When sharping chisels.........

[Russ Massery]

Is it necessary to use a micro bevel? When your not hollow grinding them? I was watching David Marks the other night. He hollow ground his before honing. But made no mention of mirco beveling. Afterwords it got me thinking about it. You thoughts on this would be apprecated.

[Terry Beadle]

The micro bevel is not necessary but does save time over a period of sharpenings. There are lots of Japanese chisels and English chisels with no micro bevel. It just takes a lit bit more to sharpen a wider surface. Since the japanese steel is so expensive, I usually only hone them and no micro bevels. Just a few strokes on the 4000 grit followed by the 6K, 8K and 10K. Other chisels I do a micro bevel but not always as it depends upon how the chisel is set up. Paring chisels don't ususally have a micro bevel. The mortise and 30 degree or higher chisels get a hollow grind and micro edge as they need more frequent sharpening.

Hope this helps.

[Mark Singer]

Russ,
With a hollow ground , you are creating a micro bevel since the surface is concave. The main reason for the micro bevel is to not have to resurface the entire bevel on re honing....only the last 1/8" or so. With a hollow bevel grind off a wheel....upon honing only a small area near the tip is in contact

[Derek Cohen]

As Mark notes, a hollow grind is essentially a microbevel. Both a hollow grind and a microbevel serve to deal with the same need, that is, a shortcut to honing. Both offer a way of avoiding honing an entire bevel face. In the case of Japanese blades, these are a lamination of hard and soft steels. Since the soft backing steel is eroded quite quickly when honing, there is really only the thin hard tool steel section to deal with.

Both hollow grinding and microbeveling have their pros and cons. I use a hollow grind on my HNT Gordon plane blades. These are 1/4" thick and used bevel down. I prefer to hone them freehand, and a hollow grind makes this a fairly easy task. By contrast, the bevel angle on the bevel up blades of my LVs determine the cutting angle, so these benefit from the more precise honing that a honing guide can offer. And since I am doing so, a microbevel is the easiest solution in this case. I could hollow grind here as well, but this would be more work and nothing to gain in this situation.

I leave my chisels - Western and Japanese - flat since the area is small and I prefer to freehand them (on either waterstones or a strop, as needed) as I work.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Dave Anderson NH]

All of the comments so far offer good insights and useful reasoning and appproaches. Personally I rarely use a micro bevel except on chisels with softer steel like the Marples(now Irwin) Blue Chips where the steel benefits from the extra thickness and strength of the microbevel. In this case, the extra thickness of the edge close to the tip makes the edge stronger nad less liable to chipping and other damage- particularly when mortising.

[Alex Berkovsky]

So if I understand correctly, I was wasting my time putting on a microbevel with a LV Mk.II honing guide after hollow grinding my Marples.

[Mike Wenzloff]

No, not really a waste. The issues are that if you set your grind angle on any vertical wheel grinder, owing to the hollow-ground bevel and the fact a stone is flat, what is in *essence* being created by the use of a flat stone is a micro bevel. The actual angle at the tip is less than that you are setting for the grinder due to the curveture of the wheel and the bevel it creates.

So by honing flat, you are "correcting" this fact. With a jig such as the MK.II, whether purposely adding a micro bevel or not is unimportant. What is important is maintaining the same angle each time to lessen the amount of time honing takes.

fwiw, if I hollow grind, and if I use a jig, I set it to the same bevel angle as the grind angle and the top and bottom of the bevel are hit at the same time on the stone. I don't typically use a micro bevel, especially following grinding as I mostly sharpen/hone by hand and having the top/bottom of the bevel resting on the stone provides better registration.

Take care, Mike

[Russ Massery]

Thanks All, I found all your replys helpful.