Showing posts with label blade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blade. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2016
Plow Plane Blade Sharpening
After years of hand woodworking and using hand tools I have become well aware that the variety of blades to have to be sharpened is so broad as to preclude the possession of only one guide for sharpening. Thus, there is no universal guide! I proceeded to own different devices that allow me to securely support most of the blades. For plow blades I prefer to use the Stanley guide. It has the advantage of having a rear support that compensates very well the narrow width of the cutting edge, preventing the device, leaning on one side, could affect to obtain a perfectly square edge, as is appropriate for this kind of blade. The Stanley guide, however, was designed to sharpen chisels or wide blades. Metal plow blades are thin and is difficult to tight them enough. To remedy this problem I put a small wedge between the blade and the lower floor of the guide, getting a firm grip, without risk to affect the stability of the system during sharpening action. 
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Sharpening a Scrub Plane Blade
The scrub plane blade has an arc-profiled cutting edge, with more or less marked radius according to the job required. This profile makes it more difficult to sharpening by guides so many people prefer sharpening it by hand. 
Im not very good at this job, so I searched for sharpening guides available that could serve the purpose. The Record 161 is a guide which is easy to find on ebayUK for few pounds. It has only one central contact point (a rolling ball in the middle) and this permits to incline to the right and left allowing to follow the cutting edge profile easily.
The blade is held firmly in place by a clamp screw that allows unrestricted iron orientation, useful even if it was necessary to sharpen skewed blade. The dark side is that you have to ensure the correct blade position by hand.
For bigger curves the guide can be moved to the sides of the sharpening stone to allow for greater tilt, as seen in the short movie. The result was satisfactory with 35 ° bevel. To re-sharpen exactly to the same angle Ill use a simple self made jig.
