honing guide suggestions wanted
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25 July 2019 at 11:39 am #593177
I originally bought a cheap guide when I started, and it is so fiddly to set-up and get the actual blade clamped straight, that I decided to try free-hand. I did make myself a wooden triangular guide with a 25 degree corner on one side and 30 degree on the other side, and I lay this on the stones before aligning the blade against it, so that my hands are in the correct position …. really quick and effective for that part. On the whole, hand sharpening is OK, but I do find myself “micro-adjusting” a lot to try and get the edge square/perpendicular … especially for chisels, so I am not sure how much time I might be saving and the spokeshave blade is getting a bit of a challenge too.
As I have an Amazon voucher from Christmas waiting to be spent – I have finally decided to buy a decent quality honing guide. As the Richard Kell one wasn’t available on that platform – I am going for the Veritas.
I do have 3 old planes (2 wooden and one Record no 3) to bring back to life, so I will use the guide when it arrives to start on these.
The guide I use is from Dictum: https://www.dictum.com/en/honing-guides-ehd/double-jaw-honing-guide-711400
The difference to the Eclipse guide is the much wider (26mm) roller. I like the wide roller very much, because it makes relatively easy to keep the chisel or blade perpendicular to the sharpening plate.E.
2 August 2019 at 11:59 am #595401I have a love/hate relationship with honing guides. I’ve used three and share my thoughts below.
I will say that the honing guide was most useful when starting out, as it removed a variable. With the guide, I no longer needed to worry about the angle, so I could focus on getting the blade sharp. Over time, I’ve stopped using it on chisels and my scrub plane blade; I now do those free hand. I know some folks obsess over the angle of their chisels, but I haven’t seen any difference that a couple of degrees makes. I still use the guide for my plane blades, and in particular my bevel-up blades where the angle is more critical. On to my review:
1.) Eclipse-style guide. There are lots of clones, as I’m not sure Eclipse even makes one anymore. These are easy to use. You do need to create a jig out of a couple of blocks of wood screwed onto a plywood platform in order to set the angle, but that’s a one time event. The machining is not great, but there are youtube videos that show how to modify it. They’re cheap enough that it’s easy to buy one and then decide to upgrade later on.
2.) Veritas guide. I’m in the minority on this view, but I really don’t like it. I find the setup very fiddly, and I could never get it tight enough. The plane blade or chisel always ended up shifting side to side. But I do know others that really like the Veritas guide, so YMMV.
3.) Lie-Nielsen guide. Operates much like the Eclipse guide, but the machining is a lot nicer, and it holds plane blades much more securely. Like the Eclipse guide, you do need to make the angle setting jig, and the distances are different than with the Eclipse guide. LN has detailed info on their web site on how to do this. The drawback is that it is very expensive, and you need special attachments if you want to do chisels (and there are 3 of them). However, they have attachments for small blades and skew blades that the Eclipse does not have.
@georgewall42 I’m with you in the minority. I very much dislike the Veritas guide and for exactly the same reasons. It will hold a few things that the Eclipse won’t, but otherwise I find it frustrating, overdesigned, and not reliable.
Sounds like this may well be a silent majority opinion… I too have a “Veritas MKII standard” for about 10 years and disliked it from the start — fiddly, a pain to get a tight grip on, doesn’t work on well on narrow and/or thick blades, and the frustration gets amplified by the pretty steep price. I don’t know why it gets high praise. A much cheaper eclipse works as well or sometime even better, in my experience.
There is a Footprint Sharpening Guide that seems to be less-common, or overlooked. It has a wider (adjustable) roller for stability, and vertical thumbscrew clamp. Not so good for chisels, but great for plane irons. They accommodate short spokeshave irons too.
I can see why we’d strive for a square-edged chisel, for morticing etc., but is it at all necessary to be concerned whether a plane iron is precisely square? That’s what the Lateral Adjustment Lever compensates for.
Sure, you don’t want it way out, but measuring with an Engineer’s Square and checking for daylight seems like overkill.
So long as its straight and sharp.To paraphrase Paul; “Put it back in your plane, set your plane, and get on with the everyday of life really”.
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