Hand plane & sharpening advice sought

AstroKeith

AstroKeith

Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2020
Messages
259
So I've invested in enough power tools (for now! ::) )
The other most used ( and deficient) tool set I have are my hand planes. I have a stanley block plane that is just about OK.

My smoothing plane is junk I have decided. I have just spent a lot of money on a set of waterstones (£150) and the Veritas Mk2 system (£170) and spent hours putting an edge on the blade. Tried it on some oak and the blade edge disappeared in seconds. The adjustment mechanisms aren't good either so that plane is bound for the bin.

I've never used waterstones before and was surprised by the wear in the 400 stone after about an hour of hard work on the two blades. So it seems I now need a lapping stone - more money.

I do like the Veritas honing system.

So to progress I need a new smoothing plane and more investment in grinding and honing equipment. I'm used to a no4.

Options in the UK seems be Veritas (big choice of blade steel!), Clifton & Lie-Nielsen. I think I'm wanting a plane that I wont be using everyday, but when I do I need it to have kept its edge. I work with ash, oak and beech mostly. Opinions please! Looks like £200 to £300.

And then to honing. Do I really have to spend £200 on a lapping plate for my waterstones? Or should I have bought a machine (another £500?) to do the bulk of the work first? If so which?

My chisels  all need some 'tlc' and so whatever route I go forward with the need to be catered for.

Please help with a) selecting a plane and b) building up a capability to keep it and my other blades at peak condition.
 
Google Scary sharp...quick, low cost and reliable method for sharpening edge tools with supply kits widely available including Amazon.
 
Sharpening...finally a subject for which there is universally one shared opinion on how to do it correctly and the necessary equipment.  [big grin]

 
I have a LN 4-1/2 and love it- I have heard good things about Clifton but have no experience with them.  The only experience with Veritas is with their low-angle block plane- it has an adjustable throat and do use that regularly.  I got the 4-1/2 instead of the 4 for a few reasons: 1) fits my hand better, 2) little extra weight, and 3) has same width frog and blade as other planes that I want to add to my collection and will give me options between regular and high-angle frogs.

I've tried a number of things for sharpening- have a Worksharp (which I haven't used in quite a while), waterstones, and Trend diamond plates.  I now use a combination of the Trend Diamond plate (1000) then finish with the waterstones, sometimes doing some work with the 4000 and then finishing with the 8000.  I have a Shapton 16000 grit on order and hoping to use that to finish instead of the 8000.  I recently found Rob Cosman on Youtube and have learned a lot- not only about sharpening but use of hand tools in general (which is an area I'm lacking and want to do hand-cut dovetails).  I've tried his method of hand sharpening- very leery at first- but it really does work.  I've learned a lot from David Charlesworth videos, as well as sharpening videos on Lie-Nielsen's website. 

Good luck and happy hunting!

Regards,
Gerald

Edit:  I do have a DMT lapping plate used to flatten the waterstones.  It was expensive but does a great job.  There are many opinions on sharpening (as with everything else)- best thing is to get information from a number of sources, then do what you are comfortable with and your budget allows. 
 
As [mention]MikeGE [/mention]aptly pointed out, opinions on sharpening are incredibly varied and highly subjective. You just have to find what works for you.

As a fellow Festool buyer, I’m assuming you’re not shy with your budget. So with that in mind, for me it’s always ‘buy once, cry once.’ My 2c: Buy yourself a couple gorgeous Lie Nielsen planes and invest in the Tormek for sharpening. While I wish I didn’t have to spend as much, I’ve never once said “I wish I hadn’t bought this.”

I started with their Bronze No 4, a No. 62 Low-angle Jack and a small No. 60 1/2 block plane. With that you’ll have everything you need to compliment your power tools. It’s an awesome start to a collection that you can add to over time if you get more interested. It’s a slippery slope though from there, so be careful :)

With sharpening, keep your stones and honing guide to use for more ‘tune up’ sharpening to keep a great edge, but I love a true rotating Tormek stone to do base grinding first. The T4 is an awesome little unit and should be all you need, I just happen to have the bigger T8. It’s also an ecosystem you can invest in over time with new jigs as your needs evolve (turning tools, chisels, kitchen/edc knives, etc.) Shoot, sharpen your kitchen knives on it once and you’ll forget the cost.

