honing

tomorrow i take off for the north and will be away a week. today i prepared some of my tools for the journey: i honed my two planes. my instructional video to the right shows you my superb technique!

when i first got the planes i naturally tried them out. they worked—to a degree. not easily. then i took them apart and looked at their blades. they had nicks, weren't square and looked like they'd been filed. i googled "plane sharpening," found lots of opinions and learned that sharpening a blade is called honing. i like learning these kinds of things. the japanese method calls for a completely flat bevel on the blade. another method calls for two bevels, one at 30 degrees and a smaller cutting edge at about 25 degrees. i chose to try the compound. to hone you can use stones, wheels, or simply sandpaper. you progress from rough to smooth. one site suggested gluing sandpaper to a sheet of glass for a very flat grind. this works great, i can say now with experience. i honed first with 80 grit (very rough) to take out the gross errors and progressed to 320 to create a nice shiny flat bevel at about 30 degrees. this took time and some practice. i discovered that if i moved my whole body my hands could remain fixed holding the blade at a single angle that produced a very flat and even grind. then i worked the second bevel with 600 and 800 papers which create a near mirror-like surface.

i placed the blades back in the planes and gave them a try. wow. beautiful paper-thin shavings and almost no force required.

i'm excited about this timber framing course. one of the instructors called me today. we chatted for a few minutes about what i wanted to get out of the course. he told me we'll be building a 10 x 16 foot pavilion for an earthen stove. i can't wait to put the planes to real use.