Maintaining an edge during the woodworking process provides higher levels of working sharpness from edge tools, promoting accurate cuts and joinery, smoother wood surface finish quality, and saves woodworkers an enormous amount of wasted time regrinding, by avoiding dullness, affordably.

It comes down to convenience. This is very important, because when sharpening isn’t convenient or is too messy, we tend to allow tools to become so dull, that restoring sharpness is a lot of hard work. Dullness is avoidable if we maintain sharpness as we work. Maintaining edge tools should be easy.

Why would we want a strop optimized for our workbench? Most strops on the market today are not optimized for honing woodworking tools well. Some come closer than others, but overall they don’t offer the right combination of leather types, flatness, length or ergonomics all at once. Woodworkers want some options and ease when they maintain their edge tools. Our strop is capable of maintaining tool sharpness, reducing or eliminating the mess, while fixturing itself on the bench where the tools are working.

Enter the ‘Bench Strop’ from Evenfall Studios.

The Bench Strop is a multi piece interchangeable stropping surface, sharpening tool. It is optimized for bench work with a Strop Base that supports the Strop Top 2-1/4 inches above the bench top. This boost in height allows clearances for the hands to hold handled tools and plane irons while stropping both the bevel and the backs.

The Strop Base also has three 3/4-inch deep, 3/4-inch diameter Dog Holes bored in the underside for fixturing the Bench Strop over any Round Bench Dog. It is quick and easy to fixture the strop wherever there is space and an available dog. Need to move the strop? Use one hand and pick it up. It is that simple and easy. Need to fixture it again, place it over the bench dog using one of the three provided holes and that’s it! If there is no dog, or the strop will be used away from the bench, we offer an optional non-skid foot kit that can be installed to the base. This will not impede the use of the bench dog fixturing system at all, and adds stability on other surfaces.

The top of the Strop Base is the mounting point for interchangeable Strop Tops. A hex key holder is integrally built into the right side of the base so the tool for interchanging ‘Strop Tops’ is always at hand.

The Strop Tops are made from dead flat MDF and mount to the Strop Base with two 1/4-20 flat head cap screws. The stropping surface area measures 3 x 10-1/4 inches. The optional stropping surfaces are made from Hard Rolled, Genuine Horse Butt, Cowhide Split Suede, which are the two most popular leather stropping surfaces available, and we offer a bare MDF base for use with diamond paste or polishing compounds. Choose one, choose three, or choose multiple Strop Tops for use with the many different compounds available. It is a system you configure to work your way.

The size of this surface area is over two inches longer than most bench stones and wide enough to easily accommodate the #8 jointer plane iron. Stropping free hand or with a roller jig is equally easy and there is plenty of space for each method. There is a lot to be said about interchangeable stropping materials that are the best available, mounted on a flat surface that stays where you put it and allows space enough for the hands to hold the edge tool as required. Our ‘Bench Strop’ provides all this.

Stropping is super easy! It is performed by dragging the bevel edge of the tool backward on the strop. We recommend preparing the edge tool with your finest stone prior to stropping. Never push the tool on the stropping surface or it will damage the strop! There is no need to press down hard, just register the steel against the strop fully with light pressure only and pull. There is no need for speed or rushing. The surface you choose loaded with the compound you prefer (or not) will do the work. This not only takes the honing of your tools beyond the range of many stones, but also can assure that the wire edge is fully removed from the bevel before returning to the work.

A few other benefits of the Bench Strop are that it’s a clean system at the bench. No water, no oil, no mess. It won’t freeze in the wintertime; it’s just the stropping surface and compound. It’s Dry! If the tool is feeling a little dull, harder to push, simply strop it! Sharpening is quick, easy and at hand!

We want to emphasize here, this kind of maintenance honing will prevent the need to completely rebuild edge tool sharpness. Regrinding will be kept to a minimum through stropping while woodworking.

Stropping chisels and carving gouges is easy. Take the tool to the strop directly. The fixturing capability and strop height above the bench allows you room to pivot skew chisels, carving gouges or contoured irons used in hollows and rounds ergonomically. Straight blade chisels from Butt to Paring length are easy, cranked necked and fish tail chisels are just as easy.