Welcome to the fun rabbit hole of hand tools. Enjoy!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Lol.  [member=72891]AstroKeith[/member] If you check out the hand tool sub-forum (the next one after other tools and accessories), you will see some threads on the topic, including this recent one

Short answer is yes, you will need some sort of lapping plate for your waterstones.  Since I use Shapton ceramic stones for final honing, I just recently decided to invest in a large DMT lapping plate, but up until then I had been using a cheaper substitute -- I think for regular waterstones, you can get away with something like a Norton flattening stone.  But someone else should confirm, as I have never used traditional waterstones.  I mainly use DMT stones, which relieve you of the burden of flattening.

You can't go wrong with a Lie-Nielsen smooth plane.  My go to smoother right now is a LN 4 1/2 with a 55 degree frog, which allows me to work on most grains, with a few exceptions, without tearout.  I like the extra width and heft of the 4 1/2 vs the 4, but it's ultimately a matter of preference.  I also prefer the iron body to the bronze option that LN offers for the 4 and below, in case you're considering those options -- I just find it moves across the wood a bit better than than the bronze, but again, preferences may vary.  Some people are really into a Low angle no. 4 smoother, which both LN and Veritas offer, because of the adjustability of the mouth and different blade options.  I have the LN version, but I don't reach for it that often, and only use it for smaller, lighter work.  I just find it to be too light for a smoothing plane, and adjustability is not really a feature for me, since I like to keep the plane in the same configuration once I have found the optimal settings.

You will see in the linked thread a bunch of different answers about sharpening -- I ultimately settled on the LN homing guide, after using the Worksharp and the Veritas.

The reason to get a machine is to facilitate repairing badly chipped blades or resetting the bevel on an iron, both of which take a very long time working by hand.  The problem is that machines won't achieve as fine an edge as you get with stones, so it's not really an either/or, but instead a both/and.  Since I use lathe chisels, I decided to invest in a Tormek, but if you're just doing plane irons and chisels, you could just get a cheaper grinder for fast material removal.

I would highly recommend checking out the sharpening techniques tab on the blog maintained by someone who contributes regularly to the forum [member=4358]derekcohen[/member] .  In particular, his technique for sharpening the chipbreaker effects a miracle transformation in reducing tearout. 

MikeGE said:
Sharpening...finally a subject for which there is universally one shared opinion on how to do it correctly and the necessary equipment.  [big grin]
Click to expand...
 
The PV11 blades are probably the most durable option you have, but consider at least getting used to the idea that you’ll be running the blades over a really fine stone with each session to keep the edges working their best.  It won’t take long once you get the hang of it.  But if you let the edges go, you’ll be doing more work less often and working with a less than ideal blade.  I don’t think you gain much extending the times between sharpening.  Whatever you get should be miles better than what you just described with the Stanley. 

As for the rest, Mike and others are right.  Lots of ways, each has their own favorite, each at different price points.  Pick one and run with it.
 
Atoma diamond plates
Japanese water stones, some use a Nagura stone to create a slurry with a 8K stone.
Stropping.

I also use a Tormek, Scary Sharp with PSA paper, and green compound for stropping. 

Surgical sharp is your friend.

Rock on. 

 
I spent years and quite a bit of money trying to find a power sharpening system. I bought the Tormek 20+ years ago and found that it was difficult to get good at it with their jigs (which now have been improved in many ways).

I bought the Worksharp 3000 and found that it did get chisels and blades sharp but there were other drawbacks.

I finally just started hand sharpening and honing. I invested in some diamond plates for the coarse sharpening grits and Shapton Glass Stones for the fine grits (2,000, 3,000, 4,000, and 8,000). I now use these with  the Lie-Nielsen honing guide. I flatten my Shapton stones with the DMT Dia-Flat plate. With the combination of these plates, stones, the LN guide, and the DMT flattening plate, I get results that I wouldn't have dreamed of before. I'm still learning, but my chisels and plane blades are extremely sharp. Plus, honing a microbevel on these blades allows me to get them sharp again quickly on usually just the 4,000, and 8,000 Shapton stones.

I still own my Tormek and use it to sharpen my turning gouges and scrapers. I have also bought Tormek's diamond wheels and use them sometimes on chisels also if they need significant regrinding.

I don't really recommend the Tormek. It's expensive and you can get similar results for plane blades and chisels with a good slower speed grinder. Much cheaper and the results, with a good wheel, are excellent.

In the end, I found that hand sharpening, for the most part, gives me the best results.
 
