Hey guys!

I'm new here and new to woodworking, it's my weekend hobby and for now I want to establish essential hand tool skills and make some furniture pieces for home. I find using hand tools more enjoyable but also I don't have dedicated workshop and don't like noise. So reducing noise level in my living apartment is second reason for hand tools.


I'm currently using manual grinding method and during that endless process I have a lot of thoughts about better uses for that time like woodworking. That all makes me and my dentist a bit unhappy. First because at the end of the day the result is so little and second because of psychological and physical tension in my jaws (funny but real). Anyway establishing proper bevel and flattening takes a lot of time, I think more than 90% of sharpening time. My goal here is to save some time and teeth.

My current setup is DMT extra coarse diamond plate and an old eclipse carriage. Here is the photo, squaring bevel a bit. The longest part of entire process is re-establishing the bevel and flattening back. Sometimes that includes removing a lot to get rid of back bevel or rust caverns. These are two parts that I want to speed up and preferably hand over to machine.


Establishing new bevel. That might be require in several cases, mostly for old tools but for some new occasionally too. For instance that old plane iron is not so bad. I would prefer hollow grind the bevel and then freehand it. I have several questions in mind here. What about gouges and turning chisels? They are not all flat and in contrast with scrub plane iron I don't have an idea on how to sharpen them with electric tool, would be nice to know the direction here.

Where should I look here? I already have electric grinder (metabo ds175) but I'm not sure about shaft diameter and it doesn't have convenient tool rest. CBN wheel for old grinder and some shop-made rest? New grinder with tool rest from Tormek? Just Tormek grinder?


Flattening. Wow, that takes a lot! Plane irons, chisels (I currently use cheap ones), small planes (yep, using diamond plate), marking knifes. Few weeks ago I have bought Japanese laminated marking knifes. The are supposed to have hollow grind at the back, however one of them had tip out-of-plane for a millimeter (guess what direction). I've spent almost a day flattening it and a set of 6 chisels, one marking knife took about 30% of time (at the end I gave up and grind a hollow on the back). More problems here: widest chisel was hardest to flatten because of higher downforce required.

So, is there any way to make flattening faster and less painful? I saw Derek Cohen mentioned using flat side of CBN wheel for flattening, however I wonder about details. Should I just press it flat against the wheel or there is some trick to make sure it's lying flat? Or probably I could use belt sander, I have small one from Proxxon. What should I look into and what sounds more promising?


Thanks,
AZ