Chisel Sharpening - 17 Degree Chisel | Why you need one

hi I'm Rob cars and welcome to my shop 17 degree primary bevel and a chisel does it actually of any value does it work will it make a difference I'm going to walk you through and show you how I discovered it and how beneficial it is Stay With Me [Music] it wouldn't be it wouldn't be an inaccurate statement to say that I cut dovetails for a living or at least I teach it and in the process of cutting dovetails I've often had problems that I've had to overcome and I want to show you how and why I discovered the 17 degree chisel when you're dealing with chopping waste in soft Woods I'm talking about things like Pine Aspen Alder Basswood even Poplar what often happens is chopping in between the pins or the tails you get huge wood fracture in the middle big cheap Pieces Pop out now if it happens right here it's not a problem but the closer it gets to the surface and then you have to start planing in order to clean up the joint once it's assembled all of a sudden you start to get a translucent area right along here where this big gap is exposed very close to the surface drove me crazy I did everything I possibly could and couldn't seem to find a solution until this so I pride myself on knowing how to sharpen and I'd be working on something with all of this fiber failure I call it my should my chisels were as sharp as I could get them 25 degree primary bevel didn't matter and did not matter how frequently or how soon after sharpening I did it you would still in some Woods have this fracture this fiber fracture which was just drove me crazy so what did I do well I started playing around with the primary bevel now I've got a theory behind why this works I'll share that with you toward the end of the video but I would lower the primary bevel two or three degrees put on a secondary in a tertiary sharpen it and try it and I kept doing that when I reached what turned out to be 17 degrees I found that it would go through the wood and the same fibers that tore at 25 degrees now they didn't I'm actually going to demonstrate so I'm going to use the other side of this piece and just see what's going to happen it's as close to being the same piece of wood I'll flip it over and start on the inside first now I always remove a little bit head area pardon me I'll leave I get closer to the line if I left too much from the Fret saw so I'll set the Chisel right on the American gauge line chop down about halfway I've since changed that procedure I now only go about a third of the way but that's beside the point for right now set the Chisel right in the gauge line do your best to follow I should take a little off to follow the slope of the PIN it saves a lot of time on the next phase all right let's see what we got well if you look at this we don't have you see we have failure up in here we have failure in here here big chunk out here along here so on this one we don't have any failure right up where it's really critical we got a little bit right here but it's in the middle of the board which is fine and this is actually nice and clean so what I do now I tell my students to do now is instead of coming halfway in the first chop only come about a third of the way then when you're chopping from the face which is the side you're going to see save that for the two-thirds what happens is you get right to about here and what's left tends to break instead of cut and that's why you end up getting these big chunks coming out like this so a 17 degree chisel there are some limitations I'm going to show you how to actually make one and I'm going to tell you what you need to avoid when using something with that acute of an angle and before you decide to make one of these you have to know there are some limitations when you're dealing with an angle that is that acute there is very little metal out there to support The Cutting Edge so there's something called the Janka scale and that rates the hardness of wood I'll give you a couple of examples here's a piece of Pardon Me maple Eastern Maple rates at 1450 piece of pine is 380 here's a piece of Aspen that is 350. Poplar is just a little over 500. you go much Beyond Poplar and you're going to that edge will literally fold in the wood while you're chopping on it but for something like this and if you're going to use these soft Woods you almost have to have a couple of chisels designated just for that but they just do a beautiful job of cutting so nice and clean on Woods like that that would typically fracture so I'm going to show you how to grind it I'm going to show you how to hone it and if you want you can make your own you're going to need a bench grinder you're going to need a decent tool rest and you need a protractor and that's all there is to it now you it's very difficult to go in there and set this up without any kind of a gauge so all I do is if I know this is 25 degrees I'm going to set that up so that I'm touching somewhere down here on the heel and I'm just going to start it I've got to remove a fair bit of material so I'm going to start fire it up [Music] uh just get a look now I don't I have no idea what that's going to be but I doubt very much it's going to be 17 right away but I still have to remove all that material regardless so I may as well do it in stages now if you're using a regular grinding wheel you're going to be constantly having to dip in order to cool it off I'm so impressed with these CBN wheels and I'll leave a link where we actually provide them now we just they're