Bench Plane irons are removed from the plane, and If chip breakers are involved, no problem; simply leave them attached to the iron and strop the bevel side. Radiused irons are similarly no problem. Rock the iron from right side to left side alternatively as you pull it on the Bench Strop. Strop squared Irons for the shooting plane or smoother with the roller guide on if you prefer. There is no mess to clean up. Reassemble the iron set onto the frog, replace the lever cap, adjust the iron for backlash and depth and it is back to work. It’s fast, easy and the edge tool sharpness is maintained. You won’t miss grinding steel a bit if edges are kept sharp as you work.

As mentioned earlier, multiple ‘Strop Tops’ can be used on the ‘Strop Base’, allowing flexibility. Configure your stropping system to suit your steel’s needs. Use Horse Butt with different compounds, or Cowhide Split Suede with others. Mix and match. Damage a strop or wear it out? No worries, replacements are available and are quick change. Need more than one base to accommodate the way you work? Add a base. Want fancy or fancier? We deliver. Available woods for bases are Ash, Hard Maple, Cherry and Walnut.

“I like stropping a blade but not everyone does. If you polish with a very fine abrasive, say an 8000-grit stone, you’ll have an edge that’s hard to improve. But something about a gentle swipe on a green chrome-oxide-charged leather strop makes me feel like I’ve done all I can.”

Excerpted with permission, page 110 of the “The Perfect Edge”.
Ron Hock. Owner, Hock Tools, Author, “The Perfect Edge”.

“I cannot imagine working on the bench without my strop handy — right there on the bench, between paring or bench chisel cuts — I can renew the edge. The main benefit with my paring chisels, in my experience, is not taking an edge to a point of failure. If edge failure happens, I need to actually go through my sharpening regimen in order to continue having clean cuts.

The benefit for my other edge tools, such as my smoother, is that I can pop out a blade, strop it, and get back to work quickly and cleanly. With a strop, I can maintain a clean working bench, no water or oil to accidentally spoil the bench or my work.”

Mike Wenzloff, Owner, Wenzloff and Sons Sawmakers.

The strop is an invaluable tool to many woodworkers, aiding the ability to keep the workbench workflow agile and easy, and edge tools sharply working at peak efficiency. We think our ‘Bench Strop’ incorporates the best of all these strengths together into a tool that makes keeping edge tools sharp as easy as it can be.

The ‘Bench Strop’ is available for purchase now from the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store. Please see the ‘Bench Strop’ Product Page for affordable pricing and configurability.

Happy Woodworking!

There are a lot of great things to know about them, but there is one thing that is really important to touch on first off.

The grading of Granite Surface Plates is of importance to the woodworker. Please have a look at the following data:

The following tolerances account for the highest and lowest differences in the flatness of the surface on the Granite Plate.

.000025” for an AA grade plate. Twenty-five hundred-thousandths of an inch.
.000050” for an A grade plate. Fifty hundred-thousandths of an inch.
.000100” for a B grade plate. One Ten-Thousandths of an inch

Now to look at the numbers, you would say that A is double the roughness of AA and B is well more than double the roughness of A. While this is true, the B grade plate is smoother than a baby’s behind and imperceptibly flat to you and I. Please don’t become mesmerized by those numbers, Grade B is amazingly, awesomely flat. I mean if one ten-thousandths is not flat enough for woodworking then, Um, I am not sure what you have planned.

The AA grade plate is a Laboratory Grade plate and is a very expensive precision tool that lives in a temperature controlled precision laboratory . It is used primarily for the calibration of tools that will do high precision or precision work. This is well beyond the needs of most end users. The A grade plate is an Inspection Grade plate which is usually kept in a clean area and used for Quality Assurance (QA/QC) comparisons and analysis. Consider it for companies that need to compare whether the work they are doing in the shop is meeting manufacturing specifications that are required to be met.

B grade is otherwise known as a “Tool Room” quality surface where us folk with grubby hands are allowed to use them. It is the plate used by those performing the work. It is the least expensive and most used, and also the least expensive to replace should it become damaged. Sounds like the one for us, and it is! The grade B plate is more accurate than we, and the tools we have in the workshop will ever need.

