Fast freehand sharpening: no jigs, no guides, no sandpaper.

a couple months ago i did a video where i showed my editor how to sharpen woodworking tools using nothing but sandpaper and an inexpensive honing guide now this is a great method especially if you're just getting started in the craft but if you've been woodworking for more than a month or two and you're still using sandpaper it is time to throw it away and get yourself some sharpening stones and i've got good news for you you can probably also get rid of that honing jig and you can definitely stop freaking out about your exact bevel angle and perfect micro bevels and all of that stuff because honestly it's all kind of nonsense or at the very least it's not necessary to good performance don't believe me stick around [Applause] i'm just like everybody else when i first started woodworking i was broke and i really didn't understand sharpening so i got a honing jig and 17 different grits of expensive sandpaper and it worked my tools were sharp and i was able to get started but then i saw a video with paul sellers sharpening freehand and it was so quick and efficient and there was no messing around wait a second let's not even talk about it let's do it this blade is a2 steel it's one of the hard sort of fancy alloys you see on some higher end tools today it came out of a modern stanley now i'm just putting oil on all of my sharpening stones just three in one oil and i'm gonna spread it out and get to work working on that bevel i'm starting on my coarsest stone and i'm just gonna move that iron back and forth on the stone nice long even strokes i've kind of got the angle programmed into my hands so i don't have to think too hard about what i'm doing then i check the back of that stone for a burn i flip the blade over work that burr off and now i'm doing the exact same thing on my medium stone it doesn't take me very long on this stone before i have another bur i flip that over onto my fine stone and i work that one this is a great black arkansas stone it cuts super quick especially for being a fine stone so i've got a burr right away i go over to my ultra fine stone this part isn't even strictly necessary but i own the stone and i do get a really good edge with it i take a few strokes on that and again i've got a good bur now i need to get that burr off of there so i'm going to go over to my strop this is just a piece of leather with honing compound on it i give that about 20 quick strokes on the bevel itself then i'm going to flip it over work the back of the bevel 10 times and that iron is completely finished totally ready to cut that took one minute and 29 seconds start to finish and the edge i have is outstanding i've got the iron back in the plane and i found my worst piece of rock maple this wood is hard like iron and it has terrible twisting reversing grain this blade slices right through it and the surface finish is outstanding this is everything i could want a plain iron to do and listen there is nothing wrong with using a honing jig for your sharpening i even know some professionals who do it but if you can get good results without having a jig without having all that extra gear well that's just gonna save you time in the shop and it's just not that difficult swear to god the first time i ever freehand honed a blade it worked that's how easy it is if you're going to get into freehand sharpening you're going to need some sharpening stones unfortunately there are way too many choices and it's very confusing let's go over some of the main choices right now a really popular option is japanese style water stones crafts people love these because they're available in very fine grits and they cut very quickly and they can handle most of the steels that you encounter in a woodworking shop the downsides of water stones is that most of them need to be kept wet all the time i use this one for sharpening japanese kitchen knives and it has to be soaked in water for a half hour before i use it down here in the shop that would just mean leaving it in a container of water all the time waterstones are also somewhat fragile so they can break occasionally and they go out of flat really easily so if you're going to use a water stone setup you also need some sort of flattening plate and you're going to be truing these up pretty frequently still they're very popular with crafts people and they work really well now another option is diamond stones or we should really just call them diamond plates because they really are just a flat plate of metal coated with a thin layer of industrial diamond these are probably kind of the best sharpening option out there they never go out of flat they last a long time they're extremely durable they're not very big and they will sharpen anything even the most high-tech complex alloys of steel when i upgrade my sharpening rig i will probably buy a bunch of diamond plates the only thing keeping me from doing that is they're still pretty expensive they're coming down in cost all the time so they're definitely going to be the best option in the future for right now i like to go with traditional oil stones these are very similar to water stones they're just a big basically lump of abrasive in