Bevels

[Jim Koepke]

I’ve been around this work for a while. The ruler “trick” has been around longer than I am old. Maybe not with a ruler but similar things. When I learned to sharpen it was very common for a craftsman to take the last stroke across the edge of his carborundum stone. Some raised the back of the iron a small amount “ruler trick” some kept it flat but because the stone was dished a bit there was a sharp edge on the stone. I was taught to raise the handle a bit for the bevel side of the chisel for the last few strokes. Some used a strop after, others used their hand (most were leathery). I never saw a plane iron with the back shiny more than an inch or so. The same with chisels. Don’t know how they ever accomplished a thing with those dull tools��. Nothing new under the sun, just reworded some. Just how many plane irons and chisels have you found used with backs completely flattened?

Many of the used planes that have passed through my shop came with bevels on the back. Many came with blades straight off a grinder on both sides. Some planes came with little ever done to the blade, especially the back. It seems for many the factory grind on the back of the blade was fine.

Blade sharpening threads often bring back memories of General Shop class back in 1963. The rough work was done with a plane and then we would use sandpaper to achieve a smooth surface. Maybe in the Wood Shop class they got better use from hand planes. The Industrial Arts wasn't my major.

Seems like that could present a challenge as the blade wears. If you are moving it back ¼” on each sharpening, eventually there will be a bump to deal with. The ruler trick is so minuscule, less than a 1* bevel on the blade, and it maintains that 1* bevel with each sharpening.


He is only using two stones, and with the ruler when the burr is removed, the edge of the blade is off the stone. The burr peels away as soon as it hits the edge of the stone.

Once the back has been worked the only time it is on the stone is to remove the burr. That is done by pulling the length of the blade across the stone. Any hypothetical bump would liley be in the low ten thousandths of an inch of that much.

I believe the final result is because he is an excellent craftsman, and part of that is due to his willingness to explore different methods and apply the results to his process. Certainly there are other parts of his process that people are calling out in this thread, such as his process of dealing with tear-out by closing the mouth of the plane rather than adjusting the cap iron. The cap iron the prevalent means to deal with that problem today, but there is no question that he gets excellent results adjusting the frog.

Again, I’m not saying the Cosman way is the right way or the only way, but I do believe he has proven in his videos that his methods produce excellent results. Why do people feel it necessary to give him crap for that, just because it’s not the method that they use?

My recollection of Rob Cosman's history is that as a woodworker he couldn't earn a living and decided to enter teaching woodworking. He has also been involved in marketing products for others and himself.

Maybe my interaction with Rob when he was promoting his blade and video with him claiming people could turn an old Stanley/Bailey plane into a Lie-Nielsen simply by purchasing his blades left me a little cold to his ways.

My intent is not "give him crap." My intent is to keep it simple.

More than once a person has posted on this site (and others) about a problem with getting a plane to work. It is often someone new who after researching everything has not only added a secondary bevel but a back bevel and cambered the blade and now they want to know, "what is wrong?"

With good steel there is nothing wrong with a single flat bevel within a range of angles depending on the steel and the work it will be doing. The same goes for a hollow grind. In fact a hollow grind is wonderful for freehanding a single bevel. A hollow grind would make life easier for me. Not enough easier for me to bother buying an electric grinder to produce a hollow grind on my tools.

jtk

[J. Greg Jones]

So, to each his own then, right?

Alas, it would appear not.

[Erich Weidner]

there can be only one (in voice of the Kurgan)

Well until Highlander II (Sorry couldn't resist).

[Erich Weidner]

Also like fingernails to me is recommending removing the burr only on the finest stone. Maybe this is fine with a very light burr when one is only using two stones. A heavy burr can leave some nasty scratches on a fine stone.
jtk

Hi Jim,
This comment made me take notice. Can you elaborate what you are doing/mean by this? I feel like I might be missing something important. (Since this thread has gotten a little "edgy" I want to point out there is no sarcasm here, genuine question).

I never tried the ruler trick/back bevel. I sharpen by first (new to me blade) flattening/polishing 2-3" of the back from the edge of the blade.
When sharpening the bevel, I progress up through the grits, feeling for a wire edge before progressing to next grit. (I use forward and back strokes). I can't really feel a wire edge after I get up to 6000 or so. But I can see the polish improve. My last grit is 10,000 water stone. After I get the polish from the stone on my micro bevel I pull the iron out of the honing guide and do 3-6 strokes flat on the back only keeping 2-3" on the stone. This last step I'm doing to remove the wire edge. (I'm just following a method that I read).

Are you doing something different between changing grits?

