Completely Confused About Grinding Plane Sharpening

[bill epstein]

I

I do not have a bench grinder, and given my limited space, I would really prefer to not have to use one.

Apologies if this should be obvious. Sometimes there is too much information on the internet.

I can relate to that, my "shop" is the spare bedroom.

Just this morning I returned a 2 3/8" blade from the 30* bevel I had on it to the original 25*. 4 sessions with 60 grit paper on a piece of Float Glass. Took about an hour. What I do is hold the paper on the glass with a pair of spring clamps that I position so the clamps hang off the front of the bench and that keeps the glass and paper from moving on the push stroke. Some masking tape holds the front edge of the paper on the pull. I use a Veritas guide.

After the bevel was established with the 60 grit, I went to 100, then 220, then a 600 water stone, and finally just a polish on an 8000. Last, a few passes with the +1* knob on the 8000 to make a micro bevel and only then a few passes on the 8000 with the flat side down. Excellent sharpness is the result.

Keep in mind the aim isn't to cut hair, it's to plane wood. Very careful attention to reseating the chip breaker and the assembly in the plane is at least as important as the grinding and honing.

With practice, no matter which of the methods you read here, your sharpening and adjustments will get better, but the basics should result in a satisfactory beginning.

[Jerome Andrieux]

Can a plane blade be properly sharpened without using a grinder?

Sure. I would recommend you buy some decent stones on the fine side and some coarse sand paper.

First, you establish a ~25 degrees bevel on the coarse medium. This takes time and effort.

Then, you sharpen / hone / polish at ~30 degrees with your fine stones. This is fast, light and easy.
Increasing the angle means that you don't need to hone a lot of material, just the tip.
Also polish the back of the blade, or use the similar technique called the "ruler trick" if the back isn't perfectly flat.

You will ultimately need to reset the 25° bevel, but you may have gained a solid sharpening technique by this time

[Tom Mayock]

Thanks for all of the input. I am starting to see why I confused originally.

I do now have a strop. It sounds like to round out my sharpening station in a corner I will buy some float glass and coarse grit sand paper. I am looking forward to figuring this out and tuning up a #4 Stanley that has seen better days. I managed to get the plane cutting with my previous setup, but the post-planing surface still required a lot of sanding to make things presentable even to my untrained eye.

[Jim Koepke]

Thanks for all of the input. I am starting to see why I confused originally.

I do now have a strop. It sounds like to round out my sharpening station in a corner I will buy some float glass and coarse grit sand paper. I am looking forward to figuring this out and tuning up a #4 Stanley that has seen better days. I managed to get the plane cutting with my previous setup, but the post-planing surface still required a lot of sanding to make things presentable even to my untrained eye.

Try to find sand paper with an adhesive back. Some folks use a spray adhesive others use water. This is often available in 3 or 4" wide rolls. Sand paper can have a tendency to bow or buckle when the blade is pushed on the paper. This can dull an edge more than sharpen it. PSA (Pressure Sensitive Adhesive) paper has less tendency to do this.

There are monument makers in just about every part of the country. They are the folks who make tombstones. They are one source for a good piece of granite to set up a production:

Granite on Horse.jpg

This piece is 4' long. A magnet wrapped in paper is used to remove the swarf every few passes. This is a more of a luxury, not a necessity. It was only $25. At the time my accumulation of tools to rehab was going full bore.

Remember, the coarser the abrasive the more work to get rid of the deep scratches. Unless a blade is really bad a 200 or 300 grit abrasive works fast enough at removing metal. On my set up it can get the blade warm by hand. It also removes deep nicks, skews or sloppy bevels fairly quick. This is where a blade holder can be very handy. It lets one establish a bevel without much work other than going back and forth.

A shop making stone countertops may also have small useable off cuts.

Often big box stores will have returned granite tiles or a sale and a good flat 16X16" piece can be bought for $1.

Float glass is also a good choice.

