How Do You Sharpen Your Tools?

[silentC]

Call me old fashioned or even ignorant but I believe I get the job done in the time available and not spend a whole heap of time doing the other bits. I thought that's what scary sharp meant!! - it's scary how much time you can spend doin' what should take as little as possible.

There's nothing that says you have to spend hours sharpening. Once you have set up the bevel and assuming you have a repeatable process for touching it up, like using a jig or doing it by hand, it doesn't take any more than a minute or two to resharpen using waterstones or whatever. Plus, if you do it right, the edge lasts longer and therefore you spend less time sharpening.

[LineLefty]

Postscript.

I attacked a piece of karri last night which defeated my current level skills, tools and sharpening ability.

The scrub plane didn't go close, the old coffin smoother was defeated, the Falcon F5 couldnt cut it and even the HNT Jack plane struggled. It did OK in scraper mode but thats not going to help me square the board. It also shrugged of the belt sander linke a wombat shrugs off a speeding hyundai.

It did make me think, is this a problem with my sharpening? Do I still not know what sharp means? Or is karri just a lost cause.............

I anderstand your point SilentC, about the blade angles. They were all as 'sharp' as each other yet the Baileys and the coffin smoother lost their edge in 2minutes. While the much higher angle HNT jackplane did hold up much better. So perhaps I was mistaken to put sharpness and geometry in the same basket.

I also foudn out the Karri is harder than Ironwood and scufffed the sole of my plane

[echnidna]

I suppose putting up with all that inferior timber is a downside to living in the West.

[Kris.Parker1]

I like the waterstone as I tend to use it while I'm turning. I used to use an oilstone, but tended to leave stains on the wood I was turning, now I don't have to worry.

[JDarvall]

I use 800 and 8000 grit waterstones, slow rpm grinder with 8" AlO wheels, and a 1 metre long piece of finished stone (its polished granet I think,,glass like finish) about 5" wide on a cement wall also 5" wide so it can be stradled like a horse...to it I adhere coarse hermes sandpaper 1 metre at a time,,,its a kind of scary sharp setup I guess,,,, It allows me to flattern plane soles, plane blade backs, and my waterstones in long uni-directional passes as heavy as I like....
The focus for me is to avoid flatterning my waterstones as much as possible... so the waterstones are reserved for final bevels of blade......eg. grind to feather edge with grinder (fingers on edge to avoid overheating) at say 25 degrees , then say at 28 degrees on 800 grit stone with carpatec guide (those $12 ones) just till wire edge falls a way,,,,then say 32 degrees on 8000 grit stone....thats it.