What’s even better is that Tool Room Grade B plates go on sale often and we can pick them up for cheaper than river rocks at a renaissance faire. Keep that in mind and just go cheap. Nothing being sold as a granite surface plate and that is cheap at the same time is a bad thing. Just buy it. It is way too easy to purchase these anymore. Surface plates come in many sizes and are on sale quite frequently at Enco. There is often free shipping if you buy enough to meet a very low priced minimum order for that

There are several ways to use a Granite Surface Plate in the woodworking shop, so lets touch on them.

First off, the top surface of the granite plate is the business surface, the sides and bottom of the plate are not certified. The bottom of the stone is generally parallel to the top, and pretty flat. Granite is hard stone, likely harder than what you have placed it on, and also likely flatter than what you have placed it on and what this can mean is that the surface plate can rock if the surfaces don’t match.

Depending on what you use the plate for, rocking may not matter to the end user, or it may matter a lot. There are a few factors happening at once here. If you are trying to work with the accuracy the plate offers, having it rock on you is not going to make for a usable experience. If you are using the plate for sharpening edge tools, having the plate rock and skid may not work well either. The solution for this is affixing rubber feet to the underside of the surface plate.

Adding rubber feet to the underside of the surface plate while solving some problems is not as straight forward as simply just doing it. Granite is rock solid of course, but if it isn’t properly supported, it can sag and warp from it’s own weight, and this can affect the accuracy of the working surface over time. So there is a proper method for locating the feet to the bottom of the plate so this all works out.

First, it takes three feet, not four, because a tripod will not rock, and as such will stabilize the plate on nearly any surface.

Second, locating the feet in a tripod shape and within the right parameters to the underside of the plate is key. Here is the formula for this:

On one narrow side edge, or end of the plate, there will be one foot affixed. It will be located at the middle, 1/2 the width of the plate from each side, and between 1/5th and 1/4th the length of the plate from the ends. I like to affix to the middle, and have the edge of the foot at 1/5th the length from the edge.

On the other narrow side edge, or end of the plate, there will be two feet affixed. They will be located in the corners, between 1/5th and 1/4th the length, and 1/5 to 1/4 the width of the plate. Again, I like to affix them with the outermost portion of the foot just within the 1/5th realm of the spec.

If you want to have a look at the Federal Specification GGG-P-463c which is the standard for which Granite Surface Plates are made and maintained with, I have a copy of it in the Woodworks Library Hand Tool section, just click this link right here.

If you have added feet, then a couple cool things become benefits to you. The plate is now reasonably skid resistant, (great for scary sharp work) it doesn’t rock, you can clean under it, and you can easily get your fingers under it should you choose to or need to move it around in your shop to use or store it. That is great usability!

Some people like to make a carrying tray for making the moving of the plate easier, because you can then add handles etc. If you do this, it’s a great idea, but it is still beneficial to add the feet under the plate to stabilize it, even if you put it in a tray.

Once you have a granite surface plate in your shop, there are a number of uses for it. Many woodworkers buy one for use with the “Scary Sharp” method of sharpening, where sandpaper abrasives of varying grit, or micron size are used to abrade metals for grinding and honing. Even if “Scary Sharp” is not your primary method for sharpening, I have found there are times it is efficient to resort to it instead of stones.

It is important to note here that these plates are very smooth to the touch. The smoothness is a component of the flatness. It is wise to avoid using abrasives on the plate in a way that will scratch it, and it is likely a bad idea to use loose abrasives on a surface plate, because they will abrade the plate and it will lose it’s certified flatness. Many people use a combination of sharpening methods including PSA sanding abrasives and a granite plate to maintain their tools. Wet-Dry sandpaper can also be made wet with water or light oil and the capillary action of the water will help hold the abrasives in place, but the use of a surface plate doesn’t have to stop there.

Many times, just for general sanding on woods, you can keep it simple. Just lay a piece of sandpaper on the plate and sand with one hand while you hold the paper in place with the other. It is really handy on the fly. This is particularly when you need to sand flatten a small surface or joint a short edge for glue up. Think jewelry box pieces, inlays, marquetry, fine fitment of things where close tolerences are desired.

