Sharpening plane iron: several newbie questions
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Dear all,
I am opening a new topic because I am puzzled about several aspects of plane iron sharpening. I have a Stanley #4 plane iron, which I have been using for 10 months (as an amateur – I still do not feel confident at planing). I recently tried to improve my sharpening skills (moving from oil stones to diamond stones) and also started to work on oak (before that, I only worked on pine and beech).
I was making a bread-board end cutting board, everything went relatively fine until the final steps (from 17:00 in https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/2013/07/breadboard-end-cutting-board-episode-5/). When I tried to plane the full board, I had tearout in several places. I also felt that I was not able to remove shavings from anywhere in the center of the board, I could only take shavings from the edges, so that the board started to be a little bit “bellied”. Note that I don’t have a cabinet scraper nor a card scraper (I did not find where to get these in France).
Then, when I tried to plane the edges (as Paul does from 27:30 in the video), I felt that I could not remove shavings from the end grain. When I tried a shallow setting, I had only “dust” coming out, and the end grain did not seem to move. When I moved the blade just a tiny bit deeper, the noise was not nice (as if the plane hurted something), and it seemed to “chatter” (I hope this is the correct word – I am not a native English speaker).
I looked at the plane iron and it seemed as if there were small fractures in the edge.During the process I tried to sharpen several times my plane iron to improve my results, but I never managed to have satisfactory results. Worse, I found that my iron seemed to become dull/fractured at a faster rate than I had ever experienced before.
I would really like to understand what is going wrong, but I feel a bit lost by the many possible reasons/things I do wrong. I would therefore like to ask the community a few questions that could help me obtaining decent results. Note that I have three diamond stones (220, 600, 1200). I sharpen with free hands, and I am confident that I stay within the 25-30° angle since I check it relatively often (but maybe it is wrong at a microscopic scale).
– I have a major problem with the burr when I sharpen. In his videos, Paul obtains a wire edge that he removes with simply “pulling” the back of the iron. When I do that, the burr goes on the other side (on the bevel). It never goes away. At this step I am generally confused about how to remove it. When I polish the bevel on raw leather (I don’t have the green polisher), the burr goes back to the flat face. Then I try to polish quickly the flat face on leather, and the burr goes up to the bevel again. My solution to remove this burr is generally to polish the bevel and the flat face multiple times with leather until I can no longer see it.
Do you think this inability to remove the burr after sharpening may be the source of the iron going dull very quickly?Do you have any idea of what could be the source of my inability to remove the burr?
– I live in France and I struggled to find diamond stones. I finally bought these types of stone: http://www.hmdiffusion.com/Pierres-d-etabli-diamantees-DMT-en-boites-plastique-11-15952-p.htm
These stones have many holes in the sharpening face, which I assume are designed to reduce manufacturing costs. Do you think these holes can be a source of problem for sharpening? Can they be the reason why I cannot remove the burr?
I have been concerned with this question ever since I bought them…– Given that this is the first time I work on oak, could it be that the plane iron goes dull extremely fast (in a few strokes) because of the hardness of end-grain? I feel this should not be the case since Paul does the entire work without resharpening his iron.
– My workbench is rather small, and when I plane it often moves a lot back and forth. Is this a major issue for planing especially on end-grain?
– It is possible that I did not sharpen enough my iron after fracturing the edge, and thus it “re-fractures” very fast when I plane end-grain?
– I am worried about the flat face of the iron. I tried to polish it with my 1200 stone; but since I have trouble removing the burr, I often rub this face either on the 1200 stone or on leather. Is it possible that I have done something wrong to this face, very close to the edge (Paul Sellers often insists that since this face has been polished we should not be working on it)?
– Could the issues come from something I do not suspect? E.g. the plane itself or something else? I am ashamed but my plane fell once of the workbench, about a month ago.
Any help would be really appreciated.
I can provide macrophotographs of my plane iron or anything else if you think it would be necessary to understand what I am doing wrong
I have attached a picture of my board before planing in order to lighten this very long post 😉– Boris
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You must be logged in to view attached files.25 November 2016 at 4:24 pm #142681You make abuRr on the 250. You refine it and thin it on the 600, and refine it until it almost , or does dissapear with the 1200 ,then buff . Sounds like you are not getting the burr off and it is rolling overdulling the edge
25 November 2016 at 6:44 pm #142683Perhaps I am wrong, but I don’t think, it is possible to get shavings from endgrain, it will always look a bit like dust. Endgrain-specialists, let us know please!
