Sharpening on stones with a guide

Sparks

In need of a tip here.

I'm sharpening plane irons and chisels with the scary sharp method and using one of the ten million clones of the eclipse guide, and everything's fine - because I can use a relatively long strip of sandpaper so I get a good bit of travel on it. And when I use the oilstones it's more or less okay as well because they're fairly long and easy to turn around. But I got some (really cheap, but I'll upgrade to proper DMZ or EZE-lap ones in a while) diamond stones and was using them this weekend and realised that they're so short that I'm getting about 2-3 inches of travel at most or the guide wheel goes off the stone and the angle changes (and if I start with the guide wheel off the stone and on the bench hook platform I use, I still only get 2-3 inches of movement before the wheel jumps up onto the stone). And since the stones are taped in place, spinning them round to avoid uneven wear is a little awkward.

I tried holding the angle by hand. And learned that when it comes to sharpening woodworking hand tools, I'm a pretty decent software engineer

How do you guys manage to get round that? Inset the stones into the bench hook or something? Or do you just have to go and learn to do it without the guide?

Wossack

find something the same thickness as the plate to run the wheel on? dont need to inset the plate that way - but might be better in the long run

hitemfrank

Instead of using stones and plates, would lapping film work for what you want? I've been using it to hone straight razors and knives for a few years an it works very nicely. You just need to have a flat plate to put the film on and you're good to go.

Effectively it's just really fine grit sand paper. Normally aluminium or silicon oxide bonded to an A4 sized sheet of plastic. It might rip if you use a lot of pressure but it's relatively cheap so not the end of the world if it does.

It goes by micron instead of grit (30 down to 0.3 on cable monkey above). So 30 micron is more abrasive than 0.3 and here is a rough chart showing grit to micron comparison.


Here is a video showing chisel sharpening using lapping film so I think you might be able to use it for your plane irons.

hitemfrank

Just one thing I forgot to mention, if you do go with cable monkey for the lapping film (there are plenty of other places to get out) make sure to ask them which colours are which micron.

They're not the best at making that clear.

imakebiodiesel

Honing guides are useful but ultimately its best learn to do it by eye and hand. Problem is it takes practice, a lot of practice. If you believe the woodworking magazines the perfect edge is just one purchase away, this new machine or that new set of stones will provide you with a blade that will slide through the toughest wood like butter. Unfortunately life and particularly wood work is not like that. Sharpening is a craft and it can only be mastered by doing it over and over again. In the end I dont think it matters whether you use diamond stones , waterstones or oilstones, its how you use them that matters.

my3cents

imakebiodiesel wrote: »

Honing guides are useful but ultimately its best learn to do it by eye and hand. Problem is it takes practice, a lot of practice. If you believe the woodworking magazines the perfect edge is just one purchase away, this new machine or that new set of stones will provide you with a blade that will slide through the toughest wood like butter. Unfortunately life and particularly wood work is not like that. Sharpening is a craft and it can only be mastered by doing it over and over again. In the end I dont think it matters whether you use diamond stones , waterstones or oilstones, its how you use them that matters.

Honing guides are very useful for getting the bevel right. If the bevel is all over the place then its not easy for beginners to see exactly what they are doing, plus restoring an even bevel reduces the area that you are working on to get an edge.

Edit> I used to have a box made up for individual stones the was the exact depth of the stone, as the stone wore I used to pack it underneath until it became easier to reduce the height of the box. Its a nice little project to make the boxes. If you want you can add a runway at one end to allow full use of the stone with a honing guide. With the cheap shorter diamond stones I wonder if they are all the same thickness then you could put two inline in and use one as the runway for the other, perhaps turning the runway one over so the guide just runs on the plastic?