a block form some of them are man-made and some of them are quarried naturally now these cut a little bit more slowly than water stones but they're much less fragile so they're really unlikely to break and they almost never go out of flat i also find that when i lubricate them with oil the oil pretty much stays on the stone i don't ever get a mess on my bench these are also the most economical way to sharpen most oil stones cost 20 or less and when you buy them used you can get them for a buck sometimes all these things have made oil stones the top choice in my shop i recommend you start with a norton crystallon india stone this is a two-sided synthetic stone the coarse side is super aggressive and dead flat the other side is called a fine grit but it's really more like a medium still you're basically getting two stones for 25 bucks if we were just doing carpentry this stone would be enough but for fine woodwork we'll need at least one more i love natural arkansas stones for my finest sharpening you can see these are chunks of real natural stone with different colors and imperfections in them these stones give a super fine edge but also cut pretty quickly most people don't know what these are so i snapped them up for a dollar or two at flea markets now you might not be able to find used stones when you need them but a company called dan's whetstones sells natural sharpening stones these are a bit thinner than the vintage ones i like but they are a real natural stone and they work just fine especially for 20 bucks this stone plus the norton double-sided stone will sharpen almost anything in a woodworking shop i will link to these down in the description the last thing you need is a strop which is just a scrap of leather glued to a scrap of wood for god's sake do not buy a strop it is just a scrap of leather any leather cut a piece out of an old handbag use an old belt when one of my neighbors throws away an old leather chair i go out there and skin that thing like a dead buffalo leather for years the strop will work better if you rub it with buffing compound compound used to come in these huge bricks that are pretty expensive luckily lots of companies now sell little bars of green chromium oxide compound for just a few dollars even this little bar will last for years i like to glue my leather to mdf because it's dead flat and it stays flat working mdf with hand tools is no problem it saws about as easily as pine and you can even plane it you'll get dust instead of shavings but you can make a nice clean edge with no trouble i glue my leather down with super 77 spray adhesive there's a whole debate about whether your leather should be shiny side up or fuzzy side up and i think arguing about that sort of thing is a stupid waste of time i go fuzzy side up because it holds more compound spray your leather with adhesive press it down to the mdf trim around it with your stockman knife and you're done we'll finish up by charging the strop with compound this little bit that i've applied is enough for weeks of sharpening so you can see how long our little block of chromium oxide is going to last now we're going to build a sharpening station you can knock one of these together in about an hour and it will last you the rest of your life your base can be anything flat and stable plywood is a good choice it doesn't need to be very big i'm using this piece of laminated pine cabinet that i pulled out of the trash it's got a clear finish on it which will help keep it from absorbing a lot of oil and dirt over the years we're going to hold our stones in place with little blocks of wood try to find a long strip that's thinner than your thinnest stone i'm going to take a long piece and screw it to the bottom of my sharpening station with countersunk screws you really don't want to hit a screw while you're sharpening when you have your long piece installed lay out the stones and trace around them with a pencil to get the spacing right put each stone on your base and screw down your little blocks all around it for my india stone i'm leaving the fit a tiny bit loose that way it's easy for me to flip the stone over and get to the finer side i want my extra fine stone held tightly in place because there's no reason to flip it over and i don't want it falling out so when i get my blocks installed and the fit is still a little bit loose i jam a plane shaving in there to tighten things up just friction is enough to hold the stones in place install your strop just like the stones and then i'm going to glue a couple strips of rubber shelf liner to the underside of my base this way you can sharpen aggressively without your sharpening station sliding around once this is done your sharpening station is complete and ready for years of service of course you can use sharpening stones with a honing guide lots of people do it the only problem is that most common inexpensive sharpening stones are exactly two inches wide and a lot of plane irons are wider than two inches that means when you want to sharpen that wide plane on that kind of narrow stone you have to skew it a tiny bit and then the jig sort of stops making sense now obviously there are companies that make much bigger stones so you can use