Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 28

Thread: Lie-Nielsen Honing Guide Question

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2016
    Location
    Kansas City, MO
    Posts
    26

    Lie-Nielsen Honing Guide Question

    Has anyone used the Lie-Nielsen honing guide with other brand plane (I.e., non-Lie-Nielsen) blades or chisel? If so, were they compatible with each other?

    The Lie-Nielsen product description states that the honing guide jaws are designed for their blades, not other brands. That being said, the honing guide looks like it is a quality piece of equipment. However, I mostly have Veritas and Stanley planes.

    I’m sure many out there do without a honing guide and think all others should as well, I appreciate that, but freehanding at a consistent angle isn’t my strong suit so I’ll use a homing guide.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Perth, Australia
    Posts
    9,467
    hThe LN honing guide will work with any chisel that has the same design as their own. The two salient features are that the sides are parallel with one another and they are bevelled. The comment by LN is likely to warn that chisels with very thick lands may not fit, and that (all) side clamp guides are not suitable for blades which taper along their length.

    I use a LN guide for Veritas BU plane blades.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Northern California
    Posts
    664
    Interesting that you bring this up. I’ve got a lot of Lie Nielsen chisels and planes as well as a few other manufacturers (Veritas, Stanley, Ray Iles). I just spent the better part of a week sharpening my blades, something I’ve been neglecting for a while. I’ve been using the Veritas Mk II honing guide with a few of their accessories and am not really satisfied with it. I purchased it before the Lie Nielsen guide was available, but not sure I’d invest in the LN guide because of the incompatibility with other blades and all the extra attachments required for different types of their own blades; if I did I’d be in for over $300. I’m hoping Woodpeckers offers another opportunity to purchase their sharpening guide. Some on this forum were critical of it, but it appears to be an excellent product.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2016
    Location
    Kansas City, MO
    Posts
    26
    Thanks Derek for the analysis. I am tempted to try it out.
    Stephen- I am in the same boat. I have the Veritas honing guide, but have not been fully satisfied, primarily with its consistency. The LN is appealing because of the simplicity and it is easy to just make a board with stops for different angles. My hesitancy is that I have very few LN branded tools that would be used in the guide. From the responses here and some reviews I have found, it appears that most plane blades will be compatible, but chisels will be the wild card. If I buy it, I will follow up and post about my experiences with it.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    bloomington il
    Posts
    184
    I do not have the LN guide but do have the Veritas MK II and one of the knock off eclipse honing guides.
    I do like the eclipse guide more now after using the MK II.

    Pick up a $15 knock off to try.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Perth, Australia
    Posts
    9,467
    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Rosenthal View Post
    Interesting that you bring this up. I’ve got a lot of Lie Nielsen chisels and planes as well as a few other manufacturers (Veritas, Stanley, Ray Iles). I just spent the better part of a week sharpening my blades, something I’ve been neglecting for a while. I’ve been using the Veritas Mk II honing guide with a few of their accessories and am not really satisfied with it. I purchased it before the Lie Nielsen guide was available, but not sure I’d invest in the LN guide because of the incompatibility with other blades and all the extra attachments required for different types of their own blades; if I did I’d be in for over $300. I’m hoping Woodpeckers offers another opportunity to purchase their sharpening guide. Some on this forum were critical of it, but it appears to be an excellent product.
    The LN and Veritas guides are different. Their similarity lies in that both hold a blade for honing. But they both have strengths and weakness. The strength of the Veritas lies in sharpening difficult and unusual angles. These include skews and back bevels, as well as obtaining a range of bevel angles. The strength of the LN lies in its simplicity (without all the add-ons), and this translates to speed as long as the bevel angle is known (basic ones can be set up with stops once the blade extension is known). All BU bench planes depend on specific bevel angles.

    I have not used, but cannot recommend the Woodpecker's device simply because it uses a wide wheel and does not have an easy provision for cambering blades (both the LN and Veritas do this easy peasy). All plane blades need to be cambered. Only chisels and joinery blades are kept square.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  7. #7
    I have the full set of LN bevel and mortise chisels, the full set of Blue Spruce dovetail chisels, and a couple of store branded chisels I bought for rough carpentry work. I use the Tormek for the 25-degree primary bevel, and use the LN honing guide and stones for the 30-degree secondary and 35-degree honing bevels. I don't have any problem using the LN honing guide for any of them, but I have to use the mortise jaws for the Blue Spruce chisels. The standard LN jaws did not work with the Blue Spruce chisels, as there was a slight side to side wiggle with the guide snugged up with a 30mm projection for the secondary bevel. The side to side wiggle was more pronounced with the 25mm projection for the honing bevel.

