How to get a DEADLY SHARP edge on a CHISEL

okay so at some point you are going to need to sharpen your chisel probably a lot sooner than you think it's always good to have sharp tools as everyone probably says because it makes you work easier it's safer you've got less the chance of pushing too hard and stabbing through your hand for example so keep your scissors keep your shizzles keep your chisels shut so what I've done with this chisel is put lots of different bevels on it I've made it an absolute state so again this is similar to some of the stuff that I see people bring into store it's got a few different bevels on it and also I've dropped it a few times like that and that has started denting the edge and also stabbed it on the tormek brick a few times this chisel is well and truly there yeah well and truly gone how do you get rid of that to start with we're going to begin with the tormek okay the tormek is going to be used to grind the main primary bevel on these chisels I'm not going to use it to do the final polishing or anything like that it's just going to be to grind the primary bevel if you're not sure what primary bevel means I'll show you that now okay so if you look at this blade you may see that there is actually two bevels on it so we've got this main large one here which is the primary bevel this is usually ground at 25 degrees which is what I'll be doing on the tormek and then on the very end here you'll see there's a very small bevel and that is called the secondary bevel and that is usually ground of 30 degrees the reason we have two bevels on these is primarily to make sharpening easier 30 degrees this secondary bevel on the end is our cutting edge so you might be asking why put this 25 on there why not just grind the whole thing at 30 degrees well the reason is because there is obviously going to be a lot more metal there if it's all ground at 30 degrees so that means when you take it to your stone it's going to take a lot more effort to polish that entire edge whereas if you have a 25 degree primary and then you're only polishing 30 degrees on the very edge you're removing a lot less metal and as a result it's just much quicker the reason it's 25 degrees and 30 degrees is just because that standard practice I've been taught and I haven't personally seen the need to change that yet there are some other makers David Charles worth off the top of my head who endorses sharpening I think it's 32 degrees on the end he's obviously done his own experiments that's obviously what works for him but as a general rule you'll probably be taught to sharpen 25 degrees as a primary bevel and 30 degrees on the very end and that gives you a good balance between the longevity of that edge and the sharpness of it as well okay so before we do anything let's look at this edge so you can see that on the corners here they have been taken off from where I've just dropped it on the floor you can see that there's a bevel there there's a bevel there there's like a round over bit here there is some remnants of a secondary bevel on there but overall it's all over the place there is no consistency to any sharpening on there and as a result that is going to be very difficult to sharpen so the Keith's sharpening is consistency and giving yourself a good grounding to start with is essential so for that reason I'm going to begin with the tormek so before I start anything I can hear a lot of you saying but Matt I don't have at all make you're just assuming that we own equipment at this size now I don't actually own this this was just lent to me for years I was actually using my 400 and 1,000 great combination stone so 400 grit on that side that's my rough grinding 1,000 to do the secondary bevel on the end that worked fine for me yes it was a lot of effort but that is what you pay for a toilet for you pay for the convenience so that in mind the first thing I need to do with this is make sure the stone is actually true now this is not at all Mac demonstration by any means but I do want to stress that if you are using any sort of powered equipment this stone does need to be true in there so I'm just going to ping this across the stone get it all nice and true and I will see you on the other side okay so that's all sorted I'm just gonna get my chisel in the square-edged jig now lock it all down top down the bar so the bar is now perfectly parallel to the top of the stone set the stone diameter which I know to be around that set the angles 25 and just adjust it until I get the right angle so that is now at 25 degrees to the stone and I'm going to start grinding the main primary bevel so this is actually almost already done it's taken about 10 seconds so far I'll see that bevel was quite close to 25 degrees before despite having lots of different facets on it but let's get that finished off get rid of all of those remaining marks and get that to a completely flat 25 degree primary bevel okay so that has taken about 30 seconds so far and most the bevel is there there is just one corner probably from where I dropped it on the floor just now that is slightly dipped off from the edge and that's important I still get rid of that because when I polish the secondary bevel on the end that Nick's off corner can still affect that so