum were critical of it, but it appears to be an excellent product.

[Ian Guy]

Thanks Derek for the analysis. I am tempted to try it out.
Stephen- I am in the same boat. I have the Veritas honing guide, but have not been fully satisfied, primarily with its consistency. The LN is appealing because of the simplicity and it is easy to just make a board with stops for different angles. My hesitancy is that I have very few LN branded tools that would be used in the guide. From the responses here and some reviews I have found, it appears that most plane blades will be compatible, but chisels will be the wild card. If I buy it, I will follow up and post about my experiences with it.

[justin sherriff]

I do not have the LN guide but do have the Veritas MK II and one of the knock off eclipse honing guides.
I do like the eclipse guide more now after using the MK II.

Pick up a $15 knock off to try.

[Derek Cohen]

Interesting that you bring this up. I’ve got a lot of Lie Nielsen chisels and planes as well as a few other manufacturers (Veritas, Stanley, Ray Iles). I just spent the better part of a week sharpening my blades, something I’ve been neglecting for a while. I’ve been using the Veritas Mk II honing guide with a few of their accessories and am not really satisfied with it. I purchased it before the Lie Nielsen guide was available, but not sure I’d invest in the LN guide because of the incompatibility with other blades and all the extra attachments required for different types of their own blades; if I did I’d be in for over $300. I’m hoping Woodpeckers offers another opportunity to purchase their sharpening guide. Some on this forum were critical of it, but it appears to be an excellent product.

The LN and Veritas guides are different. Their similarity lies in that both hold a blade for honing. But they both have strengths and weakness. The strength of the Veritas lies in sharpening difficult and unusual angles. These include skews and back bevels, as well as obtaining a range of bevel angles. The strength of the LN lies in its simplicity (without all the add-ons), and this translates to speed as long as the bevel angle is known (basic ones can be set up with stops once the blade extension is known). All BU bench planes depend on specific bevel angles.

I have not used, but cannot recommend the Woodpecker's device simply because it uses a wide wheel and does not have an easy provision for cambering blades (both the LN and Veritas do this easy peasy). All plane blades need to be cambered. Only chisels and joinery blades are kept square.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Mike Kreinhop]

I have the full set of LN bevel and mortise chisels, the full set of Blue Spruce dovetail chisels, and a couple of store branded chisels I bought for rough carpentry work. I use the Tormek for the 25-degree primary bevel, and use the LN honing guide and stones for the 30-degree secondary and 35-degree honing bevels. I don't have any problem using the LN honing guide for any of them, but I have to use the mortise jaws for the Blue Spruce chisels. The standard LN jaws did not work with the Blue Spruce chisels, as there was a slight side to side wiggle with the guide snugged up with a 30mm projection for the secondary bevel. The side to side wiggle was more pronounced with the 25mm projection for the honing bevel.

After a couple of measurements, I discovered the Blue Spruce chisels have a slight taper in width along the length of the chisel, but are a uniform width near the ferrule. The extra height of the mortise jaws meant the chisel required more projection for the 30-degree secondary bevel (44.5mm) and the 35-degree honing bevel (33.5mm). This extra projection put the section of the chisel with a uniform width adequately in the mortise jaws with no wiggle at all. If the mortise jaws didn't work on the BS chisels, I would have needed to change to a different honing guide (I don't do free-hand and have no interest in learning how to do it) that clamped the chisel from the top and bottom instead of the sides.

[Rob Luter]

I have the Lie-Nielsen honing guide and use it with Lie-Nielsen, Veritas, Hock, and Stanley plane irons and with LN, Irwin/Marples, and other chisels. I used to have the full Veritas MK II kit (it works great) but haven't found anything I can't also do with the Lie-Nielsen guide and the correct set of jaws. Like many of us, as my journey in woodworking has progressed, I've tended to gravitate towards the simpler approach to almost everything, sharpening included.

