Reply To: Sharpening a number 4 plane
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I also have the problem you are describing I think. It’s as if there are narrow but visible sections of the wood surface that the blade does not cut, even with a fresh edge. I couldn’t figure it out either.
Then recently I changed strops. I made a new one out of a thinner, softer leather I had lying around because I wanted to try my old bar of Flexcut Gold compound again, mainly out of curiosity. My old strop was thick, hard leather and Veritas green compound. I also modified my stropping technique, bearing down with my upper body weight about 30 times the way Paul advocates. Before I would not use that much down pressure, depending on the compound to do the cutting, and only stropped til the burr was not felt. The main reason I did this was that I believed all that heavy stropping would round over the edge.
I noticed a difference right away. Visually and to the touch, the edge was more refined. And those streaks in the wood were absent. So I think that was it, that the edge was not perfect enough. The next thing I noticed was that this edge did not last very long, and the streaking would come back sooner than I’d like due to wear and tear on the edge. But I could also now identify the tiny imperfections caused by wear that corresponded to the streaks.
But at least it was progress in the right direction 🙂