so so easy to use they cut very fast and because it's a big heavy steel wheel itself it becomes a heat sink so you I can grind this entire chisel without having to stop and cool it off just keep having a look now if I get a little bit closer toward the edge I'll put my protractor on there and just try to figure out where I am in relation to 17 degrees I can still hold on to that so that's how cool that wheel is it's an 80 grit it's called CBN or carbon Boron nitrate [Music] for it you can even grind carbide on it you don't have to dress it it's already balanced you put the wheel on and go to work there's no maintenance to it and it lasts a long time well worth the extra money if you do any amount of grinding seriously consider it okay I should be able to read off of that now take my protractor I'm going to set that for our way on this side so there's 10 15 17. lock that I can come over here I can see I still have quite a bit to remove off of the heel so I'm just gonna go in and I'm going to tip this tool rest back just a small amount lock it this is called a a I can't think of the name of it but it's made by one-way manufacturing and it's the best tool rest that you're going to find it looks rather crude the way I've got this set up but it'll attach and work with any grinder we've got a nice great big platform to work off everything is Rock Solid and it works on a cam so it's nice and quick to set up okay I can see my new bevel is right there you want to make sure that you keep your tool in this case a chisel tight to the rest so that you maintain that angle if you in pushing the Chisel into the wheel you allow it to ride up you're going to end up with multiple facets on there and that's not ideal so most of the pressure is keeping the Chisel tight to the tool rest and light pressure into the stone for the wheel let's check this again get a light colored background makes it easier to see and that looks to be right on so there I've got my 17. now what I'm going to do is just take that out to the tip and then we can go over to the stones and I'll show you how to do the final preparation on it I should add when you set this up you want to try to get that platform parallel to the front to The Cutting Edge of the wheel now it's all free hand so I'm constantly stopping and checking to make sure the end of that is square if you can't tell by eye you can put a square on it and I've got a little bit of material to remove off of this side which happens to be this side when I turn it over so what I'll I'll do is just I'll turn this grind the Chisel a little bit so that the Sparks are favoring that side few seconds of adjustment turn it over check it again and just keep doing that until you bring it around so it may not be that you're going to get a square edge with it appeared appearing to be square to the wheel you may have to angle it one way or the other foreign to keep it tight to the tool rest okay that looks good we can go over to the stone wait wait now if you want best performance you've got to go through and prepare the back now I'll leave a link on preparing chisels on a video we've done before but I bring that polish right up to 16 000 grit I want to keep that angle low so I'm going to do a secondary bevel on this 1000 grit Stone and I'm going to do a tertiary or a third bevel on this 16 000 grit this is what I finished the back with so I'm going to lay that down right on that primary bevel which is extremely low only bring it up just a degree or so now it's best if you just go a little short forward Strokes forward and back move side to side a little bit so you're not wearing the stone in one spot if you try to do circles with something like this you'll end up skewing it often and just work that until you can feel a slight Burr in the back side remember to just get off of the primary bevel not much more you want to keep that super low cutting angle that will work so well in those soft Woods okay I can feel a burn now you can wipe that off if you want come over to your sixteen thousand same thing register on the primary bevel and come up just a degree or two higher than you did on the previous Stone and anywhere from five to ten seconds again I'm just doing a little short forward Strokes then lay it over on its back and take just a few seconds to remove any Burr careful to keep it down nice and tight now when you're done you'll have a nice Sharp in this case sixteen thousand Grit final bevel and that'll slice through the softest of wood and leave it perfect hope this helps if you like my work and enjoy my style of teaching click on any one of these videos and help take your woodworking to the next level I've always said better tools make the job so much easier if you click on the link below the Chisel and plane icon it'll take you to our site and introduce you to all the tools that we actually manufacture right here in our shop it'll also give you information on our online and in-person workshops

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 69,807

Keywords: 17 degree chisel, build, chisel, chisel razor sharp, chisel sharpening, chisel sharpening with sandpaper, grinder, hand sharpening, hand tool, hand tool woodworking, hand tools, how to sharpen, how to sharpen chisels, making, sharp, sharpen, sharpen a chisel, sharpen chisel, sharpening, sharpening a chisel, sharpening chisels, sharpening jig, sharpening stone, technique, whetstone, wood, woodworking, woodworking ideas

Id: PvlXgw2e8cY

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023