Sharpening heavily cambered blades

[Ken Bryant]

Tell me about sharpening plane blades with substantial camber. I want to try using a "fore" plane in the sense Chris Schwarz use it: a #5 or #6 jack plane with a very cambered blade and a very open throat, the intention being to hog off large amounts of wood. What are the best ways to establish, and maintain, a substantial camber on these blades?

[Mike Wenzloff]

Hi Ken,

I grind a profile/camber using a stationary belt sander to about 25 degrees and then use a honing guide. Of late the honing guide is the LV MK.II with the cambered roller. Honing is at 30 degrees or so. Touch up by hand until the bevel needs reground.

The exact radius is less important than some with more, some with less, some without camber.

I usually draw the radius on an un-cambered blade and even on one which needs reshaped and grind to it.

The cambered roller or the Eclipse style honing guide with a narrow wheel is only a guide. It still requires a certain amount of feel in the process.

This link is to a [large] picture of honing on a 2k stone following shaping.
http://wenzloffandsons.com/temp/lv_honing_guide2/slides/roller_mod_0007.html

Take care, Mike

[Tyler Howell]

After grinding, I use a three stroke process with guide and stone. Every pass I apply substntial preasure on left, right, or middle to get a honed edge.
I might suggest a scrub plane for this kind of work. Has a wide mouth, narrow body, and there are a lot of old Stanleys around at a reasonable price.;)

[Maurice Metzger]

I should have started a separate thread about sharpening a scrub plane blade:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showpost.php?p=440604&postcount=10

One of these days I'm going to use that blade to carve a channel in some wood that I can line with micro-abrasive PSA paper. For now I'm still sharpening freehand.

Maurice

[Roger Nixon]

In a plane with a chip breaker, such as the Stanleys, you are limited to about 1/16" or so camber before you have to start modifying the chip breaker. That is enough camber to remove a lot of wood. Remember in coarse work, you aren't trying for full width shavings.

I don't try to radius blades, I just measure back from the tip of the blade the amount of camber I want and scribe a line square with the side of the blade. Grind the edged back to the line and taper toward the middle. I usually grind with a hand cranked grinder and refine the shape by a piece of abrasive beld using a side holding jig. I hone a microbevel freehand on 40 micron, then 15 micron PSA abrasives. Don't waste time trying to oversharpen, this is coarse work.

[Tom Saurer]

When I sharpen my scrub plane, I do a figure eight on the stone freehand, slowly rocking it side to side.

One time on the Woodright shop I saw Roy do it completely differently, although I didn't like it. He held the blade in and overhand grip, with his index finger point on the tip of the blade. He held the stone in his other hand. At the same time he moved the stone up and down, while moving the blade left and right, rocking it as he went, keeping the blade in touch with the stone. Kind of hard to describe, but it worked for him.

[Ken Bryant]

Many thanks, all. I'm going to try the Veritas camber thingy. Yes, I have a scrub plane -- LN -- but I want to test Chris Schwarz's assertion that scrub planes are really meant for board edges, and that bigger (jack-size) planes are better for hogging wood off board faces. In Schwarz's "Coarse Medium Fine" dvd, he dimensions boards with unbelievable efficiency using a wooden fore plane.