Sharpening Station

Now, when I want to sharpen my plane irons, or chisels, I lay out a small tarp on my workbench, or router table wing on my SawStop, and then lay out my stones etc, it works fine, but it seems I always have stuff on the go, and clearing the space to do this is a pain, so often I end up using a tool with a dull edge, this is a bad habit. As you may be aware, my workshop is not exactly large, so space is a premium.



I have this cabinet that I kind of rescued from my old stand alone router table, the drawers are full of all things router related and the one tall thing pull out is for table-saw blades and accessories. The flat top area I use mainly for putting my small stove on for making coffee.
This spot would be good for a sharpening station, but it was a little low, and a guy needs coffe too!



I built a simple box that goes on top of the cabinet, to bring it up to the right height, and to give me a place to store all my sharpening stuff when not in use.



A top that has cleats on both sides......

So I can purpose one side for sharpening and the other for general use.



here is how I'm using it right now, I'll be adding more purpose built jigs and holders to it, but it works well at the moment, the green box beside it is my stone pond that I fill with water and soak my stones in. I'm really pleased with how this worked out, anything to make the task of sharpening easier is always welcome!


Cheers!

Está muy bien. Great solution with built in storage? What more could you ask?

Great idea. You keep finding space you didn't know you had.
But more importantly, where are we gonna make coffee now ??!!

Peter Rideout said:

Great idea. You keep finding space you didn't know you had.
But more importantly, where are we gonna make coffee now ??!!

Click to expand...

On the same top, the flip side will be for making coffee or I can make coffee fairly easy just about anywhere.

I like it. Great use of space...

Glad you have the "make coffee" situation included. Otherwise it would have been a lousy idea. I mean, how could you sharpen tools if you didn't have coffee?

You didn't think "Outside the box;" you thought "Using" the box. Your mother should be proud.

Enjoy,

JimB

Stuart,

Is that one of Rob Cosman's angle jigs? Recently saw him do a sharpening demo at the local Woodcraft store. He quickly got a plane blade sharp using a diamond hone and a Shapton stone.

Tom

Tom Blank said:

Stuart,

Is that one of Rob Cosman's angle jigs? Recently saw him do a sharpening demo at the local Woodcraft store. He quickly got a plane blade sharp using a diamond hone and a Shapton stone.

Tom

Click to expand...

Yes it is Tom and I'd call it more of a training device than a jig, it will wear down and become useless at some point, but it you use it that much you should get the hang of free hand sharpening. It only works for the typical 25° blade angles. You first grind your blade to the typical 25°, then you use the guide on the 29° side to put a secondary bevel on the blade, this would be with the lower number stone, like a #600, then you use the 31° side to put a micro bevel on the blade with your higher number stone, say a #1200 or more. I go nuts and use a #325 diamond stone to put the 25° bevel on then a #1000 and #8000 sequence at 29°, finally a #20,000 stone for the 31° micro bevel, this works very well for me I get super sharp blades. I have a 10x power loupe that I use to check the edge, and it is super shiny and has almost no nicks in it that you can see, cuts very well too!

I use the ruler trick to hone the back edge of the stone, but I use a small 15cm or 6" long ruler, it is about half the width of the 30cm/12" rulers you see most guys using, so it creates less of an angle on the back of the blade. You only need about 3 or 4 swipes on the back of the blade to knock off the wire formed on the edge and hone the flat just slightly, any more is too much on the back side of the blade.

Cheers!