let's carry on get rid of that completely and there we go right so that Nick is all completely gone off the corner we have a perfectly uniform primary bevel on here at 25 degrees now what a lot of people were led to believe when they bite or Max is that they should do everything on it including secondary bevels sharpen the edge and just ready to use from here I don't really agree with that I think that it's very easy to waste too much metal on these machines and it should be used sparingly and what I mean by that is using it only to grind for the primary bevel so what you'll see some people do is no grind their primary bevel on it they'll get this stone grater onto it take that to a 1,000 grit nail because this has two different grips on it get that all nice and shiny take it to the wheel on here and give yourself a nice polished edge and call it sharp which it is but you're just grinding away so much metal you have paid for this why why turn it into slurry that's going to end up in here use this sparingly is what I would advise so what I'm going to do now instead of taking this to the 1,000 grit on here I'm actually going to turn this machine off and I'm going to take it to the 1,000 grit on my water stone okay so my water stone has been soaking and what I'm going to do is flatten the 6000 grit the finer side on this diamond plate if you want to know why I'm using water stones for this watch my previous video on sharpening stones and that will also tell you why I'm happy to use water stones on my lovely workbench so that slurry is all on there and it's gonna wash that off of here and then the 1,000 grit side on this stone as well the reason I did it in this order is because if I did the 1,000 grit first got all the stone covered in slurry and then flipped it to the six thousand grit side it's going to contaminate this fine side with the coarse grits on the opposite side get that all nice and flat there we go so wash that off now if you have watched my previous video you can see why it's good to have a designated sharpening station for this because this has already made a bit of a mess so now chisel is in the honing guide if you don't know why I'm using this honing guide watch my first video on honing guides why I've chosen it over the Veritas worm why I've chosen it over a standard Eclipse pattern there is reason for I use this other than the fact it's low Nielsen and very shiny so we have ground 25° is our primary bevel we're now going to sharpen 30 degrees what 30 degrees for our secondary bevel so that is up against my third-degree stop locked in place right so start with 1,000 grit yeah water on there and all I'm going to do here just keep this nice and even pressure on here and just drag back okay use the whole stain and that's all it really needs just a few strokes to get that secondary bevel started and then what we'll do we'll flip it over and it's good practice here especially with water stones because the whole grit contamination thing this wheel on the bottom can pick up coarse grit from the 1000 grit stone and then contaminate it onto this 6,000 so wipe the wheel first or wipe the bevel and there we go we're ready to go so again let's go drag back a few times using the entire stay there we go we've got a nice even secondary bevel along the end there so that's at 30 degrees now our main primary bevels at 25 but you see our minimal effort that was I think I did three strokes on there and then I did maybe five or six on this 6,000 grit and that has given us a sharp edge if I was grinding this at 25 that is going to take far more effort because there was a lot more metal to remove so secondary bevel established and we just get this undone and so what that has done is it's folded a bit of metal up over the edge here so it's created a small burr and you can actually feel that when you do this so it's called a burr and you need to get rid of that so the way to do that instead of dropping it onto the stone like this it's usually best to bring it on like this with very light pressure and then just rub it back and forth a few times and this is the importance with keeping your stones flat if your stones are concave you can see that I'm going to start rounding that chisel back up and it's not going to be a good reference surface to work from so it's going to do this a little bit more that's pretty much all it needs if that so go that's a nice even finish across the back of the blade I could give it a little bit more but I can see that the edge is perfectly polished next what I will do is get my strop and put some of this superfine paste on it I'm pretty sure this is too fine to even use on chisels but I like it so a few dabs of that get it off your finger right what I'm going to do here put the chisel on it and then just lift it up until I see the small shadow in the end disappear and then just drag it back a bit this is the only time you'll see me freehand anything to do a sharpening that's just dragging it back so when I flatten the back of the chisel that would have folded little bits of bur back over onto this edge and that's what this strop is doing its removing those but very gently if you snap off that burr it just gives you a blunt edge again and yes back to square one so you've got to remove that very