Well, I have trouble planing endgrain as well, but I found, that it depends a lot on the angle of attack. It is difficult to register the sole of the plane on a small surface, yesterday just 4 x 1 cm. When I got the angle right, it went quite smooth, like a brush on stone, but just a little bit off got me chatter again. Then, the direction of the annual rings plays a role too. Sometimes, it only works well from one direction, and then I find it impossible to make small circular movements, as Paul Sellers often suggests.
Concerning the burr when sharpening, I have the same issue, often have to move the burr back and forth a couple of times before it comes off. and, sometimes, this has exactly the effect, that deanbecker describes, it dulls the edge. But I think, this can happen only, when I am not careful with the angle on the bevel side.
The trouble with tearout and the plane only cutting on the edges of the board has been mentioned in one of the last Q&As. It might be a micro bevel on the plane, that makes the edge glide over the surface until there is enough resistance to cut, and then it cuts hard. I had the same issue, not sure, if I have resolved it. But often, I think, I can’t take off anything, because I trying to plane a valley that the blade simply can’t reach.
If there is one thing I have learned in woodworking so far, it is, that you need to stay conscious about your every move and engage all your senses. If you don’t, each result of your work will be a surprise.
Dieter
I am even more of a beginner than you, but I did just take a sharpening class with Tim Manney in the USA, so I’ll dare to offer some second-hand suggestions:
If you’ve discovered the technique of “chasing” the burr from one face to the other, you can keep doing that — plenty of people sharpen that way, polishing first one face, then the other, and gradually refining the burr until it is gone or nearly gone. (It’s okay to polish the back face during this process — just use the finer grits and keep it flat.) But I was taught to use fine stones for this, not an untreated strop.
http://antiquetools.com/sharp/sharpchasingburr.html
Or you can master the Paul Sellers technique by emulating him exactly, in which case I’d apply some polishing compound to the strop. As Joel says in this link, you can think of a polish-charged strop as a kind of hybrid between a plain strop and a fine stone:
https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/blog/529/title/The+Tools+of+Stropping
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by mechfish.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by mechfish.
@hugonotti: I’ve sharpened a drawknife to the point where it got actual shavings from end-grain pine. They weren’t 12-inch-long shavings or anything, but they were shavings.
In fact, the sharpening class I took used that as the acid test: If a tool can cut shavings from end-grain pine, that tool is sharp, and you can stop worrying about sharpening and get on with the rest of your craft. If the pine crumbles to dust, the tool could be sharper.
That said, we performed this test on Eastern white pine, not oak. I have yet to try shaving end-grain oak. I also have yet to sharpen any plane blades to this standard, but at least I now know it is possible!
I believe the goal should be to be sharp enough to get end grain shavings. Ash legs i was working on tonight, there are shavings, although you wont get nice long peelings just as a funtion of it being end grain. To the OP, please watch all the sharpening videos you can on the plane and even chisels. Once you have polished the backs you should only have to pull once just like in the videos. I also believe that you have several areas of tough grain to plane judging from your pic, and that a cabinet scraper would be beneficial. Good luck.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BrianJ.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by BrianJ.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.26 November 2016 at 9:28 am #142702Hi Boris,
it looks like you don’t get your blade sharp enough. Easy way to test this: does it cut paper without effort? You should be able to slice a sheet of paper in one movement. I would recommend you put a polishing compound on your leather. I live in Belgium and use this one:
Don’t buy from Amazon though, I only paid 11 euro for it. Don’t worry too much about the burr. I sometimes have it too that the burr isn’t gone completely. I switch back to the bevel on the fine stone, and then pull the back on the stone again to reduce it a bit further. Normally, when you strop you should get rid of it entirely.
I suspect Paul knows exactly when to stop sharpening, so that the burr is very tiny. That way he gets rid of it even before stropping. It takes some sensitivity to know when to stop, I guess.cheers,
Stijn1. Is the sole of your plane flat? This may be why you only get contact at the edges. It could also be the reason for the excessive chatter on end grain.
