Sharpening sharpening

Rob Keeble

Member
Messages
12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
Came across this site thought some of you might enjoy seeing this guys view on plane blade sharpening also chisels.

Take a look at his part on the intel QX3 microscope and you will see some 200X pictures of a plane blade he has sharpened and then honed on 3m micro abrasive down to 5 um.

Whats real interesting is he has taken pictures of the bevel on a normal BIC razor and you can be the judge.

It makes you think when a guy does things like this for we all know a picture tells a thousand words.

Found his site very interesting, He has some videos on Utube as well.
 
Dave i would love a tormak but i also think as a hobbyiest right now i can buy a great deal of sandpaper before i have spent that kind of money.

More importantly it is my opinion that i need to get "in touch" with some of these skills in a basic way. Then when the understanding is fully developed move on to the fast lane. Its the old neader in me rearing his head. I seem to be haunted by the old neaders that have passed on and hear them continuously teasing me with see "sissy you cannot do it without a machine":rofl::rofl::rofl: Unfortunately or fortunately depending on which way you look at it, this does not only apply to sharpening but cutting wood, and a variety ofther basics. :D

If i were writing software code today i would probably be having to go back to my assembler machine coding before continuing on to use fancy compilers.:rofl::rofl: First principles thats me.:)

That is until i get impatient and lazy.
 
More importantly it is my opinion that i need to get "in touch" with some of these skills in a basic way. Then when the understanding is fully developed move on to the fast lane...... Unfortunately or fortunately depending on which way you look at it, this does not only apply to sharpening but cutting wood, and a variety ofther basics. :D

This is my philosophy too about a lot of things. It's why I wouldn't buy my kids a "graphing" calculator until they understood what was going on with a pencil and piece of paper; why I am glad I learned bookkeeping with a pencil and a manual ledger before moving to software (and understood more than my younger colleagues who cut their teeth on accounting programs); why I want to learn some woodworking with some very basic tools before adding the fancier power tools........etc. etc. etc.

Well said, Rob.
 
Nice site. It looks like he did a pretty detailed and systematic test of different plane blades. I haven't seen tests like that published very often. It does make me want to get a microscope and double check the quality of my sharpening at 200x though :)
 
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