How can I make my chisels sharper than razors, without taking them to a pro? An old guy from northern Italy has been restoring edges his whole life, and works not too far away. But the need to shave boxwood pegs against the grain, removing slivers like shavings off of a piece of ginger root, has again come up. I can't always get to the guy. Is there a recommended three-stone system that may take time but will give me the razor-sharp edges I want? I've heard good things about the Japanese stones.

Here's something I am finishing. These pegs measure about 8mm - 9mm diameter. Sometimes I can cut them as close as a couple hundredths but in the perfect world I'd be able to shave them flush without touching the surrounding wood. My 1" Buck is a bit unwieldy and an old ¼" angled Buck is en route. It'll have to have new edges. In the longer run I'll want two ½" angled, opposing angles.

I don't know how to get a chisel that sharp, but you have me curious. What is the project? Must be something old/critical that you want to avoid touching the old wood with a blade/abrasive.

Another thought: X-acto used to make a set with a heavy handle and replaceable blades in various configurations. Some were sharpened perpendicular like a chisel.

http://www.xacto.com/products/...s/blades/detail/X218

Exact makes heavy chisel tips:

I have built some furniture pieces with pegged tenons.

When shaving down the pegs to make them flush, I have had good luck wetting the pegs with mineral spirits. This has helped the shaving process.
I use Lie Nielsen bevel edge chisels.
The stones I use for sharpening are double sided Norton waterstones.

This has worked for my needs for about 10 years now.

I use a succession of fine grit silicon carbide sandpaper up to about 4000 grit (autobody store) and a granite slab, but you can substitute a piece of glass for the granite since you're just looking for a flat surface for the sandpaper. You'll need something to hold the chisel at the correct angle while sliding it back and forth on the sandpaper. I use a Veritas chisel sharpening jig for that, but I assume you'll have to improvise something since I'm guessing you don't have one of those.

The type and hardness of the steel directly relates to just how SHARP you can get your blades.

What do you have?

Bob

You can get perfectly good results with a variety of types of bench stones or with wet/dry sandpaper stuck to a piece of glass.

I have coarse, medium, and fine DMT diamond stones and extra fine and extra extra fine Spyderco ceramic stones.

1. Flatten the back of the chisel and use the whole series of grits to make the back of the edge smooth.

2. If you aren't really good at freehand sharpening, use a guide. This is a really good one, but there are less expensive ones out there. http://www.leevalley.com/us/wo...,43072,43078&p=51868

3. When you get to higher grits, switch to a 5 degree more blunt sharpening angle to put a "micro bevel" on the edge.

Here's a discussion of all of that:
https://www.popularwoodworking...s/sharpening-chisels

Woodman,
I've been sharpening handtools for more years than I care to admit to. In the process, I've tried many different methods to get the edges you speak of. Simply put, they all work but some are faster or easier than others. Now days, I use ceramic waterstones. They are fast but very, very expensive. Japanese waterstones are fast cutting but are relatively soft so care is needed to prevent an edge from catching. Both of these systems require one to re-flatten the stones on a regular basis. Catching an edge on the waterstones means you have to remove significant amount of material to remove the divot so use extreme care if sharpening with these. Diamond stones work well and are affordable. No worries about catching edges and they last a long time. Sandpaper. While not as glamorous as the previous systems, you can learn to get good edges with wet/dry sandpaper on a piece of 1/4"-1/2" plate glass with little cash outlay. Wet/dry paper can be gotten in some extremely fine grits, mine go to 2000. I teach new woodworkers with this system because of its cost and ease of use. Finally, a strop of some sort. Some use leather, other use a piece of cardboard like the ones on the back of notepads. Load it up with polishing compound and strop the surfaces to a mirror finish.

Also, learn to hollow-grind. This will cut your sharpening time by 80%.

The most important thing to remember about sharpening is: It's easier to KEEP tools sharp than it is to GET tools sharp. Basically this means, stay on top of your edges. If you think a tool is dull, you're too late, it is dull. You accomplish this by stropping regularly or using your fine stones and strop at regular intervals.

Sharpening is not difficult, but difficult to learn to do properly.

Woodenboat magazine once did a series on sharpening that used heavy glass plate Diamond powder and oil. My internet is down but you might be able to search it up I will take a look when I get internet back.

Japanese Waterstones, a charged leather strop and a lot of practice. Tip: Buy some cheap chisels upon which to practice.

I used to get both my bench chisels and bench planes that sharp. I have "rough," "middle" and "finishing" stones. Along with a nagura for the finishing stone. I don't recall the Western grits. Maybe 400-800, 1000 or 2000 and 8,0000 or 10,000? I use a diamond "stone" for flattening the rough and middle stones.

I have a Delta Sharpening Center, too. That was used for repair/restoration. It has a small high-ish-speed dry wheel for establishing initial bevel or grinding out chips, and a large, horizontal wetted wheel for putting what I consider the "initial" edge on.

I could easily dry-shave with my tool edges when I was done, and used to be able to lift shavings with my bench planes so thin you could literally see through them.

After I get the garage cleaned up and the man cave built, that is one of the things to which I'll get back.

Samurai Carpenter has a by-hand technique.




Link to original video: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r0iSQLDBkKQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

and the station he build for doing it.




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Thank you for all of the information. Someone tried to teach me how to sharpen a knife once but I quickly became bored. Actual need has finally arisen. I'm a little more serious, even if a couple decades past prime.

The posted image is a pegbox on an old fiddle, maybe 1860-1880. The peg holes became too big and had to be plugged - "bushed", after which new holes are drilled and reamed to fit tapered ebony pegs.