[steven c newman]

Sometimes, you can get a wire edge at EACH stone....and it is usually a good idea not to bring that wire edge to the next stone.

[Tony Wilkins]

Well until Highlander II (Sorry couldn't resist).

We shan’t speak of that abomination!

[ken hatch]

Sometimes, you can get a wire edge at EACH stone....and it is usually a good idea not to bring that wire edge to the next stone.

Steven,

How true.

Learning to sharpen free hand is not that difficult but it does take a little time on the stones to develop a feel for what is happening. That time is well spent, much more so than that spent on all the jigs, gadgets, and short cuts folks are selling.

ken

[Jim Koepke]

Hi Jim,
This comment made me take notice. Can you elaborate what you are doing/mean by this? I feel like I might be missing something important. (Since this thread has gotten a little "edgy" I want to point out there is no sarcasm here, genuine question).

I never tried the ruler trick/back bevel. I sharpen by first (new to me blade) flattening/polishing 2-3" of the back from the edge of the blade.
When sharpening the bevel, I progress up through the grits, feeling for a wire edge before progressing to next grit. (I use forward and back strokes). I can't really feel a wire edge after I get up to 6000 or so. But I can see the polish improve. My last grit is 10,000 water stone. After I get the polish from the stone on my micro bevel I pull the iron out of the honing guide and do 3-6 strokes flat on the back only keeping 2-3" on the stone. This last step I'm doing to remove the wire edge. (I'm just following a method that I read).

Are you doing something different between changing grits?

Sometimes, you can get a wire edge at EACH stone....and it is usually a good idea not to bring that wire edge to the next stone.

Steven,

How true.

Learning to sharpen free hand is not that difficult but it does take a little time on the stones to develop a feel for what is happening. That time is well spent, much more so than that spent on all the jigs, gadgets, and short cuts folks are selling.

ken

Erich, Steven and Ken pretty much explain it. My only addition is when using more than a couple of stones or on a blade in need of a lot of honing due to a nick or two a burr can become rather large. It is still attached to the bevel. In my early days of sharpening this was explained as a bit of metal that was being worked one way then the other at the edge to break off or be diminished by pulling the blade across the stone first on one side then the other until the burr or wire edge wore off.

Not every piece of steel acts the same way. A few of my chisels have a very thin metal foil that trails the edge as it is being worked with pull strokes back to bevel and back again.

With the fine stones it is usually possible to feel the burr against a fingernail. Most of the time the edge of my nail being run on the back of the blade at the edge can feel a light roughness.

My oilstones are not as susceptible to scratching as are my water stones.

jtk

[Christopher L Everett]

If you can afford Lie Nielsen and Veritas tools, you can probably afford a Tormek to regrind your primary bevel and a fleet of fancy water stones.

Shouldn’t need more than a couple of oil stones and a strop, if you keep to pre WWII planes and chisels made with O1 steel. An extra coarse diamond plate would be nice.

[Robert Hazelwood]

I'm confused as to what the gripe is about secondary bevels. They are extremely common not only in woodworking tools, but on almost every knife ever made. Reducing the area to be honed makes a lot of sense.

It really seems like the gripe is more about gadgetry and fussiness, especially setting a honing guide two or three times during a sharpening. Which I agree with, but there's no need for that. You can freehand a tiny secondary bevel on a chisel or whatever, just like you freehand a pocket knife. In fact the chisel is much easier since the edge is short and straight.

On most of my tools I grind a flat 20 degree primary and then freehand hone at whatever angle I need. On the finish stone I'll raise a couple degrees as I'm chasing the burr off- basically a tertiary bevel. On the first honing after grinding the secondary bevel will be tiny, maybe 1/64". At this stage sharpening is lightning fast and its very easy to get extreme sharpness. If I let the bevel grow to 1/16" wide then sharpening is noticeably slower and it's a little more difficult to chase the last bit of sharpness. Full flat bevel would be like honing something 1/8" wide or more. If there's much wear or any damage to remove, doesn't sound like fun. I understand it can be done but can't see what the benefit is, provided you have a means of grinding the primary bevel.

I understand that on some tools a flat bevel is important to the way it's used, like mortise chisels. So I do sharpen those on the full bevel. I also sharpen my Japanese tools with a flat bevel, because they look cool that way (and I am sketchy about grinding them). Being laminated makes them pretty easy to deal with even on Arkansas stones. Though honestly they require more skill to sharpen that way than if I were to grind a primary and hone them like the rest of my tools, due to the way you have to constantly bias the pressure towards the hard steel to avoid laying the bevel back with each sharpening.


