Sharpening chisels?

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  • Carlos
    Veteran Member
    • Jan 2004
    • 1893
    • Phoenix, AZ, USA.

    #16
    The Sharp Pebble stuff looks to be pretty good, without the cost of some of the more famous stone brands.

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    • leehljp
      Just me
      • Dec 2002
      • 8429
      • Tunica, MS
      • BT3000/3100

      #17
      Originally posted by dbhost
      Anyone have tips on manual honing of turning tools. Most notably fingernail gouges and bowl gouges?
      Click image for larger version  Name:	Boxed Chisels and sharpener.jpg Views:	0 Size:	99.2 KB ID:	849531

      That was a chisel set a friend (Mr. Maeno) in Japan gave me. Notice the green on the wood? That is balsa wood. Mr. Maeno rubs green buffing compound onto balsa and hones it there. You could Do the same thing to a leather strop or other hard leather curved to the rough diameter of the bowl gouges and swipe a few times.

      In case you are wondering how well this works, Mr. Maeno was a master in finishes and wood working. He came to the US several times while I was in Japan and taught Japanese wood working techniques at seminars. One of his participants on two different occasions was Sam Maloof, who gave Mr. Maeno a signed copy of his (Sam's) book with a special hand written letter in it. Mr. Maeno was a stickler for sharp tools as in Japanese sharp. I was kinda taken aback by how he used the simplest methods to beat anything a mechanized tool could do!

      As to his sharpening method, I went by his house once and he took me into his basement. He had shaving threads there from a long board he had been planing; the shaving threads were about 2 inches wide and 3 feet long that were so thin that I could literally read a newspaper through it. When I commented on how sharp his hand plane was, he said "It is not as sharp as it could be. I will call you when I sharpen it and let you see what sharp IS.

      A few weeks later he called and asked me to come over. He made the comment: You know how humidity changes makes wood expand and contract? I said yes. He said, well I planed this board 3 days ago. We had humidity increase yesterday and today. The hard grain stays the same; the soft wood between the hard expands with humidity increases much more than the hard layers. Then he said, "Watch This!" He proceeded to cut beeds of soft wood between the hard wood. No hard grains were cut, but strings of the soft wood that raised with the humidity increase came off.

      He used that method above for sharpening his had plane. He did use a guide for shaping and then hand honing.

      Get a piece of hard leather, form it to the general shape of your gouge and use buffing compound to hone it. Use more course compound if you need to bring it up a notch before using buffing compound.
      Last edited by leehljp; 03-26-2022, 08:40 AM.
      Hank Lee

      Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted!

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