When your plane leaves a surface sand paper can only scuff or make dull, you know you are on the right path.

jtk

[Eric Rathhaus]

If you're thinking of sandpaper on glass, a glazer told me all glass is now float glass. If you specifically look for glass for sharpening, you'll probably pay more than necessary. I read on another forum that a good way to buy glass without overpaying is to tell them you need a certain size piece for a cabinet shelf. Although I have a grinder, I use sandpaper for every stage of sharpening. Most will tell you this method ends up being more expensive, which is true if you only buy a few stones and stick with those. However, it seems that most on this forum end up buying many different stones and diamond plates so that I think the cost savings is theoretical for most people. I'm not advocating this method as better but I'm providing a counter point to what you'll read and hear.

[mike stenson]

Just echoing what has been said really, but even if you end up using another method of sharpening down the road.. the supplies are still useful. I still use a granite surface plate for flattening the backs of irons and chisels, and I use 4" wide PSA backed sand paper for this (a heat gun and some goof off makes cleaning it easy). It'd work very well for grinding the primary bevel as needed (it's really not needed much for the most part, even though I like to have a hollow grind for freehand sharpening I will admit to that happily).

[Leo Butler]

Hi Tom. Something I've come to be careful about as a guy who did it wrong for a long time can be summed up as "the burr is the word" (with all due apologies to The Trashmen). No matter how good things look while sharpening, a consistent burr from side to side is key at each grit you're using. Once I finish with a particular grit, I carefully pull the burr off the flat side of the blade on my 5000 grit water stone then move to the next grit, then I finish on the 5000 stone and finally strop to create a microbevel. In the past I didn't pay close enough attention to the burr and my results were inconsistent, to say the least.

My first sharpening setup involved Norton waterstones - 220, 1000 and 5000 grit. I hated that 220 stone, as it went non-flat within a few strokes. The 1000 wasn't nearly as bad; the 5000 wears very slowly and I love it. For the coarse grinding I switched to a 300 grit diamond plate and it's much better, and I also use a granite stone with 180 sandpaper for more heavy duty material removal (divot/chip in a blade). Chips can/will happen even when you're being careful. Re-establishing a clean primary bevel is the thing that will be the most time-consuming with a manual setup. The rest of the sharpening process should be pretty quick (minutes).

At the risk of not knowing when to stop, I'll mention the "Ruler Trick" by David Charlesworth that saves you a bunch of time flattening the back of your "bevel down" plane blades (but not to be used for chisels). I only recently learned about this after discovering this thing called "Youtube" and it's a big time saver.

- Leo

[Warren Mickley]

Thanks everyone so much everyone for the clarification. This really helps a lot.

It looks like the coarse stone in the set that I just ordered is 600 grit oil stone. Would you say this is coarse enough to handle grinding?

I use bench stones without a grinder the way I was trained in 1962. The set you ordered (soft, hard and black Arkansas stones) does not have a coarse stone. They are all polishing stones. The soft Arkansas stone is not a 600 grit stone; it is more like a 6000 or 10,000 grit stone. These stones are good at removing scratches, but not good at removing the amount of material to remove the wear on a dull tool.

You need a coarse stone, what was traditionally called a rub stone. The good news is these stones are relatively cheap. I would recommend something around 8X2X1.

Here are some possibilities:
Silicon carbide ( crystolon, carborundum) combination coarse medium
King 800 stone
Norton medium or coarse India or combination.

I would avoid harsh stones like diamond or Shapton because they make deep scratches which would be difficult to remove with your soft Arkansas.

[Tom Mayock]

So until now I only had the combination stone that is linked below. At least as per Amazon, the coarse side is 150 and the fine side is 240. Should I continue to use this for the coarse work, or is this a piece of garbage?


https://www.amazon.com/Bora-501057-C.../dp/B003Y3BMAW

[Jim Koepke]

So until now I only had the combination stone that is linked below. At least as per Amazon, the coarse side is 150 and the fine side is 240. Should I continue to use this for the coarse work, or is this a piece of garbage?


https://www.amazon.com/Bora-501057-C.../dp/B003Y3BMAW

If it does what you want it to do it is not garbage.

