Had to Keep Myself From Laughing

[Jim Koepke]

While picking through tools at one of my regular stops for rust hunting another gentleman struck up a conversation. We discussed our woodworking adventures. When told of my work being mostly with hand tools he expressed his inability to get planes to work for him. He said he couldn't get them to leave a smooth surface. My comment was, "sharp fixes most problems." He said he sharpened the blades on his grinder, then asked if he needs to hone them after that.

My reply was yes and then told him about how most of the time my blades will shave hair cleanly.

For another interesting take on sharpening:

https://blog.lostartpress.com/2018/0...in-sharpening/

jtk

[David Eisenhauer]

Good one Jim. "Yeah, just a wee more than the grinder ye daft bluddy laddie..............".

[Frederick Skelly]

Love it Jim!

[Phil Mueller]

I remember in my teens an old grinder set up in my Dad’s shed. Pretty sure that was what he used to “sharpen” up the #3 I now have in his memory. Cleaning out some of his stuff, I never ran into any stones. Highly likely he never had any.

Back before internet, or without someone to tell or show you how it’s done, a grinder would seem to be the right appliance to get a plane working. Never recall seeing my Dad use that plane. From the looks of it when I took it from his shed years later, it appears it was just a fancy paint scraper. Probably used once or twice to tweak a door or who knows what. I can’t really fault him for poor sharpening. I suppose hundreds of DIYers bought hundreds of hardward store planes and just put em to work. And like many of us, I’m darn sure he never read whatever instructions there were that came with it...if any.

Does make me smile, though. Wish I knew then what I know now.

[Dave Parkis]

That's as bad as the guy that bought a plane from me and brought it back a few months later because it didn't work anymore. When I asked him what he was using to sharpen it, he looked at me and said " what do you mean? It was sharp when you sold it to me". Seriously.

[Normand Leblanc]

A few years ago I bought an estate and I ended up with 70-80 planes. None of the blades were properly honed and not a single back was flatten. Those planes had been bought by a man collecting woodworking tools over a period of ~30 years. Same can be said about 150 chisels of all kind but including ~60-70 expensive EA Berg.

It seems that for a long period of time nobody knew how to properly sharpen...

[Jim Koepke]

A few years ago I bought an estate and I ended up with 70-80 planes. None of the blades were properly honed and not a single back was flatten. Those planes had been bought by a man collecting woodworking tools over a period of ~30 years. Same can be said about 150 chisels of all kind but including ~60-70 expensive EA Berg.

It seems that for a long period of time nobody knew how to properly sharpen...

Changing methods of manufacturing, labor and a couple of world wars disrupted the usual father son or apprenticeship training that taught generations before.

There were a lot of skills and abilities lost to those disruptions besides sharpening techniques.

jtk

[Peter Christensen]

My father apprenticed in Denmark to a wagon maker in the mid 30's, so had a good hand tool background. I saw him one day sitting on the concrete walk at the bottom of the stairs. He had a pail of water and a rock he found beside the driveway and was rubbing it on the sidewalk. He was making a slip stone to sharpen his tools with. It just shows that we can get carried away with getting perfect tools instead of getting on with the work. His edges wouldn't pass muster with many here but the end results spoke for themselves.

[Jim Koepke]

My father apprenticed in Denmark to a wagon maker in the mid 30's, so had a good hand tool background. I saw him one day sitting on the concrete walk at the bottom of the stairs. He had a pail of water and a rock he found beside the driveway and was rubbing it on the sidewalk. He was making a slip stone to sharpen his tools with. It just shows that we can get carried away with getting perfect tools instead of getting on with the work. His edges wouldn't pass muster with many here but the end results spoke for themselves.

Likewise my father told me just about any hard rock could be used to hone a blade. Through life experience my learned opinion is there are some rocks that are much better than others at the task.

jtk

[Jerry Olexa]

Ignorance is bliss....He just did not know...

[Brian Holcombe]

Most modern tool edges are ground on a machine, so I can understand why many are confused by the need to hone. The reverse is likely troubling as well, I ground a tool for a lathe yesterday’s and found myself polishing the back and could not help but polish the burr off.

[Jim Koepke]

Most modern tool edges are ground on a machine, so I can understand why many are confused by the need to hone.

Most of those machines cost more than many of us make in a year. It is possible to get a fine edge with the proper wheels or abrasives on a home system, but that isn't what most folks have in their garage.

This isn't the first person of my acquaintance who thought they could get an edge sharp with a bench grinder and a course abrasive wheel. From the looks of many plane irons and chisels that came my way there are more who feel a bench grinder is all that is needed to sharpen a blade. Very few of my second hand tools came to me looking like they had seen anything finer than a carborundum wheel on a bench grinder.

jtk

[Brian Holcombe]

That’s certaibly true Jim, but you see my point I assume? My suspicion is that people see those edges commonly enough that they do not think about honing like we do but instead expect that a ground edge is acceptable. I had an interest in knives before woodworking tools so I feel I had just naturally thought it best to hone a woodworking tool, if not for that I may have thought to sharpen them the way we did tools in the machine shop.

Outside of my woodworking friends I can’t recall ever having seen a properly sharpened tool in the wild.

[Jim Koepke]

My suspicion is that people see those edges commonly enough that they do not think about honing like we do but instead expect that a ground edge is acceptable.
[edit]
Outside of my woodworking friends I can’t recall ever having seen a properly sharpened tool in the wild.

Maybe folks think this is how they should be sharpened and that they do a poor job so they sell them at a yard sale.

jtk

[Patrick Chase]

Maybe folks think this is how they should be sharpened and that they do a poor job so they sell them at a yard sale.

jtk

There's an interesting bit of game theory at work here.

By spreading he Gospel of Sharpening you may help people make use of the tools they already own, and in so doing reduce the supply of cheap tools for your own rust hunting.

It's probably OK though, because there's so much noise in the sharpening threads here that the chances of anybody learning something they don't already know seem quite remote. It's like a form of spontaneously arising steganography.