Thinking about new plane blades, I recently got a new blade and chip breaker for my #6 plane from:

Hock Tools

It was a very good upgrade from the blade and chip breaker that was probably original with the plane.

Bob
 
What? Multiple opinions on sharpening! Surely not.

I think I get the prize for having tried the most sharpening methods/machines.

Tormek (dusty), Worksharp (dusty), DMT stones (dusty), Lie Nielsen waterstones (used a lot). Almost all my planes are LN as are the chisels I use the most. The LN guide used with their angle setting jig and their waterstones produce scary sharp edges. I do use the LN Dia-Flat stone for flattening the waterstones.
 
I don't think you will go wrong with a Veritas or Lie Nielsen smoothing plane. 

I'm also a fan of Shapton stones, although my 8000 is a Naniwa.  I flatten them all with a norton flattening stone and it works fine for me.

I sharpen freehand and that works fine for me, but honing guides are very useful sometimes.  I just bought the LN guide to try and see whether it can facilitate more consistency when doing things like double bevel sharpening.  The really important thing is to develop a sense of feel and sight for sharpness.  Even with excellent eyesight, it took me a long time to really learn to 'see' the edge of a blade in a way that meant anything useful.

Most blades will dull eventually over time. I don't think this is a problem as long as you have a good consistent approach to getting it back to sharp without much interruption. It usually takes me about 5 minutes at most unless I've really gone too long or somehow rolled the edge.
 
Thanks everyone for the advice.

For better or worse I've gone for

Lie-Nielson no4 Iron
Clifton low angle block plane
DMT Diaflat-95 lapping plate

Reasoning - seems I couldn't go wrong with LN no4. Cant get one of their block planes over here at the moment, plus Clifton seem very well regarded and are made in the UK. Thought I'd be patriotic and give them a try.
I don't think I do enough to need a machine yet, and it seems I'd still need my stones for finishing and touching up, so adding a flattening plate now seemed essential.
 
You should be happy with the LN #4.  With the exception of a shoulder plane, all of my planes are LN.  A good source for LN planes in Germany is Dictum, and they ship to the UK.

If he's still teaching after the current crisis is over, you might consider taking the one-week Tool Tuning Course offered by David Charlesworth in Devon.  I've taken all of his courses, and they are worth the money.
 
Suggest buying the LN guide. The LN site has directions for making the angle setting jig. I have found the LN irons need honing out of the box. Their site has good videos on setting the iron so it cuts evenly side to side. Properly sharpened and set correctly, I can cut shavings that are thin enough to be translucent.
 
For planes, Clifton, Lie Nielsen, Veritas are all good choices.  All quality.  As mentioned by several others, one of your problems is the low quality plane iron in your planes.  The iron is what does the cutting.  So it has to, needs to be, quality steel to cut sharp and hold an edge.  The quality planes you mentioned all come with quality irons.  And you can get high quality replacement irons to fit any old plane.  As for sharpening, I like the machine powered methods.  The ones that spin a disk of sandpaper.  Just easier and quicker than hand methods.  Even with the powered spinning sandpaper, you will still need to do some final hand sharpening.  But the powered spinning sandpaper can do most of the tedious grunt work.  Think about sharpening turning tools.  Everyone uses a powered grinder wheel.  You could get the tools much sharper if you sharpened them by hand with files and stones.  But no one does that.  Sharp enough in a few seconds is good enough.  That's kind of how I feel about plane and chisel sharpening.  Get them sharp enough quickly with the power machines.  Then maybe spend a few minutes to really fine tune the sharpness.  Remember your goal is to use the tool to cut wood.  Your goal is not to put the sharpest, prettiest, smoothest edge possible on the blade.  How the wood turns out is important.  Not how you got the wood finished.
 
So I made a simple jig so that I could use my belt sander to do the initial clean up. I figured that although I have a DMT plate coming tomorrow it was too much to expect to true-up three planes and 15 chisels on the coarse waterstone.

This has worked well with very little time needed on the coarse stone before progressing to honing.

Now I'm retired I'm almost looking forward to spending considerable time fine honing my blades. Looks like I wont need a Tormek after all. Thats at least £600 'saved' I can spend on a another new toy  ::).

I'm going to use the new LN & Clifton planes (they arrive tomorrow) for a little while and see if I need anything else.

Amusingly I came across Holtey planes in my buying search. £5,000 to £7,000 for a hand plane! Does anyone have one of these or similar - not that I'm considering one, just curious.
 
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