Tools & Materials
Sharpen Your Plane Irons Freehand
Learn how to sharpen plane irons without the aid of a honing guide
Sep 27, 2013
Honing guides offer precise repeatability when it comes to sharpening plane irons and chisels, but for professional furniture makers who might refine various blades multiple times a week, freehand honing is a more common method.
This skill requires a great deal of muscle memory. If you’re not careful, you could end up inadvertently rounding over the crisp cutting edge you’ve worked so hard to produce. That said, if you can maintain the iron’s bevel perfectly flat atop the stone, freehand sharpening is a super-fast, no-nonsense approach that becomes easier over time. In this short video, furniture maker Garrett Hack offers his tips and techniques for sharpening plane irons freehand, without the aid of a guide.
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Comments
Really helpful video. Garrett makes it look easy, and it is.
Nice to see a proper way to do it and to see how one can tell if the sharpening is being done well too.
Notice he forward and backward on the stone and he uses a both oil and water on the diamond stone. Any thoughts on that???
Always amazes me that in the retail world we live in how many gismos, gagets, and versions (some very expensive) there are out there to the same thing and to make something so simple so complicated, thanks Garrett for the reality check.
No audio for this member and subsequent requests for membership login on subsequent videos. Something needs adjusting here because adjusting the sound heremakes no difference.
A good video, as always from Fine Woodworking, but that grinder should have a guard!
Excellent. Concise, precise and complete. Hack's method for setting up the hollow grind was an eye opener. It was one of those moments that my daughter would call "duh."
Great tips. If I was more than a hobbiest woodworker, I'd sharpen much more frequently and be able to develop the muscle memory that allows me to sharpen freehand.
If raising a burr on the first stone lets you know you are 'done', but you don't remove the burr until the last stone, how do you know you are 'done' with the stones after the first?
Garrett has such an easy mannered way of explaining and teaching.
Hmmm, so secondary bevel, no ruler trick. I really thought that was the point to which we'd all evolved. At the very least, GH could mention that many, if not most, now employ these techniques for good reason, while others simply don't go beyond what they were originally taught. Unless, there's a reason why he does not utilize these, which would also be important to mention.
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