Hand plane recomendations

[Nick Mazzino]

Thanks everyone for the recommendations! I am going to check out woodcraft over the weekend. I have a Wood River chisel set that I have been very happy with.

What tools do you recommend for sharpening? I have a honing stone kit I recently purchased from Wood Craft.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

If you are going to woodcraft, ask them if the set you already bought will work. They should know.

I started with sandpaper, bought waterstones after a while. When I moved I bought oilstones, because using the waterstones is not as easy here as it was in the last house. Of the three, I prefer oilstones.

[Frederick Skelly]

Thanks everyone for the recommendations! I am going to check out woodcraft over the weekend. I have a Wood River chisel set that I have been very happy with.

What tools do you recommend for sharpening? I have a honing stone kit I recently purchased from Wood Craft.

Nick,
You're gonna start a food fight dude. There are as many opinions on sharpening as there are wet 2x4's at the BORG!

I bet you'll like the Wood River planes. I have a couple.

I dont know which honing stone kit you have, so I'm going to guess it's small stones that aren't wide enough for 2" plane irons. If Im wrong, just ignore the rest of this ..... I have evolved to sharpening with Shapton ceramic stones myself but there are many other options. Search for "sharpening" in the archive. There are many discussions. You could start out cheaply and use the "scary sharp" method (sandpaper) until you sort out your long term plan. But beware - you will likely become addicted to finding "the perfect" sharpening method and spend bushels of money on it. DAMHIKT. (If I had it to do over, I'd have bought a Tormek and low speed grinder. It would have been a little cheaper.)

I like Lee Valley's honing guide. LINK The basic unit is $70, which is good enough to start with. I think they also sell it at woodcraft. Woodcraft also has cheaper "eclipse style" honing guides but those never worked well for me.

[lowell holmes]

https://www.google.com/search?q=bedr...hrome&ie=UTF-8

I would look here to start with.

[Matt Lau]

Nick,
You're gonna start a food fight dude. There are as many opinions on sharpening as there are wet 2x4's at the BORG!

I bet you'll like the Wood River planes. I have a couple.

I dont know which honing stone kit you have, so I'm going to guess it's small stones that aren't wide enough for 2" plane irons. If Im wrong, just ignore the rest of this ..... I have evolved to sharpening with Shapton ceramic stones myself but there are many other options. Search for "sharpening" in the archive. There are many discussions. You could start out cheaply and use the "scary sharp" method (sandpaper) until you sort out your long term plan. But beware - you will likely become addicted to finding "the perfect" sharpening method and spend bushels of money on it. DAMHIKT. (If I had it to do over, I'd have bought a Tormek and low speed grinder. It would have been a little cheaper.)

I like Lee Valley's honing guide. LINK The basic unit is $70, which is good enough to start with. I think they also sell it at woodcraft. Woodcraft also has cheaper "eclipse style" honing guides but those never worked well for me.

I hope we're over the food fight stage. That was years ago.

Personally, I think that it can be broken into a few camps:
-Scary sharp- sandpaper. Bit fussier, cheaper, works
-Stones- ceramic, water or oil. Can dish. Faster. works. I like it because I don't need to worry about knciking the stones.
- Diamonds- I consider it for rough grinding only
- Power- Tormek, or other

Hybrid- grinder + stones. Derek does this.

[Robert Engel]

My 2 ¢ :

Of course sandpaper is the cheapest investment, but I do not use it.

Investing $7-900 in a Tormek is, well, money better spent elsewhere in my shop.

I use a combination of diamond and water stones.

If you go this route, bite the bullet and order all the grit sizes you will eventually need them:
Diamond: 300 to 1250 grit or Xcoarse --> xfine.

Water stone: 8K, or 12K or 16K. There is no sense in going past 16K.

What works for me:

1. Sharpen to 1250 (xtra fine).
2. 8000 grit water stone
3. A few strokes on a strop.

Unless I've let an edge go too far, I can be back to work in less than a minute.

I also recommend hollow grinding. This makes your honing much easier and quicker because you are only honing a secondary bevel.

The main thing about sharpening is 1) keep it simple and 2) find a technique that is fast. This is one reason I say learn to sharpen freehand. If it takes a bunch of jig set up its takes too long to hone & the tendency is to use a tool past its honing time (and then spend 1/2 a morning sharpening everything you have....)

Once you find a method that suits you, practice, practice, practice. This hones your technique ;-) and builds muscle memory.

There's other stuff that factors into your success such as having a dedicated sharpening center. Bench height, stance, lighting, magnifiers, etc.

[Jim Koepke]

Which sharpening system is best?

All of them if one learns how to use them.

jtk