Thread: Plane iron sharpness testing

D.W.
Actually your videos are helpfull at least for me. (straightening old saws and all o1 steel videos)
But I assume that watching videos is not enough. As you mentioned it is passion and handwork. Lot of it.
And reading. I still not understand why, but in books and forums are much more info than in videos.

By the way, for some reason the unicorn method is never mentioned across youtube. And in web in general.
I thought that popular youtubers will jump on the idea. When Derek wrote about your method in his blog i search across youtube and found only your videos.
As for now there still only yours.

Originally Posted by sshiva

D.W.
By the way, for some reason the unicorn method is never mentioned across youtube. And in web in general.
I thought that popular youtubers will jump on the idea. When Derek wrote about your method in his blog i search across youtube and found only your videos.
As for now there still only yours.

I guess it's not much of a surprise. There's some nuance to it, and I post (of course I think this) correct information about what it is and where it's useful. There's a connotation that it's just a fast way to make cheap tools work OK, but that's a falsely imposed constraint. Derek felt that it wasn't repeatable with planes - I disproved that, though it may not be repeatable for everyone who can't deal with nuance. Obviously, from the pictures, it allows for the ability to plane through wood with silica without taking edge damage and without increasing general planing angle, too. I'm sure that was done manually in the past, rolling the back of an iron. The conundrum with some of the assumptions is they create dynamics that don't make sense. In testing, a cheap chisel unicorned fares better than an expensive chisel honed at 30 degrees or even 32 in a lot of cases. So, are we to accept then that cheap chisels outperform better ones? No. the real illustration there was to demonstrate how dominant geometry is when it comes to edge failure. it's more important than anything else, and that creates a pretty bleak message for folks who want to know the secret to why a $100 chisel is better than a $15 chisel, or even perhaps a set of chisels for $15. The $100 chisel isn't that much better unless someone finds parameters where it doesn't fail an the cheap tool does, and then imposes them on a test. A false dilemma.

I think nuance is difficult to communicate, and there's a running danger (not for derek so much, but influencers) that presenting my information poorly and pointing to me will lead to me pointing out that the information was errant and presented poorly.

And perhaps most of all, I'm missing a $10 made in china unicorning machine sold for $200 with a big fat affiliate program and coupons.

I don't feel too much obligation to push it further, though. Finding older texts lasts year much paralleling what I've sort of run into sharpening (grind shallow, hollow and very accurately, and then just hone the tip of the tool) is good enough for me.

I sort of had a parallel thing on razor boards where people were honing straight razors every week or two weeks starting with a 1000 grit synthetic stone and putting immense wear on them. Linen and cordovan strops typically would work the edge of a razor for several hundred shaves and take a very mild honing once a year or so for about five minutes only with a fine stone. making something sensible like that instead of prescriptive "honing pyramids" and a self sacrificial dogmatic list of time consuming secrets burst bubbles for some. It didn't make sense to me that people would've needed to do that in a historical environment where extensive sets of stones for honing were marketed as being for "manufacturers" and the actual maintenance hones were the size of a credit card, and often not that fine. I don't know if what I described there has stuck, either - who knows - but there are a lot more legitimate linens being made now than there were 15 years ago! The world of razor honing advice was *very bizarre!!*.

Getting from getting initial success to something more productive for the long term is a joy, but I suppose it threatens egos and as with folks like sellars, to claim his method is the old way and then see hasluck describing what he does as "losing several hours of labor for the week before even starting monday morning", undude for his fandom who think he's a hand tool guru of some sorts.

Forums have some good information on them, but they function poorly as archives for learning what ended up being the best information. I guess that's the problem - the medium is for discussion of a captive group that's attractive to advertisers, and building accurate condensed knowledge isn't the purpose. The old books are that, but it's almost like a chicken and egg thing. what nicholson says will go over the heads of people who are beginners, and there's not enough there to give a beginner success as they could have 10 problems unrelated to what they're reading about. But once you have some experience, there needs to be some self-reflection of "ok, what I've come to to this point, do I think it's really going to be better than methods developed when this was an economic necessity". Probably not. So we're left to gain experience and then see why what's in the books is usually far better. And sometimes, it's not entirely true. Such as Nicholson mentioning that the cut width on a double iron plane being shy of the wedge fingers. It doesn't have to be if the plane is fitted properly, and at least by 1830 or so, there were plenty of double iron planes made with the fingers exactly where they needed to be and such planes fed without clogging no matter what. Even if you only biased the iron to shave right at the corners.

