Sharpening: Anyone used the HF Wet sharpener?

[Al R.]

I think the Makita 9820-2 (also available from Grizzley) makes the Worksharp look sick.

Apparently no one has the HF sharpener?

No one willing to state that a hollow bevel for jointer blades is OK?

I have the HF one. I have not used it for planer blades but I think the Scissor jig probable will take that long blade. If you buy the Tormek jig for the planner blade it is over $160, just the jig I think. It is good to add a wooden base to the HF; otherwise the plastic case is so cheap that could break easily by moving it. Mine broke on a corner a little bit.

The Grizzly one is similar to the HF one, I have seen that Grizzly have some products that HF has; they just paint them green (the manufacturer) add the Grizzly name and they sell it for twice the price.

I ended up buying also another 8” grinder from Woodcraft which has 1700 rpm to use it before getting into the HF-wet one because is really slow, mostly for resharpening a little bit (at least for me). I have no time sometimes to wait that long while counting the stars; however the leather wheel is very good for final honing. Before that I use a 1000/6000 stone with the LV-Veritas® Mk.II Honing Guide which gives you exactly the bevel angle you need.

As somebody said the "The Complete Guide to Sharpening" from Leonard Lee is a good book that guides you to almost any type of sharpening. Very useful to have it in your library at hand when needed.

[Al R.]

I have the HF one. I have not used it for planer blades but I think the Scissor jig probable will take that long blade. If you buy the Tormek jig for the planner blade it is over $160, just the jig I think. It is good to add a wooden base to the HF; otherwise the plastic case is so cheap that could break easily by moving it. Mine broke on a corner a little bit.

The Grizzly one is similar to the HF one, I have seen that Grizzly have some products that HF has; they just paint them green (the manufacturer) add the Grizzly name and they sell it for twice the price.

I ended up buying also another 8” grinder from Woodcraft which has 1700 rpm to use it before getting into the HF-wet one because is really slow, mostly for resharpening a little bit (at least for me). I have no time sometimes to wait that long while counting the stars; however the leather wheel is very good for final honing. Before that I use a 1000/6000 stone with the LV-Veritas® Mk.II Honing Guide which gives you exactly the bevel angle you need.

As somebody said the "The Complete Guide to Sharpening" from Leonard Lee is a good book that guides you to almost any type of sharpening. Very useful to have it in your library at hand when needed.

These are the pictures related with what I said on previous posting.

1st- The orange grinder is the HF one. You see the base I did because is very fragile, and if you want it to hold for yrs then this is a good approach. I am showing the scissor-jig with a long ruler attached, to show you that probable the same way a planer blade (which is smaller) can be used here as well.

2nd -On the other side I got a 1700 rpm grinder from Woodcraft and adding a shop-made-jig-base (just with pieces of 2x4) you can use the same jigs from the HF grinder (now you got two-for-one!).
The other jig you see is done from a base of a telescope I bought for my son yrs ago. I gave it as a gift to a friend’s children and in two weeks they had it broken (I had it for 5 yrs), so I asked him to give it back to me to use the base for whatever could come up to my mind, and that’s the way the tool rest idea came up. I can move it up, down and into the sides, same front and back. All done with scrap pieces of wood that sometimes we throw them in the garbage and they really can always be used for “something”.

[tkarlmann]

Thanks AIR ..

I'm stil not certain if I want to place a bevel on my jointer knives.

[Al R.]

I'm stil not certain if I want to place a bevel on my jointer knives.

For the jointer I suggest that you should probable better keep the same pattern that came from the factory, and with these type of grinders that have jigs all you have to do is just measure first what the bevel-angle you have and transfer it to the jig. For jointer blades this low speed grinder as the HF or Tormek are good as you want to go carefully and little by little avoiding damage.

[Al R.]

I’m adding some new feature added to the pictures I previous posted before in case somebody finds it useful. The jig I built besides the grinder now can be moved to the sides thanks to an axle-bolt in the center, that way you can avoid any uneven sharpening. It can be graduated to accomplish same both measurements from the sides of the grinder-stone to the blade you sharpen.

[Al R.]

water stones

To complete more information about sharpening, this is a simple shop-made-with-scraps way I did to lay down my sharpening stones without having to buy something more expensive. There are here grits from 120 inexpensive stones to 6000x.

I oil (clean car oil) the board regularly to protect it against humidity when using it due to the wet stones.