2. Check your plane blade. Has it been heated and lost temper making it soft. If plane blade is ok increase sharpening angle to make the wire edge super fine. If you can bend it back an forth a couple time it must be fairly thick.Hello everyone,
thanks a lot for all your detailed answers. The fact that none mentionned the other issues I was concerned with has reassured me a lot. From all your answers, I believe I have major problems sharpening correctly.
I have refined my issues around three aspects:
* I think my flat face was not polished correctly (even though I spent more than 1h on it Thursday evening). Possibly, my 1200 diamond plate is not fine enough to polish it.
* I have no correct stropping tool. I thought raw leather would be sufficient, but I believe from your comments that this is not a good idea.
* I really wanted to be able to sharpen free-handedly as Paul Sellers does. However, as a complete beginner this was not a good idea. I have discovered that I sharpened out of square (I had a 1mm distance from the square at one end of the blade). Furthermore, and I believe this may be the worst of my problems, I was sharpening at a 20, possibly 15° angle. Paul insisted a lot on not going beyond 30° when sharpening. I was so worried of not going beyond 30° that I resulted in sharpening at far less than 25°. I had a sliding bevel set at 30° to always check myself; this morning I set it at 25 and discovered I was far from 25°. I really hope this is the main issue because as I understand it, the angle is wrong for cutting properly, and the blade is thinner, which is probably why it fractured so fast.So here are the solutions I am applying today:
1. I polished the back face this morning again. I also decided to use my japanese plate which is not very flat, but has a very fine grain (6000 grit) to polish it as suggested by @mechfish. I hope I will be able to remove the burr in one pull after that. Even if I cannot, I am less confused about how to remove the burr thanks to your advices and the different links. I will not use leather until I have polishing compound. I will order online the buffing compound as recommended by @bossyrangs (thanks!).2. I decided to correct my sharpening bevel with a guide. I created an extremely simple guide (jig?) this morning and it works much better than I expected. I was amazed about the difference between a true 25° bevel and the bevel I created had when sharpening free handedly. It took me about 45 mn to grind the full bevel to 25°, and I think I removed something like 2.5-3mm of the blade before I had fully corrected it. This afternoon I will continue working on the bevel at finer grits. Finally, I will again try to apply the 30° microbevel free-handedly using Paul’s technique. I want to master that technique, and now that I have a guide to correct my mistakes, I feel much more confident to try it.
About end-grain shavings: I am reassured that I am not alone in struggling at this step. I believe from all your advices that sharpening properly should result in the ability to produce even small end-grain shavings. I will also study how my position and angle of attack affects the results. As @hugonotti stated, you have to engage all your senses when working wood. However, it is often difficult to be sure if what you felt was good or bad.
I have taken several pictures of my attempts this morning, and will continue this afternoon. I will post the pictures here after I have finished.
I am sincerely thankful for all your answers. I have many hopes that I understood the problems and now know how to fix them. This site has a beautiful community!
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
@mtaylor: okay I will check that also. I don’t have a large flat surface as Paul Sellers has in his videos, so I am not yet sure how I will check the flatness of my sole.
About the blade: I don’t think it has been heated so I see no reason for it to have become soft. But what you said about the angle confirmed what I suspected! Thanks!
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
1) You can/will get end-grain shavings–though probably not so much if free-planing the end-grain. But if you put it in a shooting board you should see actual end-grain shavings. They’re pretty cool because they crumble to dust in your hand–just think about the structure of those shavings and you’ll understand why.
2) I don’t know about “chasing the burr” but I always have a small rag handy so that I can wipe my blade clean once done sharpening. I would think the burr would release from the iron at this point if it didn’t do so when I pulled it flat on my strop. Just don’t touch the blade with your bare hands so you don’t slice yourself up.
3) Sometimes that 1/4 turn on the adjuster knob makes a big difference in the blade exposure–just fiddle around until you find the happy place where you can feel the blade engaging but just barely–usually a few passes with the blade barely exposed will take off tiny layers of high spots until you have a much more flat piece at which point the blade should gradually contact more and more surface. Sometimes it’s just that a few very tiny high spots prevent the rest of the plane from engaging with the surface until you’ve planed them away.