them with a honing jig but then that costs a lot more money so how about instead we just ditch the jig and learn how to sharpen freehand i will show you how right now i'm going to start on my coarse stone with a layer of three in one oil the oil makes your metal shavings float up off the stone instead of getting jammed into the stone where they would clog it up now my sharpening angle is kind of programmed into my hands but don't worry if this doesn't make sense right away i'm going to do this a couple of times and explain all the details so just stick with me while i work the coarse stone when i'm done i wipe the stone off which gets rid of the oil and the metal shavings i flip the stone over and do the same thing on the fine side now after each stone i'm using my index finger to feel the back of the blade i'm looking for the burr the bur is an essential concept in sharpening you have to understand it so let's look at a blade more closely here's a blade it could be a chisel or a plain iron it has three parts the bevel and the back are the two obvious ones where these two surfaces meet is the edge we sharpen the blade by working the bevel with abrasive until a little flap of metal folds over onto the back that's the burr in this picture i've made the burr really big and exaggerated it's pretty small but when you run your finger across the back of a well-sharpened edge you will feel that bur no question the bur is how you know you've worked the entire bevel all the way up to the edge if you don't have a bur you haven't accomplished anything every time i finish with one stone and move to the finer grit you can see me put the back of the blade flat on the stone and pull it towards me that action flips the bur back over to the bevel where it's broken off by sharpening on the next grit of course my fine stone leaves a burr too that's why i have a strop that leather charged with fine abrasive compound will break off that final bur and give me a very polished edge with each stroke i placed the bevel on the strop with firm downward pressure and then pulled toward myself there's an important point here so let's switch to the side view notice how i get to the end of the strop and i pull the blade up before it runs off the edge if you let the blade fall off the end of the strop you will round over your edge and that's bad once you've stopped the bevel about 20 times flip the blade put the back on the strop and pull it toward yourself with firm downward pressure 10 times the final edge is razor sharp it will peel a fine shaving off a flat surface or let me dig in for rapid stock removal the edge is so sharp that i only need hand pressure no mallet necessary now i hear all the skeptics out there i hear you saying okay rex that's a very nice edge you have there i see it shave a hair i see it trim a piece of wood but where's your exact 25 degree primary bevel where's your 30 degree micro bevel and how are you maintaining that with free hand honing well the answer is i don't worry about any of that stuff because i think it's pretty much nonsense let me explain let's go back to our blade and rotate it like a regular bevel down plane blade then let's bring in a piece of wood and see how the blade cuts what you have to notice is that the bevel isn't leading the cut the back of the iron is doing the cutting and forcing that shaving to curl up the bevel has some contact with the wood which is why we polish it but the main thing is that the bevel needs to stay out of the way of the cut that's why that angle matters it provides clearance so the bevel doesn't drag in the cut or keep the edge from cutting so there's no need to have an exact 25 degree bevel on your blade 30 degrees or even 35 degrees will work the thing that matters is that you have enough clearance so that the bevel stays out of the way of the cut now how do you maintain that clearance while you're freehand sharpening it's not difficult let me show you if you're new to sharpening set a bevel gauge for about 30 degrees and stand it up on your bench that visual reference will help you start off at the right angle you don't want your blade much steeper than that because you'll grind away too much edge and lose that clearance assuming you're right handed grip the blade in your right hand with two fingers close to the edge then lay your left hand over those fingers to give them support check your bevel and make sure your blade is at the right angle and then push forward giving firm pressure down on the stone as you push forward slowly drop your hand so that the edge lifts up and by the end of your stroke you're working the bevel by dropping your hand as you sharpen you're honing the edge and grinding away the bevel to maintain that clearance angle when i sharpen freehand i don't have a flat straight bevel the way you get with a jig instead my bevel is rounded and that doesn't make any difference because most of the bevel isn't touching the wood anyway now there is one danger to freehand sharpening which is that over time your bevel might become too rounded then you lose clearance and your blade stops cutting when that happens i'm glad i've still got a honing guide because i can use that guide with some sandpaper on glass and