LN Sharpening Jig

[Mike Gottlieb]

For those of you that own this jig, I need some help. I have two sets of chisels,Veritas PM11 and Stanley 750's. All of my plane blades are Veritas. Can I use this jig for sharpening these items? I believe the LN jig cannot be used on 1/8" chisels or Veritas skew blades, but I am not familiar with other limitations. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

[Dave Mills]

I sharpen my Veritas PM-V11 chisels using that jig, except for the 1/8" one. I also sharpen all my LN plane blades, which I presume are of similar thickness to the Veritas blades (the "issue" is whether the jaws in the jig have a wide enough groove to hold the blade thickness, so unless you think the Vertias blades are thicker than the typical LN blades you should be fine. If you know the thickest blade you will need to sharpen, I'd be glad to see if I have any of the same thickness.

[Mike Brady]

I recall some LV irons that did not have parallel sides, and those would be a no-go in any side-clamping guide. The most conflict with the LN guide would come from chisels that are not Lie-Nielsen. Many of my vintage chisels are not secure in that guide due to tapered thickness. For LN tools, that honing guide is fabulous and beautifully made.

[Winston Chang]

I recall some LV irons that did not have parallel sides, and those would be a no-go in any side-clamping guide.

The Eclipse-style guides have one side that is straight, and one side that is slightly curved, which makes them able to accept blades that have sides that are not quite parallel. I don't think this is true of the Lie-Nielsen honing guide, but I don't know for sure.

The Eclipse-style guides do need a bit of filing to work well. There's a good FWW video about it here. In the video, you can see the curved jaw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBHd7x6ySSQ

Lie-Nielsen actually has a video about tuning Eclipse-style guides as well, from before they made their own honing guide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojzzCXq5ook

[ken hatch]

As always my position is: if a jig will not sharpen all your cutters and there are ones that need a different jig or the jig needs modifying to work why bother. If you have to learn to sharpen one cutter freehand why not all your cutters? I have yet to find a jig or even a combination of jigs that will work with all my cutters. Of course the answer to that could be to limit the different types of cutters or maybe a better answer is to save your money and for that matter your stones and learn to freehand sharpen.

I know a broken record but jigs are kinda like fishing lures in a sporting goods store, they ain't there to catch fish.

ken

[Scott Winners]

We need a like button so I can use it on Ken's post above. I do use a jig for my parallel sided blades, but I have "had" to learn to freehand for some others and don't regret having the skill in my tool set.

[Derek Cohen]

I am not capable of determining or differentiating by eye a bevel angle of 45- versus 50 degrees, and then freehanding a micro secondary bevel with a very fine radius ... as used in a bevel up smoother. So I turn to a honing guide to do this single task. I consider the Veritas Mk2 honing guide to be the best all-rounder available. However, the LN guide is quicker for this one particular situation.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[bill epstein]

I am not capable of determining or differentiating by eye a bevel angle of 45- versus 50 degrees, and then freehanding a micro secondary bevel with a very fine radius ... as used in a bevel up smoother. So I turn to a honing guide to do this single task. I consider the Veritas Mk2 honing guide to be the best all-rounder available. However, the LN guide is quicker for this one particular situation.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hat's off to Ken and others who can free hand without rounding off the bevel over time but couldn't agree more with Derek.

Once the bevel is re-established, though, in my Veritas MK II, the few strokes that honing requires is easily done free hand.

[Phil Mueller]

I free hand most cutting irons these days, but did find a jig to help in the learning curve. I used it often at the beginning and think it helped to teach me some muscle memory and get to know about where to hold the iron for common angles. In the end, I didn’t find any jig that really allowed for a perfect repeatable angle (probably user error), or didn’t take too much time to set up.

I have found the quickest solution for me these days is to hollow grind the primary and free hand the final edge.