The one thing that I can say always causes me to make errors is a lack of patience. Not impatience (I’m generally very patient and methodical with my work) but rather those periodic episodes of impulsiveness where I find myself wanting to force a result quickly and end up doing something silly like moving a knife wall a fraction or causing some unintended tear-out…
26 November 2016 at 3:11 pm #142711Hi Boris,
I’m glad we could help. Sounds like your main problem was that your bevel angle was too shallow. That results in a fractured edge so you loose sharpness pretty quickly. Especially with end grain. Glad you sorted that out. It’s good that you use a guide now to check yourself, until you master the freehand sharpening. I started out with a simple wooden block cut at 30° that I placed on the sharpening stone to know the angle at which to hold the blade, but now I don’t use it anymore.
You also mentioned that you have trouble planing the middle of a board and that you end up with a bellied board after a while. As Mtaylor suggested, I would definitely check the flatness of your sole. Any piece of glass will do as a flat surface, but thicker is better (6 mm or more).
When planing, you need a rock solid bench, and you mentioned your small bench moves back and forth a lot. I had the same issue when I started out, and you wouldn’t believe the difference it makes to have a heavier bench. A quick fix could be to add a bottom shelf to your bench and put some bricks on it. Trust me, your planing will improve drastically.
Hi all,
first of all, I have attached some pictures to this message, in order to show you the progress. You can see a picture of the flat face before polishing (I really thought I had polished it, but on the picture it looks horrible).
[attachment file=”142713″]
After that, one picture of the polished flat face. Still not perfect, but I hope it is fine now.
[attachment file=”Flat_face_before_polishing.JPG”]
Then, pictures of the guide I made to sharpen. The guide is extremely simple and took me less than ten minutes to create (two wheels, a block of wood and two screws).
[attachment file=142715]
Finally, a picture of the bevel after hand sharpening. I believe it is much better now for, though I am certain I have a long way before it is perfect.
[attachment file=142716]
I checked the flatness of my sole, and it was indeed not flat. I think the corner where the plane once fell was creating a heavy spot on the sole. I tried to flatten it but could not obtain a perfect result. Nevertheless, it looked close enough to what Paul obtained in his bench plane restoration video.
@bossyrangs, thanks for your comments about the workbench. My workbench moving is a huge issue I think. I had already put two large stones on the bottom shelf of the bench, because before that, when i tried to plane, the bench would often start to fall aside. It was a great improvement, but it still moves a lot. I suspect this is because the legs are full of insect holes: I got this workbench from my grandfather, it had not been used in years (more than 15-20 years I think) and insects had claimed it. I tried to restore it, but there are hundreds of holes in each leg, so the wood structure must be really weakened.
Since it seems to be important, I think I will as a next step screw some wood/plywood on the back and side faces, in order to rigidify the structure.
I am longing to make my own workbench (I have watched all the videos of Paul Sellers about making a workbench), but I am so afraid to not be good enough to plane it properly that I am just waiting to be confident about it.- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
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You must be logged in to view attached files.26 November 2016 at 10:28 pm #142723That’s a nice rig! And your edge looks like it is completely straight now.
By the way, a simple flat surface is an enameled floor or wall tile. You should bring a straight edge, or borrow a metal engineers square from the next shelf, for testing and select the best possible one.
By the way, metal surfaces always look horrible on close up photos, except if you catch the direct light reflection. The bevel will become shinier over time, and the other surfaces don’t matter so much.
Dieter
Thanks @hugonotti, good idea! I will check that next time I go to the tool shop (not sure about the correct word for the shop, google translate didn’t help here).
I tried planing a few pieces for a dovetail box yesterday, and I feel I have rediscovered how to plane. It was so enjoyable! I have also obtained oak end-grain shavings with the shooting board. I was so confused by the fact that I felt my skills becoming worse and worse at planning, while in fact it was just that I was progressively distorting my plane iron bevel.
I think that I will also make a small piece of wood at a 30° angle, just to help me learn the correct position when sharperning with free hands.
Thank you all for your help, I am glad I can use my plane again! 😉
- This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by farewell.
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