Re: the ruler trick, never done it for some reason but it always seemed to me like a good way to deal with the wear bevel on plane irons. It can take quite a bit of honing on the bevel side to completely remove it, and if you don't get completely remove it it's hard to truly get rid of the burr.

[Jim Koepke]

If you can afford Lie Nielsen and Veritas tools, you can probably afford a Tormek to regrind your primary bevel and a fleet of fancy water stones.
[edited]

Only a few of my tools are Lie Nielsen or Veritas. When first starting in woodworking buying a plane at a yard sale or flea market was something that required a commitment to saving up some money.

The other side of this is a lot of my tools that need sharpening are non-woodworking tools. They may not play well with a Tormek or other grinder.

I'm confused as to what the gripe is about secondary bevels. They are extremely common not only in woodworking tools, but on almost every knife ever made. Reducing the area to be honed makes a lot of sense.

It really seems like the gripe is more about gadgetry and fussiness, especially setting a honing guide two or three times during a sharpening. Which I agree with, but there's no need for that. You can freehand a tiny secondary bevel on a chisel or whatever, just like you freehand a pocket knife. In fact the chisel is much easier since the edge is short and straight.

My gripe is so many people seems to be insisting there is something wrong with those of us who like the simplicity of a hollow grind or flat bevel.

On most of my tools I grind a flat 20 degree primary and then freehand hone at whatever angle I need. On the finish stone I'll raise a couple degrees as I'm chasing the burr off- basically a tertiary bevel. On the first honing after grinding the secondary bevel will be tiny, maybe 1/64". At this stage sharpening is lightning fast and its very easy to get extreme sharpness. If I let the bevel grow to 1/16" wide then sharpening is noticeably slower and it's a little more difficult to chase the last bit of sharpness. Full flat bevel would be like honing something 1/8" wide or more. If there's much wear or any damage to remove, doesn't sound like fun. I understand it can be done but can't see what the benefit is, provided you have a means of grinding the primary bevel.

For a few years in my early days of woodworking there wasn't a means of grinding a primary bevel available to me.

Grinding metal off of my blades doesn't appeal to me. It takes more time and removes more metal than desired.

Usually my blades are sharpened well before there is much wear damage. This was my initial gripe with Hock Blades. They wear smoothly without visible degradation to the shavings.

The main indicator of my Hock O1 blades wearing is the inability to take super thin shavings. Until this was figured out they would have more of a wear bevel than most of my other blades.

Sharpening before acquiring a significant wear bevel saves time in the long run.

I understand that on some tools a flat bevel is important to the way it's used, like mortise chisels. So I do sharpen those on the full bevel. I also sharpen my Japanese tools with a flat bevel, because they look cool that way (and I am sketchy about grinding them). Being laminated makes them pretty easy to deal with even on Arkansas stones. Though honestly they require more skill to sharpen that way than if I were to grind a primary and hone them like the rest of my tools, due to the way you have to constantly bias the pressure towards the hard steel to avoid laying the bevel back with each sharpening.

That is funny about mortise chisels, some suggest they are one of the places where a secondary or a convex bevel can be advantageous.
(Oooh Nooo Mister Bill here comes another sharpening thread! )

Stanley proudly claimed their plane blades, being laminated, made them easier to sharpen.

Re: the ruler trick, never done it for some reason but it always seemed to me like a good way to deal with the wear bevel on plane irons. It can take quite a bit of honing on the bevel side to completely remove it, and if you don't get completely remove it it's hard to truly get rid of the burr.

Except when first using my Hock blades a major wear bevel hasn't been a problem. Rob Cosman uses the ruler trick on a blade fresh out of the package. There wasn't likely a wear bevel to be removed on that blade.

jtk

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I used the ruler trick on a plane blade from an otherwise decent plane made in India. The back was horrible and one corner was really out of wack. I needed to remove a bunch of metal to fix that problem, but the ruler trick just made it work. Took a while for me to e willing to do it, but when I finally decided to give it a try, I was very grateful at how well it worked.

[Tony Wilkins]

To me, that’s the time when it’s most beneficial. I’m still trying to decide personally if it worth it on the super prepared blades from “premium” new makers - especially ones I’ve already done it to.

[mike stenson]

We shan’t speak of that abomination!

I watched that in a theatre with a friend of mine. We were literally the only people in the theatre, we were in Europe so beer was available.. it was the most fun time I've ever had at a movie.

[harold schmonz]

I watched that in a theatre with a friend of mine. We were literally the only people in the theatre, we were in Europe so beer was available.. it was the most fun time I've ever had at a movie.

They didn't have drive-in movie theaters when you were young?