Thread: New Veritas Honing Guide Mk II – Review

sounds like another one for the wish list Derek. I have to say I have had the "old" veritas for the last month and a half and I LOVE IT! This new one sounds even better. Lets just ait and see )

Thanks to Derek's references a few months ago, I held off buying a new guide till the MK2 had arrived.

As noted on another thread, it's release happily coincided with my birthday, which gave me the excuse I needed to become an "early adopter"!

It arrived today, 6 days exactly after ordering, and while it hasn't fired a shot in anger, it really looks the part.

I can understand why it took a while to get into production, I think Rob Lee described it on another forum as the most complicated (or was that complex) bit of casting he'd seen!

I don't want to get it dirty :eek: but when I do, if it isn't the answer to my sharpening prayers, I reckon there isn't one.

It's enough to convince a girl that learning to sharpen freehand is a complete waste of time!

Cheers,

P

How much do these things cost ?

$US558.50 - cheap at twice the price!

Look here

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...072,43078&ap=1

No. US $48.50 even cheaper at twice the price.

Click on the currency button on the top right hand corner for the "international" price.

I bought a few other things as well, and postage was round $30.00 air mail for the lot, less than the cost of driving to my nearest supplier!

Cheers,

P

Midge,
I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I had a go at using it at Derek's place. Mine should arrive tomorrow (Tue) - Should have arrived today, but public holiday in WA. I also have the MKI. Wil wait and see If I still use it.
Regards
Les

Just a note for all.

The Mk II has undergone an upgrade since my initial review. In particular, read my observations on using it with chisels. I had pointed out that the honing guide was superior with plane blades but not as good with the more difficult chisel blades, such as narrow or wedge-shaped ones (but was still fine overall). Well, the clamp bar has since been changed and I have been told that this has led to a significant improvement in clamping chisel blades. I am due to get the upgrade soon, and will report on my own observations. My version was a pre-production item. All the guides that have been sold come with the improved clamp bar.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by lesmeyer

Midge,
I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Pleasantly surprised indeed!

Although amazed on another count as well!

Since I don't know what the old clamp bar was like, I played with a 29mm chisel and a 6mm chisel last night, and had a no-fuss perfect result. I needed two less hands than setting the same in the old "Eclipse" jig, and the more I used it the more I marvelled at the thought and workmanship.

Since when did a sharpening jig become an object of desire?? :confused:

The amazing thing? Well the Veritas has these beaut little holes on the angle setting gizwitch which locate the angle perfectly accurately every time, simply, no fuss.... ONE of the major reasons for the purchase.

The eclipse takes a lot of fiddling to get right, but the honing angle of the two blades I used last night was EXACTLY the same as I had achieved with the Eclipse!

So repeatable precision is possible on the Eclipse if you have all day to set it up, but I am hoping to hone out some of the funny angles on the other blades soon!

Cheers,

P

Listen I don't wont to annoy ...but why is something like this needed ?.....You can easily get by with a $12 carpa-tec jig .....

Why the need for such a broad track ? I can imagine it might help with very narrow chisels...but such tools I would think are more practically sharpened by hand...

Most of my sharpening is done on plane blades which are wide enough to give you enough stability...I would think the broader the track gets, the more square the blade has to be held, becuase you can't rock the track as much.....If you've got a narrow track, like the carpatec jig has, you don't have to worry about squareness at all, since your fingers pressure is right up along the blades edge, ensuring that everypart of the edge is in contact with the stone , thus its always square, and whether it rocks or not is of no consequence....
Besides you want to be able to rock it anyway, right, to feather the edges......

And how often do you need to sharpen a blade larger in width than what you can hold in the carpatec guide...? rarely I'd say,,,, and if you have to, just make up a little jig to sit in the guide that will hold your wide blade or skew blade......for me thats just a plate of steel with two taped bolts in ......

And back bevels are easily solved......just tap and bolt on a small bearing to the side of the jig and use upside down...... I've been doing this a couple of years.......its allowed me to sharpen at any angle from 2 degrees up .......just do a little trigonometry,,,,determine how far out the blade must extend to get a certain degrees ,,,,,but it up against a fence and niko pen it so you can get that angle again......and when the jigs running on that one small bearing, even though its on the side, its quite stable because again all your pressure should be at the edge not at the bearing(or track is it.)....and back bevels don't need much work anyway......only a few strokes on the polishing stone.....which is something I do all the time anyway whether I need a back bevel or not because I work with a lot of old blades with small pits in their backs from rust.....if you back bevel, your sharpening into the blade more and out of the range of these pits......meaning you don't have to bust your guts on the coarse grit to get all those pits out.....

Look....I'll go get some pictures....

I don't mean to be a killjoy but I think its important to be realistic,,,,,a lot of these expensive jigs can be just unnesserary gimicks ......... (this will steam someone up for sure....)

Here's a theory for you. It may be total poppycock. It probably is but I'll tell you anyway.

I was talking to my missus about this very thing last night. It was after I had finished reading Terry Gordon's article on sharpening in AWR. (He doesn't use a guide at all. The technique is in using the back of the hollow ground bevel to guide your hand so that you hold the blade at the correct angle on the stone. The micro bevel angle is set by ear.)

I said to her "everytime you open a magazine or book on the subject of golf, do you find that someone is writing about their 100% gauranteed putting method?" She replied that yes, this is a subject that is given a lot of discussion and debate. There are books on it, gadgets to help improve it - and everyone devotes a lot of energy to finding the perfect 'never-miss' technique. There are different styles of putter all designed to help you get it right.

Then there's the people who just walk onto the green with their old standard putter and hit the ball in the hole. The reason they can do this is because they have stopped analysing it and they just do it.

