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RWW 171 Free Hand Sharpening

9 comments
11 years ago
Sharpening     Videos

It is Get Woodworking Week again where we gather together to introduce new people to woodworking and to encourage the newbies among us to push beyond their current limits. This time I want to discuss free hand sharpening. This is a skill that I hear characterized as an advanced skill all the time when in reality it is no harder to master than cutting a joint by hand. It just take a little practice to build up some muscle memory and I hope to show you some techniques and tips to give you a head start in your own practice. With these tips I think anyone can get consistent results in minutes or hours, not years like the common misconception.

Please note, this is not a sharpening demonstration and I won’t be discussing specifically how to sharpen a tool. This is all about how to hold your blades and begin to ditch your honing guides so that you can apply this free hand technique to your own sharpening process.
If you want a closer look at my sharpening process, check out the Sharpening Category of this site.
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Michael

Hey Shannon, thanks for the great episode. It inspired me to finally have a go at freehand sharpening an old chisel I had laying around. Worked a treat – the chisel is super sharp. I really appreciate these great videos, they help a beginner like myself out a lot.

    Shannon

    Very cool Michael. Any struggles right out of the gate or are you just a natural?

Walter K

Inspirational video Shannon. I finally left the MK II jig in the box and went for it on an old #75 blade I had just received off of eBay that needed restoring. Your video did leave me with questions on micro bevels. Currently I use my honing guide to put a micro bevel on the blade by running it through the same three grits on my Shapton Pro stones I use for honing- 1000, 5000 & 8000. While free handing, do you just use one grit for your micro bevel? If so, which one? If more than one, how do you get a consistent micro bevel?

    Shannon

    Yes that part wasn’t clear since I was trying to demonstrate the various techniques and not so much my personal sharpening process. Usually I will just use my 8000 grit for the microbevel. Since I’m creating a true microbevel that I erase everytime I hone, I don’t have to worry about creating a consistent microbevel. I work on the primary bevel on 1000 grit, then raise up and use the circular motion technique on the 8000 grit for 10-15 seconds and I’m done. In the past I have honed a couple microbevels on different grits until I realized that was redundant so I do it all in one swoop on the 8K stone now. If you check out my sharpening process post, specifically the second, 30 second video you will see this in action except now I just do the microbevel on the 8K stone.

Mitch

Great info Shannon. Do you have any tips for skewed plane irons or is it a non issue? I saw a jig that Schwarz built to correct the skew angle on a plane iron so it got me wondering what the proper free hand technique might be.

a link to the jig I’m referring to:
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodworking-blogs/chris-schwarz-blog/correct-the-skew-on-a-plane-blade-or-chisel

    Shannon

    I would set my skew angle at the grinder rather than trying to set it while free handing on a stone. This free hand technique is really only for honing and extensive steel removal.

Stan

Thanks for another great video! Makes perfect sense to freehand sharpen, just like most things… Practice.
When I purchased my sharpening stones at Lee Valley they strongly recommended the guides but I wanted to try and learn this method first. Could always go back. So far, so good.
There is always the satisfaction of knowing you aren’t dependant on another jig.
Always enjoy your articles and Wood Talk.

Stan..

Roland

I gotta say – this rocked me back onto my heels.

I’ve been one of those who’ve held hand sharpening as a should-probably-learn-how, but have long put it up on the pedestal of it’s-an-advanced-skill. This really tangibly deconstructed all of that for me & gave me the push to elevate my WWing. The ‘I really have no idea what the bevel angle is and, really, it doesn’t matter’ was especially emancipating.

Great video – it really demystifies a lot of what’s been holding me back. You really demonstrate in an easily understandable way what to do & how to do it. I’ve tried hollow grinding in the past. But, being a honing guide user, I find that unless I got the angle on the grinder rest just right, I ended up with so much time at the stone to get to the prescribed bevel angle, hollow grinding just didn’t seem a worthwhile endeavour. I can see how hollow grinding pairs very easily with hand sharpening. Then there’s all those other non-chisel, non-planeblade edges out there…

Just got back in from my first hand sharpening session after watching this a couple of times & making some notes. It wasn’t entirely an epiphany or anything & I could see from the stone marks on the bevel I wasn’t totally successful with the locking, but the edges still ended up sharp and the chisel cut well. Most important was how *quickly* it went. I can see that with continued practice, this will be exactly what I’ve long been looking for: being able to very quickly touch up an edge and get right back to work. No dragging out of paraphernalia & setting up, just stop, zip & go back.

Thanks for this Shannon, your stuff is always so easily relatable & tangibly useful. A real boon to the WWing community.

Roland

    Shannon

    I’m so glad this helped you out Roland. It took me a long time to make that video because it was hard to quantify a method to learn it. As you just illustrated, the hardest step is the first one and usually the method becomes apparent when you give it a try. Good luck as you continue to practice and you have the right attitude: if its sharp, it worked.