I am 71 years old and have gotten interested in furniture making as a retirement hobby. To maintain my edge tools I have acquired an extra coarse diamond plate for establishing a primary bevel and a Norton 1000/8000 water stone for the secondary bevel. I use a Veritas honing guide to maintain blade position. When I go through my process I have no trouble feeling the burr produced by the diamond plate and the 1000 grit stone but I can’t feel the burr from the 8000 grit stone. Am I doing something wrong or is the burr from the 8000 stone so fine my fingers can’t sense it?
Thanks for any ideas you might have.
Replies
It might just be old fingers-- no offense. The more course the stone, the bigger the burr. When you get down to 8,000 grit, the burr is very tiny. So it might be there, and you just aren't feeling it.
Have you tried your tool to see how it cuts? If it cuts well, you've done great.
I also use a honing guide, the L-N. If my edge needs it, I sharpen on a course stone at 30 degrees, until I feel the burr. I then lap the back to get rid of the burr -- just a few strokes.
Then I change the angle to 35 degrees, and take maybe 5 strokes on 400 grit. I can feel the burr on this, usually. Then 5 or 6 strokes on 8000 grit. At this point I might no longer feel a burr.
I lap the back 3 strokes, take one or two more on the bevel, tgen one more on the back. It takes less time than to read this.
You will not feel a burr at 8000 grit check out mike pecoviches fundamentals of handplanes he will explain how to get sharp.cheers
Thanks so much for the info. I didn't want to be doing something wrong and not getting the best out of my tools. I think my tools are sharp but I have not had a reliable way to validate this.
Many of the experts found in the pages of FWW will say that the best test of a sharp blade is to plane softwood endgrain. That material is unforgiving of an evenly slightly blunt or raggedy-edged blade. The fibres bend and tear out easily if not cut cleanly.
The result of planing a piece of softwood endgrain should be an almost polished face with no sign of the tearout or raggedy. The blade should take a 1 or 2 thou translucent shaving easily.
A test involving actually cutting wood seems a good one for woodworking tool edges, eh?
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There are other tests such as shaving hair off the back of your hand or sticking the edge into a thumbnail. These are unreliable tests. A raggedy edge will cut hair, even it's also pulling out a few too. A thumbnail is a variable thing and you can't apply a large section of the edge to it.
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Feeling for a burr can be problematic as we age. Myself I have a little bit of seemingly permanent neurasthenia in my finger tips from some chemo treatment long ago now. I find it difficult to feel anything but a big burr from the 140 grit. A small price to pay for seeing-orf the rot but a bluddy nuisance sometimes. Finger tip feels are a very useful way of discovering all sorts that the eye can't see.
Lataxe
You're not doing anything wrong.
If you're using a jig, count the number of strokes it took to feel a burr at the coarse level and do that many strokes on higher grits you'll be fine.
You sure that stone isn't a 4000/8000?
I am by no means an expert when it comes to sharpening as I've been only doing it for 4ish years. I use diamond stones (as Paul Sellers teaches) and the LieNielsen honing guide (the Veritas one is as nice and might even be nicer). After I feel the burr off the first stone, I never bother to check for the burr on the other two stones. Mostly just looking to see if the scratches look uniform to the new stone grit. I've done it enough now where I just count strokes on each stone. Hope this helps.
The side is marked 1000/8000.
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