Sharpening Revisited

Warning - discussion of sharpening ahead.  It is one of these topics like religion and politics (or Ford vs. Chevy pickups) that gets folks heated up.  I am not adamant about anything.  I have a system I've been using and have been happy.  I am sure that there are many other systems that work well and maybe even better.

In 2006 I posted how I was sharpening.  It was the "Paul Sellers" diamond stone method (Figure 1).  It's basically the same system with just a few adjustments (Figure 2).  

Since I don't have a grinding wheel of any kind, I have chosen to use a honing guide.  On occasion, I had gotten the bevel too steep when free hand sharpening.  Using a honing guide to get the bevel back down even with 80 grit sand paper is a bit time consuming and not fun.  As such, I avoid the problem with a honing guide.

The other change is an addition of another stone.  Per Paul Sellers, the first three are coarse, fine, super fine (I don't remember the grits anymore).  For my tools that are high carbon steel, this works fine.  However, for Lie-Nielsen, their A2 steel was taking a long time for me to feel the bevel on the coarse stone.  My solution was to purchase an extra extra coarse stone when working my tools that have A2 steel.  Somewhere between 50 and 100 strokes and I feel a good burr on the extra extra coarse diamond plate.  I then move on to coarse, fine, extra, fine, strop.  In less than 5 minutes I have a sharpened blade.

It took me a few years before I really felt confident that I was sharpening well.  What helped was that I took some of my Lie-Nielsen tools to one of their shows and had them sharpen.  The sharpness and shavings was similar to what I was seeing.  As such, I felt better.

For some reason, I was afraid to use the strop for a number of years.  I don't know why.  I think it was because I was afraid of "rolling the edge."  I think that is more hype than reality.  This is done freehand.  You can tell when the angle is right as the blade moves nicely over the strop.  

Where I find the strop really handy is to "refresh" the blade.  There have been some times where I have had highly repetitive work.  I noticed the chisel wasn't working as well (mostly by just having used it a lot now and having developed a sensitivity of fresh sharpened vs. not), I pulled out the stop.  Gave it 30 strokes and there was a night and day improvement.  I had heard folks say it makes a big difference.  I was skeptical until I did it for myself.  

I won't say I enjoy sharpening but at least I am not comfortable doing it and do it often enough so that I am not working with a dull blade.

Oh, I like to use a 30 degree bevel.  I sharpening everything to 30 degrees (less to remember that way). Since I don't have any kind of grinding wheel, I don't use a secondary bevel.  I know a lot of folks do and that is fine by me as well.  It's real easy for me to set the distance form the honing guide.  When I built this, I set it up so that the side to the left and in front of my stones is the distance I need on the honing guide.

Figure 1 Image of what I had in 2016

Figure 2 Image of what I am using in 2020