That led on the forums to the "common knowledge" that you need a single iron plane to cut full width because the wedge fingers always cause a clog on the double iron plane. Larry Williams touted that for a very long time - he made a lot of planes but didn't use them for any larger work that we're aware of, so reading about that was good enough. it seemed like a solvable problem. When I solved it, I noticed that the good planes that I had bought solved it 180 years prior.



Instead of being unhappy that nothing I've ever pushed is new, I'm happy that it's old. 1800-1900 is the period of information about planing and sawing that you need to draw from if working entirely by hand now. Anything after that, and power tools took up the slack economically for rough repetitive work in an environment where furniture was becoming cheaper and cheaper and materials changing more to veneer. Not that veneer wasn't done before, but factory making of furniture really changed it to something we wouldn't necessarily do in a hobby in terms of what's under the veneer. Before 1800, especially much before, there was a lot more use of old growth really large ideally sawn wood, and we just don't have that available. The wpinca book about planes (detailing the beginning of the chapin plane company in the US) really illustrates how much of a burden there was on sawyers to saw and age timber ideally to be competitive.

Honestly, I think selling a "Unicorn kit" would have been extremely valuable, if for no other reason than to maintain the correct quality level for what goes out. I'm just talking a high quality buffer wheel and a bar of high quality compound with the right grit.

It took me several tries to finally end up with what I consider to be the "Right" setup. I ran through a lot of results that showed considerable promise, but didn't adequately deliver on my journey. A kit would have let me click the "Easy Button," and know I have the right stuff from the start.

It wouldn't surprise me if quite a few folks ran through the same thing, and just pitched it into the Sharpening Drawer of Shame like all the other fad stuff. Unicorning with a very fine green chromium or cerium oxide bar only delivers marginal results, and the cheap import stuff doesn't deliver any results. You have to use a fairly coarse, highly loaded, commercial buffing compound like David recommends, then Unicorning is magic.

It sounds stupid to say, but the home store buffer wheels don't run right on my grinder, and the bar compound was either way too fine (Veritas Green, Flexcut Yellow) or cheap colored wax (Everything from China.) It took a trip to Woodcraft to source a good buffer wheel, and far too much research online to figure out what compound to buy on Amazon. Much of this is due to search results being swamped by junk import product, and the fact that the professional quality commercial buffing compound isn't really advertised.

So, yes, I get the desire to provide information and let folks do what they think is right with it... But I also fully respect the other point of view that says, "My hobby is woodworking, not sharpening or chasing buffer compound. Just sell me the right answer so I can get back to my hobby."

Originally Posted by truckjohn

So, yes, I get the desire to provide information and let folks do what they think is right with it... But I also fully respect the other point of view that says, "My hobby is woodworking, not sharpening or chasing buffer compound. Just sell me the right answer so I can get back to my hobby."

it's complicated by how direct or opinionated I can be, too!! There was a lot of desire for folks to use slower or smaller wheels on drills and finer abrasives and so on. I have buffing wheels for drills for ...well, actual buffing, and not for unicorn, so I tried them. it's easier to get the whole thing right with more speed and the right amount of cutting power, and the shape of the tip of the tool (only know form wiley and bill sort of pushing me to get a picture of it) is different with more speed and cutting power. it's easier through wood.

When stu tierney was selling stones, I wasn't buying them from him at the time but saw that people would ask agonizing questions about the stones and burn an hour of his time or sometimes more with repeated questions about what combination of stones to get, and then often not buy anything.

I begged him for his own sake to put together a standard set because a lot of people will ask those questions due to being unsure, and stu wanted to make sure they would get exactly the right things. The 10% of people who are really sussing out the perfect combination could still do that, but the other 90% would buy the set, ask no questions and be happy (happier than having to think about it). I never asked him about it once he put up the sets, but I'll bet he sold a lot of sets without so much labor.

I never check alibaba to see what those HF buffers cost, but one of those 6" with two *good* stitched imported wheels and a pair of buffing compounds - yellow and white - would've been my ideal. I also like the buffer to be on the floor, and I know a lot of people are too proper for that kind of thing.