    After a couple of measurements, I discovered the Blue Spruce chisels have a slight taper in width along the length of the chisel, but are a uniform width near the ferrule. The extra height of the mortise jaws meant the chisel required more projection for the 30-degree secondary bevel (44.5mm) and the 35-degree honing bevel (33.5mm). This extra projection put the section of the chisel with a uniform width adequately in the mortise jaws with no wiggle at all. If the mortise jaws didn't work on the BS chisels, I would have needed to change to a different honing guide (I don't do free-hand and have no interest in learning how to do it) that clamped the chisel from the top and bottom instead of the sides.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Michiana
    Posts
    3,047
    I have the Lie-Nielsen honing guide and use it with Lie-Nielsen, Veritas, Hock, and Stanley plane irons and with LN, Irwin/Marples, and other chisels. I used to have the full Veritas MK II kit (it works great) but haven't found anything I can't also do with the Lie-Nielsen guide and the correct set of jaws. Like many of us, as my journey in woodworking has progressed, I've tended to gravitate towards the simpler approach to almost everything, sharpening included.
    Last edited by Rob Luter; 10-06-2019 at 8:37 AM.
    Sharp solves all manner of problems.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by justin sherriff View Post
    I do not have the LN guide but do have the Veritas MK II and one of the knock off eclipse honing guides.
    I do like the eclipse guide more now after using the MK II.

    Pick up a $15 knock off to try.
    Most of the time I do not use guides but I love to try things because of the "tinker" factor I've tried most of the guides available and of the lot if I were to want to use a guide it would be the cheap knockoff. Costs less and works as well or better than any of the others. As an aside, I had a full set of the LN guide (most if not all the accessories) and ended up giving it to Ralph for his grandson's tool box.

    BTW, nothing against guides, for some sharpening needs they are the way to go but a guide that tries to do all things usually can't. Buy a guide that does the job you want it for, simple is usually better.

    ken

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Northern California
    Posts
    664
    Derek,
    Other than my scrub (a converted Stanley #4), I don’t camber any of my blades. Instead I prefer to knock off the corners (1/64” or so) of only my bench planes. Much quicker and consistent, as it only requires a few passes on a coarse stone. Block planes remain square with 90* edges, as do all my joinery planes. So for my needs the Woodpeckers guide would work other than for my skewed blades.

    The problem I have with the LV honing guide is it does not hold the blade securely - even the narrow blade attachment tilts or skews chisel blades slightly thus altering the bevel or knocking it out of square. I’ve tried all sorts of ways to resolve this problem, none of which have worked. It’s been disappointing and I wouldn’t buy it again or recommend it, although, as you note, it does work reasonably well for skewed blades.

    Steve

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Oct 2015
    Location
    Greenville, SC
    Posts
    25
    I have both the Veritas and Lie Nielsen honing guides. As other have said both have pluses and minuses. I do not own Lie Nielsen chisels but have used the Lie Nielsen guide on my Stanley Sweetheart chisels and other misc. chisels that I have.

    The Lie Nielsen guide has removable jaws and they offer jaws for short blades (great for spokeshave blades) and skew chisels (not cheap of course). That feature opens up the possibility for us to fabricate jaws out of hard plastic, wood, or even metal to fit that odd blade that the standard jaws won't accommodate. That idea has been rattling around my brain for some time nut haven't had time to act on it.

    TonyC
    Last edited by Tony Corey; 10-06-2019 at 7:25 PM.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2018
    Location
    N CA
    Posts
    1,279
    I have a drawer full of honing guides. Several months ago I went for the LN and it is head and shoulders above the others. I have mostly LN products but have thrown the odd Hock or chisel at it and have been pleased with the results. So far I have not purchased any other guides for the LN. I am doing better work since getting the LN.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Longview WA
    Posts
    27,347
    Blog Entries
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Frederick View Post
    I have a drawer full of honing guides. Several months ago I went for the LN and it is head and shoulders above the others. I have mostly LN products but have thrown the odd Hock or chisel at it and have been pleased with the results. So far I have not purchased any other guides for the LN. I am doing better work since getting the LN.
    Currently there are knock offs of the Eclipse style honing guide on the great auction site for less than $5 with shipping included.

    This is even tempting for me. My expectation is there might be some fettling involved. It may be an inexpensive way to see if this kind of guide might be useful.

    There was also one > Eclipse honing guide < listed. The interesting detail about this one is the projection distances for different bevel angles are listed on the sides.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    Currently there are knock offs of the Eclipse style honing guide on the great auction site for less than $5 with shipping included.

    This is even tempting for me. My expectation is there might be some fettling involved. It may be an inexpensive way to see if this kind of guide might be useful.

    There was also one > Eclipse honing guide < listed. The interesting detail about this one is the projection distances for different bevel angles are listed on the sides.

    jtk
    Jim,

    I have both Eclipse and knock offs. In use it is hard to tell the difference. The $5 dollar ones I don't know but with most of the $15 ones the most I've had to do is smooth some paint or a little bit of casting. Not really enough to call it fetting.

    ken

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    twomiles from the "peak of Ohio
    Posts
    12,120
    Irwin-Marples..
    Stanley #3 rehab, sharpening tools.JPG
    helped with a Stanley iron..
    Stanley #3 rehab, stone work.JPG
    Nothing complicated...
    Stanley #3 rehab, shavings 1.JPG

    Old leather work belt, as a strop...
    Stanley #3 rehab, chipbreaker set back.JPG
    Even stropped the chipbreaker....then set the distance back from the edge @ 2mm....

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •