Messages

I just purchased a #1 flat gouge.  The #1 indicates that it does not have any sweep, so it's a gouge, but it's essentially a wide chisel.  It is somewhat sharp out of the box, but I need it to be very sharp.  Should I treat it like a chisel and sharpen it as such?  Should I treat it like a gouge with a bit of sweep and sharpen it using the SVS-50?  Or should I leave it alone and hone it with a strop?  Thanks.

Went back and carefully followed the instructions for the jig.  Paid very close attention to the "line of light" -- it's really just the edge that I blunted.  Ground the tool paying close attention to that edge.  When it became a thin sliver, I switched to the fine grading stone.  Removed the line of light entirely.  Honed it on the stropping wheel.  Tested it on a piece of basswood.  Cut like butter.  It was so sharp, I couldn't put it back in the original packaging--sliced through everything.  So I carefully placed it in my chisel tool roll.  I slept very well last night.  Thanks again.

I am sharpening a #3 35mm straight gouge using the multi jig.  I have inadvertently rounded over an edge?  How can I restore a straight crisp corner to the edge?  Am I using the correct jig?  Thx.

I purchased a blade for use in a wooden compass plane.  It has a pronounced 3 inch radius on it because it's used largely for shaping.  I nicked the blade and needed to sharpen it but I'm not sure how to do this.  The square edge jig will put a square edge on it.  Don't want that.  Will the SVD 110 work?  Whenever I use that thing, I end up ruining the entire blade.  Any tips?  Thx.

Using the marker method, I was trying to replicate an existing angle.  When i ran the wheel by hand, the wheel contacted the middle, not "tip to heel" as required in the manual.  If I adjust the height, I can get it to contact the tip to the middle, or the middle to the heel, but not the entire bevel.  Should I just work on the tip and not work on the rest of the bevel?  Thx.

What's the proper procedure for rehoning a plane blade or chisel on the Tormek?  When it dulls, do I sharpen on the wheel at the coarse level or the fine level?  Also, someone recommended that I use a combination of stones and the Tormek.  When the blade gets dull, they recommend going to an 8000 grit waterstone to get it sharp again.  Once the hollow is gone, I can go back to the Tormek to reestablish the hollow (which is good for plane blades, as it eliminates plane marks.)  Thanks!

After months of out of square plane blades and nothing but frustration, I think I've hit upon the problem.  When the plane blade contacts the stone, it hits it in one place, near the left side of the stone.  I've trued the stone numerous times, but every blade hits the stone at the same spot.  Eventually, it wears down the blade at that one spot, resulting in (you guessed it), an out of square blade.  On larger plane blades, it wasn't as noticeable, because I was moving the blade back and forth across the stone.  But when I went to a small plane blade--with smaller movements across the stone--I noticed that it was grinding in one place on the blade, while the rest of the blade was untouched.  Any suggestions (new square edge jig?) before this thing becomes an $800 paperweight?  Thanks. 

I'm having trouble using the squate edge jig and the Universal Support jig when honing a Veritas plane blade.  It seems like the blade is too wide to allow the square edge jig to move sufficiently far enough to the right.  When I set the blade (using the marker method), the jig won't go any farther right due to the threaded rod on the universal support jig.  So I'm forced to hone free-hand which results in, you guessed it, a rounded over (and useless) blade.  Any suggestions on how to hone this blade?  Also, any suggestions for fixing the rounded over edge would be appreciated also.  Thanks. 

Well, I'm frustrated.  After working on the long end (and many hours later), I finally evened it out. (Thanks for the tips, Jeff.)  So, I went to the finer grade.  No problems there.  Went over to the leather honing wheel--switched from vertical to horizontal, as required.  Set the angle using the angle master.  Unfortunately, the square edge jig scrapes against the threads of the tool support, so I can't move the blade back and forth.  I tried moving the blade up and down in the jig, but it still scrapes, thus preventing me from honing the tool.  I imagine that I can do this freehand on the wheel, but this seems like too ridiculous a design error.  I must be doing something wrong.  My bench stones are starting to look very enticing...

When regrinding the bevel, should I pay special attention to the high spots?  Do I need to apply pressure to those spots?  Or should I just grind equally across the entire bevel?  I have a feeling that I will be at this for hours.  But, as you say, it's an important introduction to using this tool.  Thx.

So in my effort to speed up the process, I ground one edge of a plane iron down too far.  Now the entire tool is out of square--extremely out of square.  I need suggestions on how to return it to square.  I don't mind spending a lot of time on it.  But if it requires me to manually press on various parts on the iron until it's square, I'm going to just throw the iron away.  I'll never have that sort of dexterity.  I was hoping that I could just regrind a new bevel at a slightly different angle.  In one of the YouTube videos, I saw a guy hit the blade with an axe several times and he got his iron back to square (or at least it was straight).  Any suggestions would be helpful.