When I started this stuff, I spent more time fixing mistakes than doing actual work. After a bit I decided it would be more productive to do it better the first time. So sharper is better.

The new Zona kerf saw gets me pretty close but the idea is to be flush. Perfect world, the bushings are undetectable. Hence the chisel; sharp equals better control.

Currently I have one 1" Buck Bros with a ¼" Buck on the way. I bought the 1" chisel from the knife sharpener for $10 and paid a little more for the ¼" with no edge; it'll cost me $3.50 to have it brought to the best of his abilities. Yes to a granite slab and 3M Imperial wet/dry to 2000. Different grits buffing compound, stick form. No chisel angle jig yet.

A 4-piece Buck set was swiped in college. Are Bucks considered "good generic"? Not in the same league of steel hardness as a Lie Nielsen?

The knife man learned me on taking better care of edged items a few years ago; kitchen knives no longer clatter around in my drawer. My one chisel has been set purposefully when not in use.

Do I want to use water on the sandpaper method?

A single ½" Lie Nielsen plus two Japanese double-sided stones plus one leveling stone may be all I require for a lifetime of peg-cutting. A cabinetmaker who dabbles messaged me he uses a ½" for most fiddle chores.

Regarding stone hardness, I learned recently hardness is not as it appears. As "hard" as ebony seems, while scraping a fingerboard, my new chisel made a mess of the wood.

A luthier who ran a local violin shop told me he collects old chisels. Now I know why.

I used a heavy, shallow baking pan, stuck some non-skid to the bottom, than locked my stones into one of these:



Not as elegant as the solution above, but a lot easier to fabricate

I don't recall how I kept it from moving on the bench. Non-skid or something on the bottom of the bottom, too? (Can't seem to lay my hands on it atm.)

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
A 4-piece Buck set was swiped in college. Are Bucks considered "good generic"? Not in the same league of steel hardness as a Lie Nielsen?

No, Buck is not considered "good anything," IIRC. At least not when I was last messing with this stuff. <Goes to look at his good bench chisels...> Well, so much for that recommendation. I was going to suggest Marbles Blue Chip, but the name is now owned by Irwin and they're not the chisel they used to be when they were Sheffield steel . What a shame, because those were "reasonably affordable" chisels of good quality at the time.

So, I'm sorry to say, I don't know where to tell you to turn now. I'll only say this: Poor-quality tools aren't worth their cost, IMO. That goes doubly for edged hand tools, IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
The knife man learned me on taking better care of edged items a few years ago;...

My wife made me this for my good chisels:




(The three on the lower-left are three of my cheap chisels, with edge-protectors made from heat-shrink tubing.)

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
Do I want to use water on the sandpaper method?

That's one way to do it. I used to use a 3' x 1' piece of thick glass with wet/dry sandpaper tack-glued (with spray-on glue) to it for flattening hand plane soles.

But you'll never get them as hair-splitting sharp as you would with waterstones followed by a charged strop.

You would do well to read up on how sharpening works. Then you'll understand how and why it's done the way it's done.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
A luthier who ran a local violin shop told me he collects old chisels. Now I know why.

Same reason I was collecting old hand planes, mostly Stanley Bailey. Those hand planes, once re-tuned, cannot be beat by anything you'll find in the store, these days, unless you go to an actual woodworking store and pay beaucoup bucks for 'em.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
Exact makes heavy chisel tips:

I use these at work for shaving forbon flush for certain things. Easy quick rework with a bit of 600 grit sandpaper and stand the feathered edge back up with cardboard.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
I use these at work for shaving forbon flush for certain things. Easy quick rework with a bit of 600 grit sandpaper and stand the feathered edge back up with cardboard.

What do you do with the forbon? Not a material I hear about every day!

600 grit on the angled surface, then pull the feathered edge straight (or off?) with cardboard?

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
... and stand the feathered edge back up with cardboard.

That's not exactly what stropping with cardboard is doing. What it's doing is knocking-off what's called the "wire edge." The wire edge is an artefact of sharpening any edged tool or weapon. Part of the sharpening process is to make that wire edge progressively thinner--finally removing it entirely in the stropping phase.

Well, that's what it's supposed to accomplish, anyway

If you don't get the edge sharp enough, and the wire edge small enough, yeah: That's all attempting to strop the edge will do: "Stand up" the wire edge. The instant you apply that edge to anything, the fragile wire edge will collapse, resulting in a ragged edge and likely damaging the real edge behind it.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
What do you do with the forbon? Not a material I hear about every day!

Flatwork for guitar pickups. Mostly the task I'm referencing is flush-cutting bevels and burrs from drilling and tapping. Forbon is more fibrous than dowel rods, but with these, I can achieve close, clean cuts. I would expect you could get good results for the task you show in your picture with one of these.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
600 grit on the angled surface, then pull the feathered edge straight (or off?) with cardboard?

The original edge is better, but I'm cheap at heart and like to get a little more life out of those blades once they're past prime. Likely Ensigmatic could put a better retouch on one of these, but what I do is a few passes on 600 with the grind until I'm down to fresh steel, one light pass across the back to reduce the feather, then a few passes on 800 or 1000 with the grind and then I maintain the feather with cardboard from cut to cut, as needed.

I use the flat side of a fine grinding stone on a low RPM bench grinder. I do the chiseled surface first being carful not to get it too hot. Then I turn the chisel over and hone the flat surface. You have to maintain the original angles so it takes a steady hand lots of light and a good eye. All of my chisels are sharp enough to shave hair.

I've had good results with Japanese water stones, also used a white oxide wheel on my bench grinder as preparatory grind. Also a good honing guide really helps. I am tempted to try the plate glass and abrasive strips.