Other uses for the surface plate include using it as the reference standard that it is to evaluate the quality of your layout tooling’s accuracy. It is great for all kinds of analysis. The plate will help reveal the accuracy of straight edges and squares by comparing them on the surface.

If you have a high quality square, you can place it on the surface plate to compare the squareness of other squares to it. 1-2-3 blocks are great tools for comparing squareness as a for instance. Any square nudged up against a 1-2-3 block is square if there is no light seen between them. It is for woodworking, good to know which squares are highly accurate, or just good enough for the job at hand.

It is also a place where you can measure and compare parts with depth gauges and dial indicators. A magnetic stand need not be left out on a granite surface plate. Allow it to hold the dial indicator; the stand is not the accuracy. The dial indicator is set so it is perpendicular to the surface, the tip is in contact with the plate, and the dial zeroed. Anything you place on the plate under the tip of the indicator is measured for thickness. It’s just an idea of what you could use the plate for with a little imagination.

Glue joints are pretty particular about matching well. We often cut things straight and plane things flat so they will mate well. Often times when a small part is too small or delicate to work with common tools, sanding it on a granite surface plate is a great way to prep it. You can achieve flatness to greater than 0.001 while sanding things on the surface plate. You can also contour sand convex shapes on the plate, because the plate is heavy, rigid and flat, and adhesives hold sandpapers to it really well. All you have to do is move the part needing sanded as you sand. It often works with higher control than holding the work piece and sandpaper in your hands.

Finally, what about that big rock in the shop when you are not using it? Granite is a porous material, so leaving any kind of grunge on it might not be a good practice, as it can soak into the granite. Leaving adhesives on it long term can affect how easily they come off later. When it is exposed and uncovered, it is good to make certain then hard things wont be dropped on it, so as to allow it to become gouged or scratched, and piling things on top of it can render it too difficult to use when it would be nice if we could.

Good practices include keeping it clean and dry, and cover it so the dust in the shop doesn’t land on it when it isn’t being used. Keep it ready to go and you’ll find a ton of ways to use it.

Depending on what you use it for, it can be nice to have it ready to use when you need it, and it is wise to remember that any dust on such a flat surface can easily affect the accuracy when precision measurement is desired. Unless it has a full time home where it is placed, covering it and placing it on a shelf out of harms way is always a good way to keep this precision tool ready for the next use we have for it. It is way more versatile than float glass or MDF for many reasons, and can be more versatile than a floor tile or piece of countertop in many cases as well. Well worth having!

Happy Woodworking!

Ok, this is a little longish, but there is no substantial way to provide a sharpening primer in a sound bite. I’ve tried to write about what will work well overall, without getting too focused on too many particulars in any sharpening media. No matter which way you choose to go ahead with sharpening, this advice should be helpful to you overall. It’s a reasonable primer that will put you on the road with usable sharpening skills. So grab a snack and a drink, and settle in for a bit. If you really want to learn to sharpen, reading this will likely be worth your time. Your Questions and Comments are invited as always!

When it comes to sharpening, abrasives are abrasives the world around. They may have particular idiosyncrasies you need to pay attention to, but they all abrade metal. Once you choose the abrasives you feel will work best for you, you will establish your own routine for working with them. All paths are means that will lead to a similar end. Waterstones, oilstones, ceramics, particulates, sandpaper, various styles of machine sharpening etc. The steel does not care; the abrasives don’t care either, as long as the grit equivilents of abrasiveness are appropriate to the goal. Sharpness.

For the sake of this discussion, I am referring to the abrasive grits, as they correspond to the grits common to waterstones. I do this simply for the reason that waterstones are very popular, but I am in no way advocating that waterstones are the best abrasive. Most all abrasives will sharpen, and it is up to the end user to investigate the pros and cons of the various abrasives to determine the best paths for themselves. For cross-reference please refer to this cross reference chart to derive the equivilent grit for the media you choose.

It is important to keep in mind that the goal of sharpness has stages.

