lie-nielson

[fraseman999]

Hi Folks,

Can anyone tell me what the best stone is for honing lie-nielson planes and chisels? I am told the blades are pretty hard. So would i be better with a blackstone?

The chisels are just their standard A2 not the carbon ones.

And that leads me to my next question what is the best stone for carbon steel?

Thanks

John

[Mike Fairleigh]

I have a fairly extensive LN collection.  I use the Tormek to get the new irons hollow ground using the standard wheel (it helps a LOT to take a light pass with the truing jig before starting to form the hollow on a new iron), and then I move to water stones for final honing.  Once the hollow is formed and the iron is sharpened, I intend to rely on the standard wheel (graded fine) for ongoing maintenance.

LN irons are excellent out of the box, but you still need to flatten the back before starting work on the bevel.  For that I recommend a piece of granite or heavy glass with aluminum oxide sandpaper, starting at about 120 grit and moving up from there (either up to 220 if you plan to finish polishing the back on water stones, or up to 2,000 grit if you plan to flatten entirely on sandpaper).  Some will disagree, but I don't personally like using the side of the Tormek wheel for flattening backs.  On one or two of my LN irons I had to start clear back at 80 grit on the backs to get them flat, but those were exceptions, not the rule.

Most A2 irons should be sharpened at 30 degrees.  There are a few low angle LN tools that come with A2 irons sharpened at 25 degrees at the factory, but they're generally tools that only get light, intermittent use.

Here's the iron out of my LN scrub plane after following the routine I described (re-ground on the Tormek using a wooden jig I made for the tight radius of this unique iron):

[fraseman999]

Fantastic Mike,

Great pics.

Great info

Thanks

John

[ionut]

Hi John,

For anything O1 A2 White and Blue steels you should use the original 220 Tormek stone, it is far more effective than the black stone, also the black stone will glaze faster with these steels.  It will cut but in my experience will cut slower than the more friable original stone.
I also have few so called A2 LN chisels but somehow for me they only feel as A2 only during sharpening and not during use.

Ionut