Thread: Microbevel - sometimes it is best not to

Wilbur is not an accomplished woodworker by any means. He is a forum poster that one day decided he'd have a blog without doing anything notable. I'm not saying that to be rude or stiff, I'm saying it because it's true.

Most of what is on the blog is not out of experience, it's repeating things read elsewhere.

You can hollow grind or microbevel japanese tools with no real detriment. The chisels shown in those pictures are exaggerated (especially the microbevel and the ugly uneven hollow grind). The effect of running through all grits on japanese tools on the entire bevel is sort of a waste of time, it's adherent to advice provided in japanese texts but based on used tools that have been used heavily (presumably by professionals), not followed that closely. I've gone through all of the rounds because I hate long sharpening routines, and I have found the combination of sharpness and edge holding that lasts the best is to work the entire bevel on a medium stone, and then make an almost imperceptible tiny microbevel with the polish stone on the end of the tool - one that can be removed easily with the next honing. The edge is slightly protected, cosmetics are preserved, the final honing gets all the way to the edge, and riding the bevel in a mortise is the same with or without (the microbevel isn't big enough to push the bevel away from the backside of the cut. Any intelligent user of these tools (who wants to use them a lot and not sharpen them all the time) will come to some sort of compromise like that unless they want to spend 5 or 6 minutes sharpening a single chisel.

There will be scads of beginners who get advice like wilbur is providing, and who will diligently put a flat bevel on their tool at a degree or two too shy of what the bevel should be, and they will end up with a chipped edge or a corner that breaks off, and it will be a bear to repair - even on a carborundum stone. Their reaction will be that the tools are hard to use, or they will overreact and make the entire bevel very steep. That's too bad.

Also, if one would want to hollow grind (which isn't necessary once you find the nice balance point where a chisel feels sharp, but won't chip in use), there is no common wheel radius that functionally threatens a japanese chisel (6,8,10"). The same wheels are used without any regard on western laminated tools, and some of those are at the same point where most budget japanese tools are (most budget tools that claim to be 65 hardness are closer to 60-62, similar to some of the harder vintage western laminated tools).

There is all kinds of text advice out there about japanese tools that's not very good, that the chisels are all chippy, or that you can't pry with the mortise chisels at all. It's simply not the case with a good quality chisel.

The missing link in all of this is the desire to put suggestions out that people can follow blindly, but such things are a very bad substitute for user experience.

I felt a little guilty after making this post, because it's so critical that maybe the point can be missed.

All of these little rules bandied about in blogs and passed from one person to the next without finding that they don't actually work do nobody justice. Each and every thing like this can be tried easily, sometimes with quite a bit of benefit, and we can all prove to ourselves that just about any reasonable method works. And we can say "oh jeez, not this again...." every time someone talks about how a hollow grind weakens an edge or how a japanese chisel won't have edge support if a microbevel is used. Neither have ever failed to perform in my shop, and neither look like the intentional hack work done on the sharpening of those chisels.

No offense taken by me. You makes some excellent points and well argued.

My intent was to promote discussion so you should not feel too guilty

John

Lots of good points DW! After years of reading forums I realised that often their are many ways to do one particular thing. When I hear 'you must' or 'the only way' I tend to substitute in the phrase 'this has worked for me'. The information they want to share makes more sense to me after that point.

FYI, I really appreciate everyone's different opinion on things. I make mistakes all the time and when someone shares a different way, I have another path to try and improve.