Reply To: Keeping chisels square when sharpening

Sharpening small chisels is hard and for quite a while I pulled out my honing guides when sharpening them. But no more. Like Keith, I now sharpen narrow chisels differently than wide ones. I found skewing them at all was a disaster and lead to the chisel being seriously out of square. No doubt that is because I am not well coordinated, but there it is. Now I generally hold them straight to the stone and move the chisel forward as if trying to carve a little bit out of the stone. And like Keith, I hold the tip of the chisel down with one finger. I actually let my finger touch the stone a bit to help control the engagement of the tip with the stone. I try not to be too aggressive since that little chisel tip can get seriously out of skew with just a few strokes! If the chisel is a bit out of square, I simply put a bit more pressure on one side or the other as a sharpen. And I generally start by taking a few strokes with the chisel at a low angle to take a bit off the belly since it is easy for me to get too much of an angle on these chisels. I then gently ease the angle up till I feel the tip engage and boom, with only a few light strokes — gently — the tip is done. After a lot of frustration, I finally get a lovely camber on the small chisels much as Paul suggests.