For those of you who have enjoyed the Sharpen This series of blog entries, we offer this new set of stickers with a special full-color sticker featuring the expression “Sharpen This.”
For those of you who are disappointed or disgusted by my juvenile behavior, I ask you to simply look away. Scolding me will only encourage an even fouler set of stickers next time. (I’m weird like that.)
These are quality 100 percent vinyl stickers – the larger ones are 5” x 2”. They will survive the outdoors – heck you could put one on your car.
Want a set? You can order them from her etsy store here. They are $6 delivered ($10 for international orders).
Or, for customers in the United States, you can send a $5 bill and a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) to by daughter Maddy at:
Stick it to the Man
P.O. Box 3284
Columbus, OH 43210
As always, this is not a money-making venture for me or Lost Art Press. All profits help Maddy squeak through college without debt (and it is going to be close).
Some days I wish there were a Google Translate filter for woodworking forums and podcasts. It would allow people to understand what is really being said. Below are some actual quotes I’ve heard through the years and my rough translation of them.
Statement: “As soon as you pick up a hand tool you are losing money.”
Translation: “I can’t sharpen.”
Statement: “Some of my students went down the hand-tool route and became frustrated when the tools didn’t do what was promised.”
Translation: “I cannot sharpen, and I encourage my students to skip it.”
Statement:
“With reverent pause, I turn on the switch
And submit to the roar and the sounds that bewitch.
Abrasion, vibration, my only sensations
My art I pursue of instant creations.”
Translation: “I can’t sharpen or write poetry.”
Statement: “To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”
Translation: “Wanna find out if I can sharpen, whale?”
Statement: “When tools were rude, great precision and nicety of finish could not be expected. To return to the crude joints of our ancestors would be a distinctly retrograde move.”
Translation: “I cuddle with my Kreg Jig.”
Statement: “Let machinery be honest – and make its own machine buildings and its own machine furniture; let it make its chairs and tables of stamped aluminum if it likes: Why not?”
Making dividers – hundreds and hundreds of them – has been our obsession most of this year.
As a result, we at Crucible Tool have been burning through sanding belts. We have become quite good at precision reaming (stop snickering, or we’ll give you a taste of it). And we have become connoisseurs of legs that spread apart – without any slop – in the grip of a firm hand (again, you don’t want a piece of this).
As a result, since early June, we have been able to keep up with orders for the dividers in the crucibletool.com store. That has been mostly due to the thankless detail work from John and Raney (really, I just eat bonbons all day and bark orders).
John Hoffman – assembling and inspecting the dividers.
So if you have been itching to own a pair, we now have plenty. They are $187, which includes domestic shipping. Yes, we are working on getting them into the markets in Canada, the UK and Europe.
Thanks to everyone who has supported Crucible Tool so far this year. We are now working on our fourth tool, which we hope to release before the end of 2017. In the meantime, we have plenty of holdfasts, design curves and dividers boxed up and ready for immediate delivery.
Read the other installments in the “Sharpen This” series viathis link.
When it comes to the topic of honing guides, I’d sooner have a double colonoscopy than discuss them. But here goes.
Honing guides are jigs. They hold a cutter to perform an operation, much like a scratch stock holds a moulding cutter, a slitting gauge holds a knife for cutting veneer or a router holds a dovetail bit for cutting joinery. Sometimes jigs are a good idea; sometimes they are a fool’s errand.
But to dismiss them entirely relegates you to the realm of woodworkers who populate the food court at the Woodworking Show, yammering to the ketchup dispenser about the finer points of mustard. Don’t be that guy.
As someone who has used almost every honing guide on the planet and who started life as a devoted freehand sharpener, here’s my take: You can’t do all of your sharpening with a honing guide (or the accessories to the accessories for the honing guide). But you’re also a fool if you don’t acknowledge that a simple honing guide can bring consistency and speed to sharpening simple blades.
If you want to explore honing guides, first buy the cheapest one – the Chinese-made side-clamp honing guide that costs $10 to $20. This is one case where spending a lot of money isn’t a great idea. Expensive honing guides are usually part of some sort of system, like Amway.
Try the honing guide. Compare its edges to the edges you get when you sharpen freehand. And – whatever you do – make your decision without consulting the Internet. It will only radicalize you one way or the other.
Personally I use a honing guide for straight chisels and simple plane blades. Everything else – moulding plane cutters, carving tools, knives, weird chisels, awls, etc. – are sharpened freehand. And when I’m working in the field, I sharpen chisels and bench plane blades freehand – it’s not difficult, stressful or even inconvenient.
I use a guide at times because, like all jigs, it can speed the operation of routine chores (I think of it like using a table saw for ripping lots of lumber). But I’d never use a honing guide that required a setup time of more than two minutes – by that time I’d have the edge sharp and ready to go back to work.
But most of all, don’t let any debate about sharpening equipment or techniques get in the way of your sharpening.
Read the other installments in the “Sharpen This” series viathis link.
One of the misguided mantras in sharpening is this: Polish the edge until you remove all the scratches left from the previous grit. Then move to the next finer stone and remove all the scratches left by the earlier grit.
This ridiculousness is why it can take beginning sharpeners 30 minutes to sharpen a chisel.
Polishing doesn’t make the edge sharper (see this), it makes the edge more durable. So having a few errant scratches remaining on your edge means you might have to sharpen a little sooner than if you had achieved a perfect scratch-free edge.
Sharpening priests and priestesses will counter my statement with: Tiny scratches in the edge will leave tiny scratches on the work when using a smooth plane.
To which, I’ll counter: Yes, but sandpaper. (See this entry for a discussion of the traditional way to prepare surfaces for finishing.)
Coarse scratches left by manufacturing, grinding or a coarse stone.
Scratches left by a #1,000-grit waterstone with a few deep scratches visible.
Polishing on a #4,000-grit waterstone with a few errant scratches noted.
Polishing with an #8,000-grit waterstone with one scratch noted.
Sanity on Scratches When you polish an edge, a few errant scratches are fine. When I sharpen on a polishing stone, here are the steps:
Rub the bevel on the stone for about 10-12 strokes.
Observe the bevel; if there are scratches, return to step 1.
If there are still scratches after three visits to a stone, I move up to the next grit (or get back to work if that’s my final grit).
Sometimes I manage to remove all the scratches from an edge. Sometimes I don’t. Regardless, sharpening a tool never takes longer than one song on the radio.
On Cleanliness One of the ways to improve your polishing has nothing to do with the brand of stones or your skill. It’s cleanliness.
In my experience, the primary cause of scratches that are difficult to polish out is stray grit on your sharpening stones. If you get big rocks on your small-rock stones, the big rocks will scratch the edge. These big rocks can be loose abrasive on the stone or even get embedded in a soft stone.
So keep your stones clean. If a stone is giving you trouble, put some lubricant on it and wipe it off with your hand. That removes loose grit. If grit has become embedded in the stone, flatten the stone and clean it off. That fixes almost every problem except for a stone that was poorly made and has coarse grit embedded throughout (yes, this happens).
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. One more entry and then we get to sharpen things!