Coarse grits are for grinding, heavy material removal, bevel forming, flattening. Initial flattening and bevel angle forming are the biggest jobs and to aid getting the job over with, the coarsest grits should be used to get the bulk of these tasks done.

Fine grits are for honing and polishing. Once you have established bevels and flatness on the backs, you will want to polish it. Removing coarse scratches in steel with finer ones is what creates finer sharpness. Sharpness actually is where the intersection of the two planes formed by the bevel and the back meet. The finer they are polished, the sharper they will be. the act of creating the wire or feather edge happens when the bevel side of the iron or blade is abraded until the dullness has been honed away. This is required to establish a fresh edge on the tool, and can be done with any number of the different honing or grinding grits.

It is up to the sharpener to determine how dull the tool is, and select the coarseness or fineness of abrasive grit needed to restore the edge to sharpness the fastest way. This means, it comes down to how much steel needs to be removed on the bevel side to form the wire, or feather. You must determine the condition of the edge, and the fastest way to restore it. If only a lttle honing is needed to restore the edge, don’t select coarse abrasives when you begin. If a lot of honing is needed, don’t select fine abrasives when you begin, but realize you will have to polish all the way up through the grits to the fine abrasives to restore the sharpness.

It is important to get a feel for the finish your honing equipment will give you as a finish result at each stage of the work. It will aid you to learn to evaluate what is needed, where to start, how long to hone, and when you have reached what was needed. Knowing this simplifies the task and helps you save time. This is experiential– it is learned by using the sharpening tools you have on your edge tools. It is getting to know one another. Call it sharpening intimacy if you will.

A little about flattening the back. Many people take this as meaning they must flatten the entire back of a chisel or plane iron to properly complete this step. Nothing could be further from the truth, but you can be happy if you’ve the mind to. Try thinking of how a knife has a bevel on each side of an edge. Remember how we hone both sides to make a knife sharp? We are simply trying to hone both sides of a chisel or plane iron too, but we want to keep the flat side in plane with itself for the most part.

Flattening the back really only means that you only need a planar surface near the location where the bevel is, and the width of flatness on the back, or in other words how far away from the edge on the backside need be no wider than the bevel is, but you are welcome to flatten more of the back if you like, because sometimes it is easier to hold the tool on a wider surface.

Flattening doesn’t have to kill you or be drudgery, just buy a Kanaban plate and some silicon carbide grit or diamond paste and get it over with. There are a number of places that sell those items, so in all fairness to them, please use a search engine for pricing. That is the fast track to flat backs. It is more important for backs to be a planar surface, flat, than it is to have a mirror finish, but the mirror finish is what we often wind up with eventually anyway.

The bevel side too, the bevel’s actual surface, is a narrow flattened plane. It is the intersection of these two planes where the angle forms. The flatness of these two planes are what help them succeed at being very sharp, at the angle point. In fact it is difficult, maybe impossible to achieve a high degree of sharpness if this planar-flat surface isn’t present on each surface that makes up the bevel.

It is geometric, and has to respond to a couple different things all at once to be most effective. Just like you would hone both sides of a knife to restore its edge, It just happens that on edge tools, the back makes up half of the beveled edge. It is the straightness of these two planes which form a line along the intersection of these flattened and honed surfaces, and that makes this edge. It is also often helpful if this honed edge is square to the side of the blade, unless skew (an angle that is not 90 to the edge) is desired.

Guides are useful for grinding specific angles. Please feel free to use them for the heavy work. Honing and polishing are something often done quicker, which is more useful and easy if you can learn to do it free hand. Free handed, the side sharpening method is likely the easiest to learn and use. The steel does not care, the wood does not either. If you cannot do this well enough, please, feel free too use the honing guide.

I’ll add here that chisels seem great candidates for free hand honing, and I recommend it. It’s quick and keeps the tool really sharp as you work with it. Use the guide to grind though because it is faster. Avoid micro bevels on chisels to aid freehand sharpening. Never back bevel a chisel either, because the back of the chisel is important for registration in the work.

