Thread: First time Chisel sharpening ended up with blunt chisels!

I don't have much experience sharpening chisels but I do knives and you always have more steel to work with. Well not always but most of the time

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What honing guide did you use and what angle did you hone at?
Cheers

Fergy, first let me reassure you that you are most unlikely to have done any serious damage whatever to your chisels. You should have enough left to stuff up about 10,000 more times yet, before you run out of material!

So what sort of honing guide are you using, is it an Eclipse (or one of its many clones) like this? honing guide.jpg

If so, these are not great gadgets for beginners, imo - I had one back in my early w'working days and never got on all that well with it. The narrow wheel lets it wobble too easily, & it's hard to get a straight edge on narrow blades (as you've discovered). I tossed it aside & learnt to sharpen freehand. But you can get good results with them if you persevere, it just takes a bit of practice.



For sure, your chisels are not top-shelf, but I'm sure they'll be adequate for most jobs. While there's definitely a number of very excellent (& very expensive) brands, you can still do a good job with chisels that are a bit 'soft'. In fact they are better for beginners, imo, because you are less likely to chip them (which takes an awful lot of elbow grease to fix by hand!). You just need to sharpn a bit more often, which is probably a good thing when you are starting out, 'cos you do need the practice..

A carborundum stone won't put a polished edge on a tool, no matter how hard you try, but it' quite capable of giving you a "shaving edge", which will do the job for you.

So cheer up, you can't expect perfection on your first attempt. Analyse what went wrong with your first attempt & try again, correcting your 'mistakes' as best you can. Hone on the coarse side of your stone til you've got a small 'wire edge', then adjust the chisel in the guide a little so that you can put a very fine secondary bevel on it on the fine side......

Cheers,

It is most likely that you haven't honed your chisel to an edge. An edge is when there is uniform burr at the edge.
Also a skewed chisel indicates that you may honing unevenly.
The Norton combo stone is an oil stone which is pretty slow cutting so patience is necessary.
You might want to invest in a better honing guide. I recommend the veritas honing guide mark 2.
You can sharpen any chisel to a razor sharp edge.
You also need to use a strop as the last honing step.

If you did buy the eclipse style they do not work out the box and they can be difficult to use, however I used too use a veritas guide and now have gone to the eclipse style and I like it more. Its lighter, easy to setup and it locks the blade square into itself.

See here about how to tune your guide.



Sharpening is a question of practice, I have been sharpening for 10 years, and I am still learning.

This is a good basic sharpening video:

Hi Fergy
It feels so good when your chisels are razor sharp ... and so disappointing when they aint ... we all have occasions when we get the angle wrong or squareness wrong

I took a lot of advice from Paul Sellers https://paulsellers.com/paul-sellers-videos/

Take a look on how to dress new chisels. He is a great craftsman. Irwin are an OK chisel ... it's not the chisel I'd say but your technique.

Honing to 25 to 30 degrees is a progressive process ... make sure that you lubricate it all the way and keep the edge at the chosen degree. Without a strop it is doubtful that a razor edge will be achieved.

I used a glass plate and sandpaper fron 240 to 2000 grit before I got some diamond plates (600 and 1200) and then finish with a strop.

The guide is tricky to master ... 2 reasons ... firstly the setting to 90 degree can be lost in use ... and not notices ....and there is a tendency to lift the heel (bad) rather than lower the heel (good) when finishing the stroke.

Fergy, take a look at Paul's videos ... great tips .. and if you havent got a strop ... then make one soon

Regards

Rob

It is just one of those eclipse style honing guides. You can't actually set a angle on these can you? Dont you just simply slide the chisel into the groove and it should be at the correct angle?

Also how long should I be running the chisel on the stone for?

See here regarding projection

How to Sharpen Wood Chisels at the Perfect Angle


STEPS (very simple honing steps)

Flatten back on course stone
Flatten back on fine stone
Work bevel on course stone until you turn a burr on the back - 40 to 80 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone - about 10 strokes of the stone
Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 40 to 80 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone - about 10 strokes of the stone

STEPS (advanced)

Flatten back on course stone
Flatten back on fine stone

Work bevel on course stone until you turn a burr on the back - 40 to 80 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone

Work bevel on course stone until you turn a burr on the back - 20 to 40 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 40 to 80 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 20 to 40 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 8 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone using 8 strokes

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 4 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone using 4 strokes

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 2 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone using 2 strokes

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 2 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone using 2 strokes

Work bevel on fine stone until you turn a burr again on the back - 1 strokes of the stone
Remove burr on finest stone using 1 strokes

TEST

Can you take fine shaving in pine end grain
Can you shave arm hair
Can you shave your finger nail (DANGEROUS)

Originally Posted by Fergy1987

Dont you just simply slide the chisel into the groove and it should be at the correct angle?

On those guides, the angle is set by the placement of the chisel.
More or less chisel sticking out the front changes the angle.

here's a similar honing guide along with a jig to help set the angle you want, by controlling how much chisel extends out of the jig.
HE Honing Guide & Blade Angle Setting Jig

there's a lot of articles on how to use these jigs to set the angle. here's one example
How to Sharpen Wood Chisels at the Perfect Angle

ah....that could be my other issues, simply chucking it in the honing guide seems to be a rookie error without an angle jig

I'm an idiot and just realised that the side of the honing guide tells you how far to extend to get the angle.....too eager to get sharpening it seems!

Make yourself a depth stop jig, with measurements/angles for chisels and plane irons. Makes for faster and repeatable setup over a ruler.

don't forget to "face" your chisel, plane blades, spoke shave blades, any blade for that matter. As an Thumbsucker said "flatten the back."
Place the blade back down on a good oilstone, use as much of the width of the stone as you can, plenty of lubricant. Push the blade the full length of the stone and draw back towards you. have fingers placed on top of blade to stop you wobbling. Do this till you have a perfectly flat and even section on the business end of the blade. After the first half dozen strokes look at the back of your blade , unless the manufacturer was a genius you will see hollows in the back. You need to remove these hollows to be able to hone that perfect edge. Keep the lubricant up, don't work a dry stone. " face the back " sounds like an oxymoron.