Sharpening is a necessary evil on the path to making good furniture.
I wrote “Sharpen This” in the hopes of putting it in a time machine and sending it back to 1994 Chris when he first learned to sharpen. Like many woodworkers, 1994 Chris bought way too many sharpening systems, jigs and BS sandwiches peddled by salesmen.
Instead, I wish I’d been able to read this book.
The above video shows a lightning-quick tip that will help you get back to work faster. And it will reduce your grinding chores, save wear on your sharpening equipment and make you sexy to all raccoons.
If you order either of these titles before Oct. 1, you will receive a free pdf download of the book(s) at checkout. After Oct. 1, the pdf and book will cost more.
“Euclid’s Door” is Jim and George’s latest exploration of artisan geometry. In this new book they show you how to build a set of highly accurate and beautiful wooden layout tools using simple geometry and common bench tools. This practical application of geometry will train your hands and mind to use this ancient wisdom. And you’ll end up with a fantastic set of useful tools.
After editing all of George and Jim’s books, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the geometry stuff. I was wrong. This book blew my mind a few times with stuff I should have known. (And now I’m glad I do.)
The book is 8.5” x 11” and 120 pages. It is printed in the USA and is built to be a permanent book, with heavy cover boards and a binding that is glued and sewn.
‘Sharpen This’
My latest book, “Sharpen This,” is the book I wish I had when I was learning woodworking. It might have saved me hundreds of dollars of buying sharpening equipment I didn’t need. And saved me time in learning how to grind, hone and polish.
This book is a short and blunt treatise about common bench tools: chisels and planes mostly. (Exotic tools and saws need their own books, really.) It seeks to explain how sharpening really works and what you need to do the job well – and no more.
It is not about one sharpening system. It’s about all of them. It is not trying to sell you some stones or jigs or magic paper. Instead, it is trying to give you the foundational knowledge you need in sharpening so you can make good decisions and – perhaps more importantly – ignore the vast piles of sharpening crap that companies are trying to sell you.
The book is 4” x 6.5” and is 120 pages. The book is printed and bound in the USA using quality materials and a sewn binding. It is designed to last a lifetime. “Sharpen This” is the same trim size as “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book,” and easily fits in the slipcases made by Texas Heritage.
After a long dry spell – the last book we sent to press was in December – we now have four books on press. (Actually, we have five books if you count the somewhat-cursed edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” that has been on press for six months. More on that below.)
Today we finished our work on two books and won’t see them again until a semi backs up to the warehouse in 11 weeks. You can sign up to be notified when any of these books arrive in the warehouse on this page.
“The Belligerent Finisher” by John Porritt. This is our first book devoted to finishing, and it is a doozie. Porritt, a furniture restorer and chairmaker, shows many of the tricks he uses to add subtle (and beautiful) wear and age to a new piece. Porritt is not attempting to show you how to make fakes. He is trying to show you something deeper – how to add color and texture to a piece so its form matches its finish. Most of his processes use simple and common tools (a chainmail pot scrubber, a deer antler, a handheld propane torch, washing powder). The book walks you through all the steps for two backstools. Then there’s a gallery that shows how you can mix and match these techniques on other pieces. The book should arrive in our warehouse in September.
“Sharpen This” by Christopher Schwarz. I think of this book as a piece of historical fiction. What if someone wrote a book about how to sharpen, and that person wasn’t making sharpening equipment. And the internet didn’t exist. This is a pocket-book-sized treatise that boils down everything I know about sharpening media, steel and technique to give the reader a clear understanding of sharpening. The book embraces all the sharpening systems. But it focuses on how to work with a minimum amount of expensive gear. And how to work fast. This is a book I never wanted to write. But after teaching so many beginners who were so horribly confused, I decided to just lay it all out there. The book should arrive in our warehouse in September.
“Euclid’s Door” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. Geometry lovers rejoice. Jim and George are back with a new book about how to make your own insanely accurate woodworking layout tools using simple hand tools and geometry that blew our minds. Honestly, both Megan and I had to step into the shop to confirm some of the geometric constructions really worked (they do). If you have been resisting geometry and whole-number ratios, this book will show you how to apply it directly to tools that you will use for the rest of your life. Really good stuff – and the book is entirely hand-illustrated by Barb Walker and Keith Mitchell. The book should arrive in our warehouse in late August.
The Stick Chair Journal No. 1. A crazy experiment. Can we make a beautiful journal about vernacular chairs and have it be slightly more successful than our money-losing posters? The first issue has techniques you can use, a tool review, folklore about a cursed chair and complete plans for a new vernacular chair design, which you are free to build and sell if you like. When you buy the journal you will also receive a download of the full-size patterns for the chair. The Journal should arrive in our warehouse in late August.
You can sign up to be notified when these books arrive in our store. It’s a simple process, and it is 100 percent not marketing. We are not trying to trick you into signing up for ads or some worthless newsletter. It’s a notification service that costs a lot of money to use. But we encourage you to please use it to make your life easier.
Oh, and about that cursed edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises.” That has been at the printer since December. Then the plant shut down because of COVID. Then it shut down because of ransomware. Then they printed one of the signatures with a missing page and had to redo the signature. The whole situation is almost laughable.
The plant told me they would ship those books on June 24. I’m not holding my breath.
