Am curious if ther are any decent sources of info about how to restore/sharpen old wooden hand planes such as the Sandusky hallows/rounds that I often see in out of way antique joints in my travels. Some of these planes look like they are in decent shape except the for the irons that can often stand a good cleaning and sharpening.
Am already familiar that the following books exist:
(a) Lee/Complete Guide to Sharpening
(b) Dunbar/Restoring, Tuning & Using Classic Handtools
(c) Hack/The Handplane Book
How do you rate these and are there any others that “must read”?
Replies
Read them all. You need to be thoroughly comfortable with sharpening plane irons in general before you tackle H&Rs. Are you at that point?
Hack's book is good- probably sufficent.
I used to think sharpening the back of the blade was frivilous. It is not. I think getting the back very close to flat is very helpful.
Frankly, I think grinding the iron is harder than sharpening the blade. I use our different oil stones and then strop on leather. It works well enough.
Some folks get very obsessive about this. I really can't see why. After fifteen or twent minutes of hard work on a hard wood, you'll probably have to resharpen it again anyhow.
Frank
Biscardi,
"I used to think sharpening the back of the blade was frivilous. It is not. I think getting the back very close to flat is very helpful"
Personally, I think this is the secret to a sharp blade. At the risk of getting dramatic, without equal polishing on both sides...your ending up with a serrated edge. The stroping is all that is required to remove the rolled edge...and that's good enough for quite a while.
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