Plane Irons are another matter. I feel micro bevels can really help you here because there is a lot more metal to remove, and the honing process is more involved while getting blades in and out of the plane. I recommend using the guide all the time on plane irons, if really sharp sharpness is important to you while planing.

Back bevels can be useful for getting sharp faster on plane irons. Use them. They have other benefits on plane irons as well but I’ll cover that another time.

Remember, forming a wire or feather only means you have ground, honed or polished past the dullness, depending on how long you allowed things to dull. It means you can now stop grinding and start honing and polishing.

Honing up through the finer grits is how we remove the wire edge created by honing past the dullness. If you hone and do not create this wire or feather, then you have not honed past the dullness. The dullness is the wear on the edge that you want to remove. The wire edge is what you want. It is the indicator that you have abraded the steel enough to have ground away the dull parts. Once you have achieved this all the way across the edge, you can then begin working both sides of the bevel with the grits appropriate to the level they are currently polished, alternately, to hone the edge to working fineness.

When honing off the wire, always hone the backs of the tool with the finest grit you have previously honed the back with. It often means alternating stones from the bevel to the back, but why scratch up the back if it is already polished? Hone both sides on the appropriate grit as you work up through the grits.

While honing or polishing, never push the edge tool into the stone, always drag it. Breaking the wire edge off is easy to do and pushing the edge will increase the risk. Braking the wire edge off is equivalent to dubbing the edge. Instant Dullness. We want to hone the feather or wire off, not break it off. The end result is vastly different. Pull the blade while honing and you’ll be fine.

If you examine your backs and bevels after honing to a mirror finish and see a glint of light right at the angle point, that is a flaw in your work. It should be a complete surface with no glints of light sparkling at you, especially from the bevel angle point. Glints of light indicate dullness.

In most steels, once you have honed through the grits to the 8000 grit stone, you have honed finely enough to pare end grain pine. End grain pine is the most difficult wood to pare without crushing; it really is the toughest task an edge tool for use in wood will ever see. **(Japanese tools often use finer steels and traditionally were used in softer woods, so there may be some benefit in honing good Japanese steels slightly finer if for use in soft woods)**

There are no recognized tests of, or charts with “scales of sharpness”. The time honored test for sharpness has been and always been; if the edge is sharp enough to do the required work in the material required, to the level of result desired, then sharp was sharp enough. I personally contend that with the wide ranges of tooling, sharpening media, and woods to use them on, this test for the woodworker is still good enough to be true.

The only major corollary to this adage is concerning edge-wear. Can the sharpness last a reasonable quantity of time, so as to bolster productivity? That would depend on the environment. Is it one of production or for that of the hobbiest? Harder tooling is wonderful in a production setting where the sharpening media can match the task of maintaining it, but can the hobby woodworker go toe to toe with the price tag needed to buy in? For most of us, common tooling is just fine, and the results of adequate sharpening as shown in the work have always sufficed, once learning what is needed so as to make results repeatable has been established.

You do not have to shave off your hair! Many people contend hair popping sharpness is an adequate test for sharpness. The truth is, it isn’t. Hair is not wood, and shaving a hair from the surface of skin is is a completely different set of circumstances and dynamics happening, that actually do not require the sharpness required to take a shaving from wood.

The sharpness required for shaving is not as sharp as required for paring wood and as such is not an adequate test for pairing wood. I can shave hair with knives coming off 1000 grit abrasives. Since this is true, what if you can shave hair, should you stop honing well before you are sharp enough to do the work you need to? I was able to accomplish hair popping sharpness with spit on carborundum stones as a young kid, so I am not personally impressed with hair popping sharpness.

For woodworking, shaving hair is the equivalent of a neat card trick. Good for show, not much go. This is a long way from the sharpness we need to push a blade through end grain pine with least effort, so as to pare it. I am saying, we are aiming for and achieving a much higher level of sharpness. If you have sharpened to 8000, you are well past the sharpness needed to shave hair. (Read this as, being able to shave hair can fool you, I hope I have made that clear.)