The new Speedbor (right) and the old pattern (left). Please let me have my teeth back.
Because we make tools, I hesitate to criticize other toolmakers. Today I am making an exception because the manufacturer is Irwin Industrial Tools, which is owned by Stanley Black & Decker, a company that is worth $28.4 billion (that’s with a “b”).
So no toolmaker is going to go hungry because of this blog entry.
For 18 years I’ve used Irwin Speedbor spade bits in my chairmaking. They are inexpensive, they cut fast, they don’t clog and they are perfectly fine for chairs.
In the 2000s, lots of Irwin’s competitors started making crappier spade bits. They ruined the cutting geometry, didn’t surface-grind the cutting face or they added a screw tip, making them almost worthless for furniture making. But Irwin kept making good bits, and you could get them everywhere.
About two years ago, however, Irwin “improved” its Speedbors by removing the cutting teeth at the rim, replacing them with little chamfers.
These new Speedbors are supposed to last twice as long and cut twice as fast.
My first experience with the new bits was terrible. They cut slow and tended to leave a rough entry and exit hole.
I talked to my supplier at the hardware store about it. She said many of her customers also disliked the new bits and had the same experience I did.
I slapped together a rant about the bits and almost posted it. Then I thought: Maybe I should wait and use the bits some more. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe the bits can be improved with a little filing. Maybe I just got some bad bits, and the manufacturing will improve in time.
So for the last two years I stuck with the bits. And I can honestly say they still stink. I’m sure Irwin has some science that backs up its claims, but it doesn’t apply to working in hardwoods. Perhaps they did the test in Styrofoam.
I’ve searched for another brand available in the U.S. as a replacement, but I haven’t had much luck. I’ve tried four other brands, and none are as good as the old Speedbors. If you have a recommendation of a spade bit brand you use and adore, please post it in the comments. (Please spare us the “I’ve heard good things about Beaver Bits.” Or “Saul Pellers says spade bits are for punters.”)
Until I find a replacement brand, I’m sharpening my old Speedbor bits. This works great until you file the rim teeth away (I get about three filings before this happens). I’ve also purchased a two-year supply of NOS (new old stock) Speedbor bits from eBay. So I have a couple years to solve this problem.
As anyone who makes chairs will tell you, life is a never-ending search for decent or better bits.
— Christopher Schwarz
A closer look at the geometry of the new Speedbor.
A close look at the geometry of the older Speedbor.
A typical vintage iron. The coarse grinding scratches from manufacturing still extend all the way to the tip of the tool.
I promise this post is not about sharpening. It is, instead, about what we read vs. what we see.
When I learned to sharpen, the entire first day of my lesson was all about flattening the backs of my chisels and plane irons. I was told to get them all dead flat and then polish them up like a mirror. It was a whole damn day of my life I wish I could get back.
When I started buying vintage tools, however, I looked at the backs and thought: I don’t think those people had the same teacher. I’ve examined hundreds of vintage planes and chisels, and I can recall only one or two that had the backside of the blade flattened or polished.
Sure, some of them looked like they had been pushed over a stone to remove the wire edge after sharpening the bevel. But not flattened and polished like I was taught.
Most 20th century instructions don’t talk much about the backside of the tool. You are supposed to work the bevel and then remove the wire edge by rubbing the back flat on the stone. (The Stanley instructions above are typical, which are from a 1941 booklet.)
Joseph Moxon, who wrote the first English instructions on woodworking, discussed this issue in “Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works” (1678). He wrote that after you sharpen the bevel of the tool:
“Then turn the flat side of the Iron, and apply the Stone flat to it, till you have worn off the coarse gratings of the Grindstone, on that side too.”
Basically, you have to stone the bevel and the back. The instructions were clear in the 17th century and they are clear now. So why does the archaeological record – at least what I have seen – seem at odds? Why are there so, so many tools out there that have been sharpened on the bevel but not on the back?
I think about these things a lot as I work at the bench. And I promise I do not have any answers. Only thoughts. Here are a few of the possibilities I’ve considered.
Perhaps most of the extant old planes and chisels were used for carpentry (in softwood) or by homeowners. So getting the wicked sharp edge needed for tricky hardwoods wasn’t necessary. So the back remained mostly untouched (except for removing the wire edge).
Furniture makers need a really sharp edge, but that profession has always been a less common one than carpenter. So the well-treated tools are much less common.
The good tools that were sharpened properly were mostly used up. The tools that weren’t sharpened properly survived because they weren’t used much (perhaps because they weren’t sharp).
Modern people have a much more extreme idea about what a polished edge should be. We take it beyond what was typical because we have the abrasives to do it. A mirror polish might be better in theory but it might not be necessary in actual practice.
The user decided to go for a flat and polished back in a gradual fashion – by stoning the backside over and over as they sharpened the tool during the day/month/year. In other words, the tool would get gradually better over the life of the blade.
We are too precious about our finished surfaces. A few errant grinding marks on the backside that transmitted to the work can be easily scraped or sanded out by hand.
I have a lot of other possibilities rattling around in my head, but the above six are enough for a blog entry. During the last two years I have been experimenting with these different possibilities with my own edges. I’ve learned some things that are definitely not doctrinaire with modern sharpening theory. But I’ll save those for when I’m ready to endure an old fashioned Internet thrashing. Today has been too much of a Monday.
