honing guide suggestions wanted
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I decided to try and restore my grandfathers old hardware store brand hand plane before I try to restore some old #4 and #6 Stanley planes I have. It’s in pretty good shape considering it’s age. Just some minor surface rust on the upper end of the plane iron. I’m currently flattening the sole and getting ready to sharpen the plane iron (I also have some chisels I wan tot do).
What would be a good honing guide to pick up. I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars but I also don’t want to buy junk. Any suggestions?
2 March 2017 at 2:02 pm #309734I bought the Robert Larson honing guide through Amazon for around $15. I’m not crazy about it for chisels (it doesn’t always hold them straight), but it works great for planes.
3 March 2017 at 8:46 pm #309771You should look for a honing guide, that has lateral guides, possibly something similar to what Paul Sellers is using in some of his videos. I have a guide without these guides and it is very difficult to get a square edge. Even if you manage to get the blade absolutely square, it might move slightly over time. However, with some care, it does work, and I only paid 10 Euro, including an oil stone and a bottle of oil.
But I decided to give free-hand sharpening another try, because squaring blades in that guide is really time consuming – with a lot of success. If you follow Paul Seller’s method to the letter, you still cannot achieve a bevel of exactly 25° or whatever number you chose, but you can maintain an existing bevel or change it gradually. If your father took good care of the blade, it should be no problem at all. Simply keep the bevel as it is, until you find out, that you want another angle. And do check your progress often, and make sure, you have a good light source, so you can see exactly, what you are doing. With more experience, you can add variations to the edge that are impossible with a honing guide (though perhaps not really necessary at all).
Narrow chisels are a bit harder free-hand, because it is fairly easy to rotate them just a little, and then get the edge out of square or even round. If you start with the plane iron and then do the larger chisels first, you already have some experience, when you turn to the smaller ones.
Apart from that, there is nothing bad about using honing guides, they only limit your possibilities, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Dieter
I agree with your comment on narrow chisels–I’ve really found no great way to get them perfectly square but I’ve taken comfort in Paul and others’ comments that it’s less critical on a chisel to have squareness–and I imagine that is particularly true with narrow chisels (like my 6-8mm ones). So they don’t look awesome but the function great.
3 March 2017 at 10:52 pm #309774The Veritas Honing Guide; I have used a few different methods and devices and this is by far the best. It is quality made for a start but also allows you keep the chisel or plane end perfectly square and ensures you get the perfect angle on the blade every time (sounding a bit like a Veritas salesman there – sorry). It is not that cheap but, in my opinion, money well spent. I’m only a hobbyist so Paul’s method of sharpening freehand is a bit tricky for me – I seem to stuff it up more than I get it right.
http://www.veritastools.com/Products/Page.aspx?p=144
Youtube clip here on how to use it:
5 March 2017 at 2:22 pm #309799I found a nice overview on honing guide types: http://www.getwoodworking.com/news/article/honing-guides-~-six-of-the-best/773
I have the first one, in Paul Seller’s videos, you can eventually see one similar to the second one. I like the idea of the last one, where the roller rolls behind the sharpening area, so you can use the entire abrasive area. the advantage of my guide is, that it can hold blades of any width, the second one is restricted to a minimum width.
I watched the veritas video. Impressive, but way over the top, I think, and it is quite expensive. It certainly gives good results, but others do too.
Dieter
If you’re not going to buy a quality honing guide like the Lie Nielsen or Veritas or Richard Kell (http://richardkell.co.uk/honingECom.htm) then be sure to modify the cheap eclipse-style honing guide.
and
Having said that, a quality honing guide is just not that expensive a purchase, and it will last you for the rest of your life. If they were 500 euros, OK, too expensive, but the Veritas is what, 70 bucks? And a cheapo is 15 bucks? So for a difference of 55 bucks over the course of your entire life, I don’t see the value in skimping on something as critical as your sharpening gear, which you’re going to use across multiple tools, multiple times per day.
2 June 2019 at 6:44 pm #577324I faced issues with a narrow chisel recently. Part of the problem I found is the rounding of the bezel from left to right.
If you apply pressure to one side the chisels edge deviates from the angle: one corner lower than the other. I try compensating for this by putting pressure on the other side to even it out. What wound up happening is the other side of the chisel gets ground down and the previously lower edge is higher now. I would reverse the process and eventually figured out that the center of the bevel is higher than both corners. I realized that the chisel started to form a belly in the middle part of the bevel (if you hold the chisel at the sharpening angle it now rocks left to right ever so slightly). The solution for me was on a coarse stone focusing on straightening the bevel surface going a couple of strokes at a time and each time wiping the blade and checking the burr and looking at where I’m bringing down the bevel. Eventually going real slow a few strikes at a time, and lighter pressure, I was able to get the edge straightened out. At this point I was able to rely on the flatness of the bevel to sharpen, and move to finer grit. This took about an hour to realize and straighten.Honing guides are a great thing, especially when a person is getting started. They help you find your angle, and keep your edges straight and square. As people continue in the hobby, some want to use the guides for every sharpening, and others go the freehand route. After a couple years of on/off woodworking, I’m mainly freehand, and I only use my guide to reset the bevel angle when I find my freehand sharpening has gotten off-kilter and is impeding my wood work, or I am setting up a new tool. It takes me 2-3 minutes to resharpen a tool freehand, whereas with the guide 6-7 minutes.
I can’t speak for other guides, but I do like my Veritas guide.
10 June 2019 at 8:54 pm #579828I have a cheapo like this, picked a couple up in B&Q a few years back. I did the FWW tune up, and it works very well indeed.
I also set a little piece of label on the plane iron to mark the position. It does not interfere with the plane iron in the plane, but lets me set up very quickly for a quick refresh of the blade. (Plus, if I have put anything specific in to the way that I shape the blade, I can write that on the label so I don’t forget.)
Colin.
P.S. Tried the Stanley top and bottom clamping one, could not get it to work well. Also, 40mm stone for a 42mm plane iron…….24 June 2019 at 11:24 am #583957I bought a Stanley honing guide that came with a stone (which I discarded) -it’s closer to the rubbish end of town but sufficent. The honing guide is good enough to get the 25 degree angle – I then put the 30 degrees on by hand without the guide as per Paul’s technique.
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