re-grind that bevel to something like 25 or 30 degrees with the planes i use every day i find it helpful to grind the bevel and start fresh about once a year oh and you're probably wondering about camber getting that little bit of curvature on the end of the blade well every time i sharpen i'm maintaining that camber but the way i do it is a little bit subtle so you might not see it when i'm sharpening a plane iron i lift it just a little bit and focus on one corner then as i'm working the bevel back and forth i slowly lower the blade until the whole thing is in contact with the stone again then i slowly lift it and work the other corner just a bit before bringing it down flat again in this clip i'm exaggerating the motion to make it really clear when i'm actually sharpening i just put a little extra pressure on one corner and then slowly shift it to the other corner you can't really see me do it the more you practice the more you'll develop an automatic motion that's consistent and predictable for you okay now we've looked at all the little parts of sharpening but we need to put it together and see the whole thing this is my widest plane iron much wider than my stones so i'm gonna have to skew it to sharpen the whole edge i use a lot of oil to float away those metal chips and then grip my iron and set up my angle as i work the coarse stone you can see me dropping my hand to work the bevel and shifting the iron side to side as i work the corners it's a subtle motion because you only need a little bit of camber on your edge i check for a bur but i don't have one so i need to keep going i'm using a little more pressure here and being sure to keep working the corners to keep my camber then i check the iron again and i feel that burn so i wipe off the iron and the stone and flip to my medium grit it's the exact same motion here but i should have used a little bit more oil you can see the stone getting stained black as it takes metal off the iron this stone cuts really well and i have a bur almost right away i can move on to my fine arkansas stone i start by working the back of the iron to flip that bur back to the bevel you need to do this every time you change stones again i'm dropping my hand to work the bevel and i'm putting pressure on those corners to keep my camber then i clean the blade thoroughly because i don't want oil on my strap this is a quick motion with firm downward pressure and i'm lifting up at the end of the stroke so my edge never falls off the end of my strop then i strap the back by pushing down and pulling toward myself i clean the blade and inspect my edge it's bright and polished and very sharp so that's the whole freehand process there's nothing else to say about it because it's honestly just not that complicated and listen i'm not trying to tell anybody that they're dumb for being concerned about their bevel or for using micro bevels or any of that stuff you should do what works for you no judgment for me i'm just trying to suggest that being very legalistic about the exact angles and being super surgical about it well for some people that might be a waste of time and i think this because i read a lot of old woodworking books and the authors of those books they barely discuss sharpening they never talk about angles they never use the word micro bevel i also collect a lot of old tools some of the tools i own are very old and when i pull these irons out i always see the same thing a curved rounded bevel like you get from freehand sharpening so obviously craftsmen have been using this approach for generations and one of the things i like about it is that it's inexpensive this sharpening station here everything on it cost like 50 bucks and it's probably gonna last for decades so if you've been struggling with sharpening and if you're not sure about all the different angles maybe you should just ditch all the extra stuff and give freehand sharpening a try i've linked to all the stones and everything else down in the description so it should be really easy for you to grab the gear and get going especially if you're still using sandpaper stop using sandpaper in case i didn't make that clear and just like all my videos i have to thank my patrons on patreon their support makes it possible for me to write record edit and put out these videos every single week without them i i just wouldn't be here doing it and i'm so grateful if you'd like to be part of that amazing community of craftspeople go on over to patreon.com rex krueger and check out the early access and rewards that i have for the people who make this content possible i'll be back next week with another great woodworking video and i really hope you'll join me thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 105,506

Rating: 4.9387307 out of 5

Keywords: sharpening, knife sharpening, sandpaper, sandpaper sharpening, chisel sharpening, axe sharpening sandpaper, woodworking, beginner axe sharpening, plane iron sharpening, sharp, plane sharpening, no power tool axe sharpening, knives sharpening, diy axe sharpening, honing guide for chisel sharpening, axe sharpening, knife sharpening diy, diy hatchet sharpening, diy

Id: EmyW8nFDLr4

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020