When Veritas introduced the Mk.II, I felt they had the perfect honing guide. After using it for a while, though, I realized it might be a little too perfect.

The wide roller on the Veritas guide ensures a flat bevel on the blade. That’s fine for bench chisels, but on wide blades used for planing, I prefer a bevel with a slight curve (or camber) from one edge to the other. A camber helps reduce plane tracks—the scoring lines often created by the blade corners as you plane.

Cambered wheel yields cambered edge. Veritas now offers a cambered roller for its Mk.II honing guide. It lets you hone a slight curve on a plane blade, so the corners are less likely to dig in and leave ridges on the wood surface.

When honing without a guide, or when using a guide with narrow wheels, I produce the camber by placing pressure on the outer edges of the blade. But because of the wide roller on the Mk.II, I couldn’t get the same cambered results.

Rock on. As you move the jig back and forth on the sharpening stone, the cambered wheel allows you to rock the blade from side to side, in a controlled manner, to generate the curved edge.

Someone at Veritas must have read my mind because they recently introduced a cambered roller assembly for the Mk.II. The assembly mounts in seconds. A 1/2-in.-wide flat center section of the roller provides solid footing for flat bevels, while the outer sections are curved for easy blade cambering. It worked great.

Shaving tells the tale. When properly cambered, the plane iron produces a shaving that is thicker in the middle and feathery at the edges.

The cambered roller sells for $21.70 at www.leevalley.com.

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