[Jerome Andrieux]

For those of you that own this jig, I need some help. I have two sets of chisels,Veritas PM11 and Stanley 750's. All of my plane blades are Veritas. Can I use this jig for sharpening these items? I believe the LN jig cannot be used on 1/8" chisels or Veritas skew blades, but I am not familiar with other limitations. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

The blades and chisels lay on top on the jig, which is inconvenient because most bench chisels are tapered,
- so the edge angle is influenced by the taper angle
- the clamping might be weird for for low angles (long projection) depending on the chamfer style

On eclipse style jigs, the chisels are hanging below the jig, grabbed with their flat side laying on the jig, with the chamfer actually helping the grab.

LN jig is great for my bench chisels, BU and BD plane blades AND spokeshave blades (which are short). It doesn’t generally handle mortise chisels nor anything Japanese.
I use to reset an edge true, maybe twice a week. And also for BU blades. I do the daily sharpening by hand.
I find it easy to use and reliable.

[Rob Lee]

Hi,

We’ll be releasing our eclipse style side clamping jig early in the new year...the same one I posted a picture of several years ago, when we released our current guide. It will accommodate blades up to 2 1/2” in width, and will work with tapered blades. It is a well executed version of the Eclipse, but with increased capacity and better registration. It should retail for under $50. Don’t have a great shot of it at hand...but will attach what I have.

Cheers,

Rob

443696

[ken hatch]

I am not capable of determining or differentiating by eye a bevel angle of 45- versus 50 degrees, and then freehanding a micro secondary bevel with a very fine radius ... as used in a bevel up smoother. So I turn to a honing guide to do this single task. I consider the Veritas Mk2 honing guide to be the best all-rounder available. However, the LN guide is quicker for this one particular situation.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Derek,

If I used bevel up planes I can see using a jig for those cutters. For me, the good news is there are no bevel up bench planes in my shop nor do I expect there to be any. Of course as always YMMV.

ken

[ken hatch]

Hi,

We’ll be releasing our eclipse style side clamping jig early in the new year...the same one I posted a picture of several years ago, when we released our current guide. It will accommodate blades up to 2 1/2” in width, and will work with tapered blades. It is a well executed version of the Eclipse, but with increased capacity and better registration. It should retail for under $50. Don’t have a great shot of it at hand...but will attach what I have.

Cheers,

Rob

443696

Rob,

Thanks for the heads up, I expect once out I will give it a go.

ken

[Howard Pollack]

Rob, will the new jig work with Japanese chisels and plane blades? Thanks. -Howard

[ken hatch]

We need a like button so I can use it on Ken's post above. I do use a jig for my parallel sided blades, but I have "had" to learn to freehand for some others and don't regret having the skill in my tool set.

Thanks Scott,

ken

[Douglas Mosman]

Shucks! Just too late. I have your eclipse guide sitting in the garage, waiting to be filed into shape. Before I bought it, I looked everywhere because I couldn't believe that no one had just stepped up the price point a little bit and done exactly what you've got sitting there.

[Rob Lee]

Rob, will the new jig work with Japanese chisels and plane blades? Thanks. -Howard

Hi Howard,

The short answer is...I’m not sure. Japanese chisels have so much variability in both length and section. We designed it to fit the widest range of edge tools possible, keeping in mind it is meant to be an entry level guide, though at a much higher quality. Perversely, this meant it would be incompatible with some of our own chisels (butt chisels, mortise chisels). Shorter chisels are always an issue with a projection jig....as are really thick/deep sections.

I’m up at the cottage right now, and don’t have access to a lot of my files, so will give a better overview when I get back....

Cheers,

Rob

[Howard Pollack]

Thanks Rob. -Howward

[Derek Cohen]

Howard, I experimented with this guide some years ago, and can say that it is an interesting adaption of the Eclipse style guide, as we have come to expect from Veritas.

Rob’s comment is actually spot-on. Japanese chisel blades can be pretty short, and this makes it very difficult to get sufficient projection to work the bevel in the lower angles in this style of guide (that includes the Eclipse and LN). Some Japanese chisels worked well, and others not so much. The standard Western bevel edges and firmer chisels I tried were all easy peasy.

Regards from Perth

Derek