[ken hatch]

I do not have the LN guide but do have the Veritas MK II and one of the knock off eclipse honing guides.
I do like the eclipse guide more now after using the MK II.

Pick up a $15 knock off to try.

Most of the time I do not use guides but I love to try things because of the "tinker" factor I've tried most of the guides available and of the lot if I were to want to use a guide it would be the cheap knockoff. Costs less and works as well or better than any of the others. As an aside, I had a full set of the LN guide (most if not all the accessories) and ended up giving it to Ralph for his grandson's tool box.

BTW, nothing against guides, for some sharpening needs they are the way to go but a guide that tries to do all things usually can't. Buy a guide that does the job you want it for, simple is usually better.

ken

[Stephen Rosenthal]

Derek,
Other than my scrub (a converted Stanley #4), I don’t camber any of my blades. Instead I prefer to knock off the corners (1/64” or so) of only my bench planes. Much quicker and consistent, as it only requires a few passes on a coarse stone. Block planes remain square with 90* edges, as do all my joinery planes. So for my needs the Woodpeckers guide would work other than for my skewed blades.

The problem I have with the LV honing guide is it does not hold the blade securely - even the narrow blade attachment tilts or skews chisel blades slightly thus altering the bevel or knocking it out of square. I’ve tried all sorts of ways to resolve this problem, none of which have worked. It’s been disappointing and I wouldn’t buy it again or recommend it, although, as you note, it does work reasonably well for skewed blades.

Steve

[Tony Corey]

I have both the Veritas and Lie Nielsen honing guides. As other have said both have pluses and minuses. I do not own Lie Nielsen chisels but have used the Lie Nielsen guide on my Stanley Sweetheart chisels and other misc. chisels that I have.

The Lie Nielsen guide has removable jaws and they offer jaws for short blades (great for spokeshave blades) and skew chisels (not cheap of course). That feature opens up the possibility for us to fabricate jaws out of hard plastic, wood, or even metal to fit that odd blade that the standard jaws won't accommodate. That idea has been rattling around my brain for some time nut haven't had time to act on it.

TonyC

[Jack Frederick]

I have a drawer full of honing guides. Several months ago I went for the LN and it is head and shoulders above the others. I have mostly LN products but have thrown the odd Hock or chisel at it and have been pleased with the results. So far I have not purchased any other guides for the LN. I am doing better work since getting the LN.

[Jim Koepke]

I have a drawer full of honing guides. Several months ago I went for the LN and it is head and shoulders above the others. I have mostly LN products but have thrown the odd Hock or chisel at it and have been pleased with the results. So far I have not purchased any other guides for the LN. I am doing better work since getting the LN.

Currently there are knock offs of the Eclipse style honing guide on the great auction site for less than $5 with shipping included.

This is even tempting for me. My expectation is there might be some fettling involved. It may be an inexpensive way to see if this kind of guide might be useful.

There was also one > Eclipse honing guide < listed. The interesting detail about this one is the projection distances for different bevel angles are listed on the sides.

jtk

[ken hatch]

Currently there are knock offs of the Eclipse style honing guide on the great auction site for less than $5 with shipping included.

This is even tempting for me. My expectation is there might be some fettling involved. It may be an inexpensive way to see if this kind of guide might be useful.

There was also one > Eclipse honing guide < listed. The interesting detail about this one is the projection distances for different bevel angles are listed on the sides.

jtk

Jim,

I have both Eclipse and knock offs. In use it is hard to tell the difference. The $5 dollar ones I don't know but with most of the $15 ones the most I've had to do is smooth some paint or a little bit of casting. Not really enough to call it fetting.

ken

[steven c newman]

Irwin-Marples..
417401
helped with a Stanley iron..
417402
Nothing complicated...
417403

Old leather work belt, as a strop...
417404
Even stropped the chipbreaker....then set the distance back from the edge @ 2mm....

