Veritas Mark II honing guides and bevel up irons

[Aaron Rosenthal]

By no means an exhaustive test, but I've been unhappy with the results of using the honing guide and my diamond plates (Fine, Extra fine and Extra Extra fine), getting the smooth operation into the Maple I often work with. (sorry for the grammar).
I recently got a Tilt box after seeing interesting discrepancies in a picture on Derek Cohen's <www.inthewoodshop.com>, decided to do my own tests. The results were similar, of course; when I set the guide for 25 deg, the plane blade had a marked space under it, on the plate; if I set the primary bevel on the plate so it were flat, it was about 23 1/2 deg. It meant that I was supposedly working very hard to get an iron which had a different angle than indicated on the box, to fit a suggested hone angle on the guide.
I HAVE NOT, tried to play with the various combinations of angles on both the holder and the projecting guide; even though i'm "almost retired(!)" my time has value. That will come next week.
I spoke with Customer Service at LV, who set me straight. The 25 deg. iron isn't 25 deg, it's about 23.5 deg, and the SECONDARY bevel should be 25 deg. They may mention that in the little paper that comes with the irons, but as a typical male, who reads the instructions LOL! Same factors with the 38 and 50 deg. irons.
What I did as a short cut, was to eliminate the guide, and honed up the blades using the bevel built in by LV; place the bevel flat on the plate, tighten the holder, check for perpendicular using my sliding gauge, and going through the plates firstly at the primary bevel, then adding the secondary one.
As said I'm working with end grain Maple, so I used my 50 deg. iron in the LAS to joint an edge.
Using this system, the plane just sang! Almost zero tear-out and cut sweet.
I'll enjoy the experimenting, but as a long time contractor, this is a whole new ball game for me.
I do have a number of newer and older Stanleys that I sharpen and bevel accurately on the Mk II, but it seems the BU irons are different.
Learning new things is fun.

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Aaron

The blades from Veritas do come a degree lower, which facilitates them being honed with a guide. I hollow grind all my BD blades immediately at the angle I shall use them, and freehand sharpen on the hollow. For BU blades, all are hollow ground at 25 degrees. This permits any BU blade at 25 degrees to be freehanded in the hollow, while others with high cutting angles are given a secondary bevel with a honing guide. The 25 degree primary bevel makes it easier to camber the high cutting angle (less steel to remove).

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Steven Mikes]

I just purchased a bench grinder a few days ago and went through the process of regrinding two Veritas BU blades that I had purchased at 38 degrees down to 25 degrees (One of them I put a ~8in camber on for the jack plane, Derek I followed your excellent advice from your website, thank you very much for that detailed article!) I have one of the cheap eclipse clone honing guides but it seems to work fine, using wooden stops to set the angle and end up with a nice secondary bevel at whatever angle I set (e.g. 30 degrees for the jack plane). I don't find my BU plane blades to behave any differently during/after the sharpening process than the BD blades personally with this method.

[Jim Koepke]

Howdy Aaron and welcome to the Creek.

Most of the time my blades are honed freehand. A guide is nice for removing a lot of material quickly and accurately. When fast metal removal is the goal is about the only time my home rigged guide gets used.

jtk

[Aaron Rosenthal]

So, just to set my mind straight; is your plan to have any BU plane iron with the primary bevel @ 25 deg., and only hone the secondary to the angle useful for the species you are working with?
It seems to me that the reason there are are a number of different initial angles on the primary bevel is to ease the time involved in getting the secondary bevel where it needs to be - or am I missing something?

[Aaron Rosenthal]

I have also been working on getting the muscle memory going, but even though I work out 4x a week (mainly to make sure I can ride my beloved Harley in my 7th decade and beyond with arthritis creeping up) I find my fingers aren't there yet. It'll come, with practice. I am a believer in freehand, just learning the best way. You folks are years ahead of me on almost every skill needed.

[Jim Koepke]

So, just to set my mind straight; is your plan to have any BU plane iron with the primary bevel @ 25 deg., and only hone the secondary to the angle useful for the species you are working with?
It seems to me that the reason there are are a number of different initial angles on the primary bevel is to ease the time involved in getting the secondary bevel where it needs to be - or am I missing something?

Someone else will have to answer that since most of the time my blades do not have a secondary bevel. Most of my work is in fir and my bevel up plane irons are ground to 25º.

jtk

[Normand Leblanc]

So, just to set my mind straight; is your plan to have any BU plane iron with the primary bevel @ 25 deg., and only hone the secondary to the angle useful for the species you are working with?
It seems to me that the reason there are are a number of different initial angles on the primary bevel is to ease the time involved in getting the secondary bevel where it needs to be - or am I missing something?

For all plane blades there is only a very narrow portion of the blade, at the tip, that get the work done. That means that all your BU blades could be ground at 23-25° and only the secondary bevel is at a higher angle (25,30,35°, etc).

The angle that you sharpen a blade has more to do with end grain or difficult (tear-out prone) wood when planing with the grain.

[Jim Koepke]

For me when working on end grain it seems the lower the angle the better the result.

jtk

[Patrick Chase]

For all plane blades there is only a very narrow portion of the blade, at the tip, that get the work done. That means that all your BU blades could be ground at 23-25° and only the secondary bevel is at a higher angle (25,30,35°, etc).

As Derek often points out it's easier to camber BU irons (which require a LOT of camber due to their low bedding angles) if you do it that way, since you only need to apply camber to the secondary bevel. He has an article on the topic somewhere on his site.

[Patrick Chase]

For me when working on end grain it seems the lower the angle the better the result.

Yes. Skew also helps, and a low angle with skew (as in the LV shooter, edge planes, and skew blocks) is best of all.