Reply To: Stanley No. 4 – what am I doing wrong?
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By the way, if you haven’t used your Narex chisels and your first job is mortising, you almost definitely *must* sharpen first. They probably come out of the box with a low bevel angle, maybe even 25 degrees, which is too shallow for mortising. You’ll get only a few mallet blows before the edge likely fails. Put the chisel in the Eclipse for 30 degrees (35 for hardwood) and, if this is the first sharpening, go right to your middle grit paper. It will take only a few strokes to raise a burr because you’re really putting a secondary bevel onto the narrow bevel the chisel came with. Take a few passes on your fine paper and you’re ready to go.
Don’t skip this. At 25 degrees, that edge will fail for mortising. The Lee Valley Narex come with backs that are very flat, ready for polishing. You can start right away on the fine grit and I’d even try starting on the superfine. I don’t know how the non-LV Narex are, though. Look at the back of your chisel. If it shows circular patterns of grind marks, you probably must deal with that to get started. If it has a uniform, dull, matte finish, then it is like the Lee Valley chisels and you can put off polishing it for a bit, especially for mortising.
I keep suggestiong to put off polishing the backs of your blades, which isn’t what people usually say. The reason why is that, without a flat surface, and while you are improvising with paper, it is so, so easy to dub the corners of the blade. It takes the blink of an eye to do, but it takes a lot of work to fix. So, that’s why I’m saying to approach this iteratively. You’re getting things to cut. Do some work. Come back later when your hands and eyes have a bit of work behind them and take the next step then.