[Günter VögelBerg]

The only blades I have that I cannot sharpen with the Lie-Nielsen guide are the skew blades of my Veritas skew rabbet planes. Lie-Nielsen doesn't make a set of jaws at that angle.

[Keith Pitman]

Lie Nielsen has one of their Hand Tool Events in Denver next month. You give the honing guide a try before buying if you stop by the venue.

[Benjamin Alsip]

I have the Lie-Nielsen honing guide and use it with ...Irwin/Marples and other chisels.

Rob, how are you eliminating the side-to-side wiggle in the LN honing guide when sharpening your Irwin-Marples chisels? Which LN jaws are you using?

[Stephen Rosenthal]

Lie Nielsen has one of their Hand Tool Events in Denver next month. You give the honing guide a try before buying if you stop by the venue.

Due to Covid-19, I believe all LN hand tool events have been canceled until further notice, likely through at least 2020. Their showroom is closed, but production is still operating at limited capacity.

[Rob Luter]

No issues with Wiggle as the sides are perfectly parallel. Mine are Sheffield made chisels. Seems to me I heard when they moved production to China the sides ceased to be parallel. Here's my 3/4 size in the guide, set for a 25* bevel. These are the standard jaws. Rock solid with just finger pressure on the clamp screw.

436669 436670

As an aside, some scoff at these chisels. They were a "price point" buy when I was getting back into the hobby 14 or so years ago. I bought the whole set from 1/8' to 1". The backs weren't very flat on some and the machining was not terribly refined. That said, they were a great study in how to prep chisels and the steel is fantastic. They will take a very keen edge and it lasts. I save them for rough work and keep the Lie Nielsen's for the finer jobs. Sometimes I find myself wondering why as well as they cut.

[glenn bradley]

Just because no one mentioned them I'll show the Kell guides. I got these for short and narrow irons but do use them for other things. I also have and use the Eclipse and Veritas MKII. The MKII and Eclipse work for most things, the Kell covers everything else in my arsenal.

436681

[Phil Gaudio]

The only chisels I have found that don't play well with the LN honing guide are the Barr chisels. Too bad, since the Barr chisels are very nice.

[J. Greg Jones]

Due to Covid-19, I believe all LN hand tool events have been canceled until further notice, likely through at least 2020. Their showroom is closed, but production is still operating at limited capacity.
Keith posted that LN event info last October, and the thread got a new bump. The 2020 events, as you mentioned, are canceled until further notice.

[Stephen Rosenthal]

You’re right. Gotta look at those dates. Chalk it up to a senior moment.

[J. Greg Jones]

Senior moments FTW!

[Benjamin Alsip]

Thanks for the reply, Rob. My Irwin-Marples are parallel, but I’ve still got the wiggle. While the sides along the length are parallel, the edges along the thickness taper to the front. I’ve diagrammed these four photos to help describe it:


1). The thickness at Z1 is greater than Z2 because of the taper from back to front
2). With the chisel in the L-N honing guide looking at the back end, Z1 is meeting the jaws on both sides
3). Looking at the front end, however, Z2 (right) does not meet the jaw
4). Chisel pushed to left so that Z2 (left) meets jaw and Z2 (right) does not meet jaw


Since Z1 > Z2, there’s (Z1-Z2) distance above the chisel edge before it meets the jaw and this is allowing the left to right wiggle. Really hand tightening, I can reduce the wiggle, but I’m just biting into the chisel and/or jaws in back.


Now I’m looking around the house to find something more refined than toothpicks to basically convert the angled jaw opening into a straight one... Or giving the mortise jaws a try. Those should reduce the space causing the wiggle, but still not eliminate it.

437134437135437136437137

[Benjamin Alsip]

What about the Barr dimensions made them a no-go in the LN honing guide?

[Jim Koepke]

Hi Benjamin and welcome to the Creek.

Do you have an angle gauge like:

437146

This might help to find if the guide might have a problem or if the chisel bevels may have a slight misalignment.

A small bevel gauge might be enough for comparison purposes.

jtk