If you visually examine the edge and see no glints of light reflecting from your edge, and you have polished to the 8000 grit level, no tests are necessary. At 8000 and after a little stropping on leather, the tool is as sharp as you will ever need, I assure you. Honing beyond here is a lot of work spent honing with a diminished work time in wood. In other word, the honing takes longer than the dulling does in this range. You can strop on leather with a little honing compound if you like for a slightly finer edge, which is sometimes temporarily helpful in softwoods. Again, if you feel the need to test, the pine is fine.

Much has been and continues to be written about sharpening, and I encourage you to study this subject, and pay attention to your own realizations as you sharpen. This here is at the heart of what you really need to know. It isn’t rocket surgery. Once you get the heavy work done, (flattening and bevel shaping) it is done forever, and “maintaining” sharpness should generally take no more than 30 strokes on most any stone as you hone up through the grits. This means, If it is taking more that 30, you chose to hone with a stone to fine for the work you need done.

Don’t let your tools get too dull before you touch them up. You can easily maintenance hone as you work. It can take less time to keep your edges in working condition if you become a fastidious maintainer. If you have to rebuild edges every time you sharpen, then you have likely waited too long, and that is a lot more work than 30 strokes of maintainence sharpening.

I need to touch on one last thing here. Bevel angles. Commonly, woodworkers like to bevel their tools so as to be easiest to push through the work. I feel there are some hard fast rules that need to be understood.I am going to touch on a common for instances.

In a nutshell, not all steels are created equal. There are trade-offs we have to learn to live with. Here are a couple.

A-2 like any Steel, has a particular molecular structure. In A-2, the hardening process forms carbide particles in the steel which has a high wear resistance. It will stay sharp longer than that of other steels, but it will require you to sharpen it at usually no less than a 35 degree bevel angle in order to maintain an edge that won’t fail. In other words, If you attempt bevels of 30 degrees or less with A-2, the effect will often result in the edge failing and crumbling. This is due to the very carbides that form to make it wear resistant. It also takes longer to sharpen than High Carbon, or O-1 Steel. As such, this steel is not the best choice for low bevel angles where paring is desired. A-2 is far better lasting where the tooling will be struck with a hammer like in mortising, or for people who prefer a lot of chopping with their bench chisels, or when used to plane in abrasive woods like many tropical hardwoods.

O-1 and high carbon steels are considered finer grained and do not form these carbides in them in the same way A-2 does. As such, these steels are able to hold a shallower bevel angle than A-2 commonly can without edge failure, they sharpen faster, some feel they sharpen finer, and lend themselves well to shallower bevel angles that works well with paring and lighter impact work that is common with many american hardwoods.

in any case, watch your edges. If you find them failing it is usually some combination of the steel type and wood hardness coming to loggerheads with the style of work you are performing and the bevel angles you have. Prepare to adjust the bevel angles accordingly.

My overall sense of this as well as my recommendation to you is this. A-2 Steel really prefers most usually to have a 35 degree bevel ground on it for best outcomes. To go shallower than 35 degrees with your bevels is something you may find works, but please don’t have high expectations. While these angles are not good for paring, they are great for rough service, so mindfully purchase O-1 or high carbon steels for the paring tools. O-1 Is not going to hold a lasting edge is really rough service. Steepening the bevel angles will help, but it still preforms better for finer work. Asking one steel to be all things to the various woodworking tasks is not going to happen. The same is also true of the tooling itself, some things simply find it difficult to interchange. Generally Speaking, Rough service bevels are in the 35 degree range, General purpose bevel angles are in the 30 degree range, and light service or paring bevel angles will be in the 25 degree range. The steel you have may require slight adjustments, just realize your steels can not be all things to all situations and you will be well serve when reaching for the right tool for the job.

I hope these tips help get you on the path to maintaining your tooling with the least effort possible!

Happy Woodworking!

Sure, That is a very large amount of application options. There are variables such as steel types. Cast steel, hand forged, high carbon, O1, A2, and D2. There are sharpening options. You have scary sharp, water stones, oilstones, and diamond stones amongst your choices for abrasives. There are a number of different sharpening methodologies, various jigs, freehand, even machines.