Now one of the biggest things in golf is 'muscle memory'. If you want to be good at it, you need to get to a point where your muscles are trained to follow a precise set of movements to guide the club or putter in a specific way. Once you can do that, you don't need to think about it anymore. Some of the techniques described in the magazines and books and some of the gadgets sold are aimed at muscle memory training. The idea that once you repeat a movement so many times, your muscles 'know' how to do it without you having to think about it.

I think there is a certain amount of this in sharpening. If you can train your hand to hold the blade the right way as you move it on the stone, you don't need the guide at all.

The question is, does using the guide help to train your muscles? Or are we forever tied to the guide?

Originally Posted by apricotripper

Listen I don't wont to annoy ...but why is something like this needed ?.....You can easily get by with a $12 carpa-tec jig .....

Apricot,

Who said it was needed?

All the points you made are valid, except I think for the one about the width of the roller.

I made the point above, that the bevel angle set ever so precisely on the new one, was EXACTLY the same as I achieved with my Eclipse (the original version of the Carbatec one). To do that I made a jig out of aluminium angle to ensure the blade always had exactly the same projection, and a second jig to move the blade for a micro bevel.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and the changes you have made are about all I ever would have needed. I guess I should learn how to "just tap a thread" or even cut a bit of plate steel..... but there's so much else to do at the moment!

I also had a timber jig that worked perfectly well, but was a step down from the Eclipse, just as the Eclipse is a step down from the LV.

For me the decision was based on a few things:

1) It made a better birthday present from my beloved, than the box of undies that was the alternative.

2) It makes repeatable settings reliably and simply, and much, much easier to achieve, and is therefore a better bet for a sharpening mug like me.

3) It's just a lovely bit of engineering both in the design thought and in the execution which makes so smooth to adjust and use effortlessly (remember it is brand new too ). In satisfaction terms, it's right up there with my original 25° timber sled which slid on plastic rails straddling the oilstone, and probably doesn't work much better.

I'm no mad purchaser of jigs, in fact the opposite, but I'm also no great shakes as a sharpener and anything that makes that chore easier and more pleasant is worth it!

By the way, I don't seem to have the same control as you over narrow wheeled eclipse, and particularly my narrow blades always seemed to end up a bit skewed or woofy.... still perfectly adequate for use, but woofy none the less!

I don't mean to be a killjoy but I think its important to be realistic,,,,,a lot of these expensive jigs can be just unnesserary gimicks ......... (this will steam someone up for sure....)

I agree! (and this is unnecessary, but not a gimmick!)

Cheers,

P

Giddy apricotripper,

Yup Apples and oranges, & yer your dead right theres no doubt that a cheaper Jig will do the Job........................If you listen to Bob Smalser, Barry and other forum members who have Done their time and learn't 'old school' methods they often comment about not being able to understand all the Whoooo Ha about Sharpening Techniques various Stones n grinding gizmos!!!!!

I guess at the end of the day it depends on how perdantic you wanna be about how sharp your blades are and whats the best way to go about doing it.......................I find "The Sharpening Camps" all a bit confusing and would rather spend a little time sharpening and a lot a time woodworking!!!!

I hope Bob or Barry do a post on Sharpening soon so that I can finally discover the quickest most economical way to keep things sharp!!!! As always though I guess this is about personal choice ........................ I'll try a few techniques till I find what works for me

For what its worth I found your post a great read!!!

REgards Lou

Originally Posted by silentC

The question is, does using the guide help to train your muscles? Or are we forever tied to the guide?

I don't have any muscles.

And while I continue to work at a keyboard and telephone, it is unlikely that I ever will.

I also don't use my tools enough to sharpen them often enough for any of my muscles to remember what they were doing even if I did.

I thought I had come close to getting hand sharpening right many years ago, then I built my first jig, and realised how far off the mark I'd been.

I'd prefer to spend time doing stuff other than fighting with chisels I couldn't sharpen properly.

3 Sharpening jigs in 30 years is hardly an obsession! Neither is the methodoligy, oilstones for the first 20, scary and belt sander for ten, sander and waterstones now and not looking back.


Cheers,

P

Biting midge....... apologies on saying it was a 'gimick' ... probably poor choice of words....especially to the designers who probably put a lot of time into it.....and I can understand recieving it over a box of undies......I get socks.....and lots of them.......I have so many from so many birthdays and christmases I end up using them as rags before I ever wear them..........and I probably shouldn't critisize it since I have never used it.......I just get a knee jerk reaction to products that advertise in the tone that implys you can't live without them .....paging through these catalogs and all these new products I feel that 80% of the products arn't nessessary.....which must be a big problem for someone new to woodwork.......there must be plenty who end up spending thousands on stuff they don't need.......

I have a way to go myself, but I think its a very important process to becoming an adapt craftman if you can resolve problems in shop.....the problems force you to understand your tools and materials in depth,,,, meaning you'll be able to make your own jigs and repair quickly rather than go...... bugger its broken....... no matter I'll go buy another one .....drop another $100.....

And as for doing it by hand....... buggered if I know how they did it reliably......different times indeed.......I guess back then carpenters and cabinet makers where built like butchers.....everything done by hand.....no jointers or thicknessers.......I'd imagine with such exercise they had vise like hands and strong wrists.....stable jigs in themselves......a guide wouldn't be needed also because the blades where so much thicker as well so the bevel would have a more stable footing on their stones........and generally I would say there blades wouldn't have to be as sharp due to the quality of the timber that seemed to be so readily available back then........this last point seems to be backed up whenever I sharpen up an old matherson blade, even those from old cabinetmakers shops. The backs of these blades are always scratched, not polished to the degree that most of us seem to expect as standard........