These stones are good at removing scratches, but not good at removing the amount of material to remove the wear on a dull tool.

This is an important point for people buying a lot of used tools.

Otherwise there is good reason for not letting a tool get so dull as to need so much work restoring its edge. A few quick trips to the stones during the day saves a lot of time over one long session on the stones.

jtk

[Tom Mayock]

I agree completely on the garbage comment. Unfortunately at this point I am so inexperienced with sharpening that I am not completely sure what that stone should be doing. Until I really started reading up on sharpening, I thought that stone was all that I needed to get a nice cut with a hand plane, and the results were very disappointing.

[Rafael Herrera]

I agree completely on the garbage comment. Unfortunately at this point I am so inexperienced with sharpening that I am not completely sure what that stone should be doing. Until I really started reading up on sharpening, I thought that stone was all that I needed to get a nice cut with a hand plane, and the results were very disappointing.

Sharpening is a pretty dense subject.

Aluminum oxide is also sold under the trade name India by Norton. It comes in coarse, medium and fine, don't bother to assign them a grit number.

Your particular stone I would say is ok for sharpening axes, knives, and other non-fine cutting tools. The only way you'll know if it works for you, on these tools, is to try it.

It's also ok for re-profiling or repairing chisels and plane irons. It can get the tool ready for the next stages where you can use finer media.

Do you have some old tools you can practice with? work them with your AO stone and see the results.

[Charles Guest]

I am trying to pick up some hand tool skills, and I understand that sharpening correctly is very important for getting the best performance out of the tools. I have been reading -- arguably too much -- about how to sharpen plane blades, and I am now totally confused about the grinding part of the sharpening process. Some discussions of sharpening start with someone taking the iron to a grinding wheel, while other discussions start the process with oil or water stones. Can a plane blade be properly sharpened without using a grinder?

If a grinder is required, how often do you need to regrind the primary bevel?

I have a Stanley 5 that I purchased off of Craigslist that I am trying to learn on. I do not have a bench grinder, and given my limited space, I would really prefer to not have to use one. So far I have been trying to get by using a cheapo two sided sharpening stone from Amazon. Results have been meh. I just ordered this set of oil stones (https://www.bestsharpeningstones.com...&product_id=77) and got a strop. I have also been using a honing guide.


Apologies if this should be obvious. Sometimes there is too much information on the internet.

Read this, it'll keep you grounded:

http://www.richardjonesfurniture.com...harpening.html

[ken hatch]

I use bench stones without a grinder the way I was trained in 1962. The set you ordered (soft, hard and black Arkansas stones) does not have a coarse stone. They are all polishing stones. The soft Arkansas stone is not a 600 grit stone; it is more like a 6000 or 10,000 grit stone. These stones are good at removing scratches, but not good at removing the amount of material to remove the wear on a dull tool.

You need a coarse stone, what was traditionally called a rub stone. The good news is these stones are relatively cheap. I would recommend something around 8X2X1.

Here are some possibilities:
Silicon carbide ( crystolon, carborundum) combination coarse medium
King 800 stone
Norton medium or coarse India or combination.

I would avoid harsh stones like diamond or Shapton because they make deep scratches which would be difficult to remove with your soft Arkansas.

This is something I've posted about many times, While I think diamond stones can be used for grinding, neither diamond or Shapton are good for honing or polishing. The scratch pattern is too deep and sharp sided from either type stone. The Shapton because of the scratch pattern will give an impressive shine but a poor cutting edge. Diamonds are not good for honing or polishing because of the type scratches left.

ken

[Jim Matthews]

I use an Atoma 400 for coarse grinding, and cleaning up the surface of my oil stones. I use WD40, because it's easy to wipe up and I like the smell.

It's not an ideal lubricant, but I use it for basic lubrication, removing rust and labels, too.

Most times my Norton coarse "India" stone will reshape any edge and raise a quickly raise a burr.

It's rare I have a blade so badly damaged, or out of square that power is required.

For that I use a 3M fine deburring wheel.