More About Chisel Sharpening

Introduction

I performed the initial sharpening on my 3/8″ chisel yesterday and wanted to provide an update to my previous post on the lessons I have been learning.

I am using the OneTIME Tool Sharpening System from Woodpeckers, a set of ceramic whetstones by Shapton (grits: 1000, 5000, 8000 & 12,000), a DIA-FLAT Lapping Plate, a leather strop, and Extra Fine Buffing Compound by Woodstock.

Read on to see some additional details and modifications to that provided in my previous post.

Flattening the Chisel Back

The first photo above shows the back of the chisel after only 50 or 60 passes on the 1000-grit stone. There is an obvious hollow highlighted in blue.

After another 100 to 150 passes, the hollow is beginning to disappear but is still visible.

After yet more passes, the hollow really can’t be seen. There are 1000-grit scratches on the entire surface yet you can still see a slightly darker area where the clearly visible hollow had been.

What I have found to be helpful at this point is to move up to the next stone which in my case is 5000-grit. After making 30 or 40 passes on this finer grit stone recheck the back. As shown above, if the hollow is still present, it will be much easier to see.

So back to the 1000-grit stone for yet more passes which yielded the result shown above. It appears as though everything looks pretty uniform. Next, I perform my “check” on the 5000-grit stone.

As you can see above, there is still a little bit of the hollow area left.

After yet more work on the 1000-grit stone, I get the appearance shown above. At this point, I was able to move through the finer stones and finish flattening and polishing the back of the chisel.

The Micro-Bevel

The photo above shows the chisel bevel after finishing all sharpening and polishing. Using the 1000-grit stone, I established a 25° bevel and then used the finer grit stones to smooth and polish that face. I was then able to establish a 27° micro-bevel. It is the slightly darker area along the cutting edge highlighted in blue.

In the previous post, I had said discussed the fact I was not able to establish a micro-bevel on my two narrowest chisels (1/4″ and 1/8″). The problem was that I could not keep the chisel edge flat enough against the stone to get a uniform micro-bevel across the width of the edge. I said that I thought I would have the same problem on this 3/8″ chisel. However, as you can see I was wrong.

I hope that this information is helpful to you.