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Hi Brett,
Nice to see a fellow Aussie on these forums. I’m also a programmer by trade, but dabble in electronics on the side. My work place has a basic electronics workshop, which includes a magnifying lamp and some head mounted magnifiers. The magnifying lamp is really handy when soldering PCBs and fiddly cables, as everything is well illuminated and the detail is much clearer.
Such a lamp might be useful on your workbench. The one in our workshop is a 3 diopter magnification from Altronics, and they also have a 5 diopter model. Here’s a link to their site: http://www.altronics.com.au/search/all/?sr=magnifier+desk+lamp
They also have other types of magnifiers and tools which might help.Thanks everyone for the input, the pencil marks are now gone!
@salko
I forgot to mention I did try an eraser without much luck, but then the eraser itself was old and plastic feeling. I went and bought a nice new one, and low and behold if the pencil markings don’t just disappear! I think I probably did mark the wood a little too heavily too, so I’ll keep my marks light on the next project.
@tomangle
Thanks for the tips. I don’t have a scraper yet, so that may be my next purchase.
@dbockel2
You’re right, I think part of my problem was the pencil markings were made with the tip of the pencil, so I probably pushed the graphite into the wood fibers. I’ll use a more angled, lighter touch next time.I’ve run into the same issue a few times due to a couple of different factors. The first was my combination square wasn’t fully tightened. It felt tight enough, but running the edge of the knife along it when marking was pushing the ruler edge away ever so slightly. This error was compounded on each face, so the resulting mark was about 1mm out.
The other main factor was I the way I was holding the square – my fingers weren’t in the right position to securely hold the square against each face. I think Paul mentions how he holds his square in one of his videos, which made me double-check my technique. Now I spread my thumb and forefinger along the length of the ruler, pushing down firmly. I use the remaining fingers to pull the square edge firmly against wood edge.
I’m new to sharpening and woodworking in general, and have run into the same issue with smaller chisels. I spent some time yesterday working on my sharpening technique to establish a square edge on a chisel I had put somewhat out of square, and got a fairly good result.
The main thing I found was to check squareness often, every three or four strokes. If the edge is beginning to develop an angle, apply pressure on the side opposite the angle. Be careful that the burr on the edge may look like the chisel is still square, but when it’s removed it’s not square at all (this was how I put the chisel out of square in the first place).
In terms of grip I held the blade quite low down with my right hand (I’m right-handed), with my index finger almost directly over the bevel applying pressure, while my left hand supports the handle at the correct angle. When I was correcting for angle, I slowly rolled my index finger pressure from the chisel edge toward the center. This was done to try prevent the chisel edge developing a central point as a result of applying pressure on opposite sides of the blade.
I also found it helpful to use a permanent marker to mark the whole bevel face, perform a few sharpening strokes, then check to see if my angle was correct and if I was out of square. At the same time I feel for the burr that is developing, checking it is consistent across the tip of the chisel.
I’m certainly no authority on sharpening, but the above did work for me (after some trial and error!)
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