I use a portable sharpening station designed for use with stones, with both jigs and freehand manner. This helps facilitate the process, contain the mess, protect other shop furniture from damage and helps keep the honing tools organized. It can be used in a couple configurations, and can be moved out of the way when necessary. It is simply stored when not in use.

The base is made from 1/4 inch MDF, cut 19 inches deep by 16 inches wide. It is bordered with 1×2 poplar, mitered in the corners, glued and screwed to the base. It has a poplar 1×2 running along the front beneath the base. It is designed to be a bench hook. The hook registers against the edge of whatever you place it on. You may see in the photos, where I placed a small F clamp on the left front corner to keep the station in place while in use. You could use a holdfast, the bench vise; squeeze it between bench dogs, your option. It is designed to work however, wherever.

On the left side of the base, a riser made from 3/4 MDF, cut 11-3/4 x 4-1/2, is meant to be a stone base, and is glued along the edge rail on the main base. It has a poplar backstop for helping hold stones in place, added to it. The 3/4-inch riser is what is needed to allow clearance for your fingers when holding tools in various positions, especially during the back flattening process.

There is room inside the station for your spray bottle of water, can of honing oil, or the stone lubricant you prefer, various stones, jigs, edge tools, and what have you. If it is dirty from sharpening swarf, this is the best place for it.

For a resilient finish, this assembly was treated with 3 coats of Teak Oil, applied as directed, allowed to soak the MDF, wipe off the residue and allowed to fully dry. It was then wiped with mineral spirits to clean up any residual oils from the oil finish, and coated with 2 rubbed on coats of Poly.

In the front area on the main base, there is also a removable 3/4-inch MDF base, designed as a bench hook, which is cut 10 x 4 inches. This size is the exact size of the DMT brand, Non Skid Mats, and will accommodate most common stone sizes. It also has a poplar 1×2 backstop along the back, mounted to the edge of the base, and a 1×2 hook on the front mounted from the underside. It is finished the same manner the large base is.

The complete ensemble is very water resistant, very easy to clean.

When in use as a 2 piece station, a non skid mat is placed under the portable base in front so it wont skid, and a non skid mat is then placed on top of each sharpening station to help keep the stones in place, a job these mats do very well. You can flatten a wide chisel or plane iron with a stone like the DMT XX coarse 120 grit diamond stone, and the stone does not move. It is very effective.

When used for shaping bevels, or doing major flattening on edge tools, I use both stations in ensemble. The long station on the main base is great for use when using jigs for bevel reshaping. The portable auxiliary station is placed in the front of the main base, and is used for general maintenance honing, and for flattening and honing the wire off while major bevel work is being done. Both stations offer all the finger clearance needed for holding most any tool in the needed orientation for the sharpening.

The auxiliary station is a little more versatile when it comes to various tasks. It is handy for odd shapes like router blades. It will allow the stone to be placed near the front edge in a stable manner. It is also handy for honing off the wire without having to remove the tool from the jig. The sideways orientation is also very useful when honing cutlery and other knives.

For general woodworking, the small station can be used by itself. Just place a Non Skid Mat, or any non-skid material available on the bench, and place the little station on that. Another non-skid mat is then placed under the stone. Simple maintenance honing is possible, freehand using push pull or side sharpening methods, or with simple edge holding or side sharpening jigs. Touch ups only take a couple swipes on the finest stone, and depending on the wood you are working, you can choose to strop or not.

If needed, the little station gets out of the way, simply pick it up. Gravity and the non-skid mat are all that is needed to hold it still. Since it is a small bench hook, it can be used any place on the bench edge that is convenient. The hook can even be held in the vise. It only needs positioned on the edge during the honing process.

Feel free to design a station to meet your sharpening needs. Sharpening is a workflow, and is best made to suit the way you work. If you are still developing your workflow, this may help. You may have just been wondering if there is a better way to organize the process or help contain the mess. Maybe you have a space limitation, and need to move the station in and out of the work area as you go. This is just a concept. If it seems like it could help you, then use it. If you are a southpaw, simply reverse the layout.

For those who would like more views of the station, which can be expanded to much larger, more easily viewed images, please follow this link to the Sharpening Staton in my woodworking gallery.

Happy Woodworking!