gently one thing I will say here I know the height of this drops okay but if you're working on stones that are very low just remember that some handles poke out below that chisel so when you put them on a stone like this that handle could accidentally be cranking up somewhat like to say this drops fine but on some diamond stones it can be an issue so there we go back and forth a few times get rid of all that rubbish that's left on the end there and there we go that chisel is let's call it stupidly sharp that is just easily taking hairs off the back of my hand easily shave half my body with that should I wish but that is how you sharpen a chisel 25-degree primary bevel 30-degrees secondary bevel just try that out to start with maybe you'll end up changing the angles somewhat but that's the general rule and that's how easy it is there's nothing complicated few strokes on your sharpening stone whether that's a diamond stone water stone a couple of strokes on the strop and you're ready to go so after using that channel for a while obviously that edges get a blunt again what you do not want to be doing now is taking that back to the tormek and grinding the 25° on again and then the 30-degree secondary bevel because that is just a complete waste of time this is where a secondary bevel is handy because you can just put it back in the honing guide lock it up at 30 degrees and then just go you don't even need to go to the 1,000 grit stone here after time just go back to your 6,000 - a few more strokes get a nice fresh edge on that take it out polish the back of that take it on your strop there we go nice fresh edge again so overtime obviously that secondary bevel is going to get bigger and it's going to work its way further up the blade now there is no written rule to this but by the time it gets to around a third or half of the way up that primary bevel that's where I feel I need to regrind the primary bevel and get it starting fresh again otherwise the only reason to take it back to the tall mech before the secondary bevel works its way halfway up to the primary bevel is if you drop it on the floor and you take a massive Knick out the corner for example that's when you want to start regrinding it and get it back to a uniform position but most the time that's why sharpening a secondary bevel is so quick you're removing a lot less material which is also less effort and less metal wasted which is always good so there we go that is how you get a sharp edge on a chisel now like I said tormek not everyone has access to one of these I would advise either getting a 400 grit diamond stone or a 400 to 240 grit water stone those will grind away the material very quickly but bear in mind with the water stone you need to keep it flat as well if you haven't watched my previous video on sharpening stones be sure to watch that before you go ahead and buy anything to do that and also if you do need to grind the primary bevel by hand make sure you use a honing guide again you cannot get that 25 degrees accurate without one of these especially if you're a beginner alternatives to the tormek would be using a high speed grinder but with a high speed grinder you've got to be very careful about heating the steel on high carbon blades so think chisels and plane blades for example if you heat them up too much it ruins the metal makes it really soft and you'll basically have to throw that blade away it will be no use to you from there if you're going to do it on a high speed grinder take a little bit off dip it in water a little bit off dip it in water and just keep doing that until you get your primary bevel established otherwise find a friend who owns a topic or lots of tool shops actually do regrinding of bevels so you can specify what angle you want they can take it away get it reground to a nice flat 25 degrees and you're ready to go again just keep doing your 30 degrees secondary bevels until you need to regrind it in which case to do exactly what you did before so hopefully that is demystified sharpening chisels for you it's really not a difficult process plane blades in the next video will be a little bit more difficult but overall really not much to worry about these just make sure you keep everything nice and square nice and controlled you'll be fine if you want more information on sharpening to make sure you get the correct setup from the get-go watch my previous videos and watch it right through to the end because i'll be sharing lots of information on tips I've learned outright cut wood on things that I've seen and learn to Axminster there's a lot to be learnt so hopefully I can help you out with it and happy sharpening happy sharpening yeah

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 1,162,553

Rating: 4.7069974 out of 5

Keywords: how to sharpen a chisel, how to get a sharp edge on a chisel, how to fix an old chisel, sharpening chisels, How to regrding a chisel, regrinding chisels, difference between primary bevel and secondary bevel, how to grind a primary bevel, how to sharpen a secondary bevel, what angle should I sharpen my chisel to, sharpening chisels on waterstones, stropping chisels, Lie-Nielsen Honing Guide, sharpening, chisels, blade, hand tools, diamond stone, waterstone, stropping paste, estlea

Id: xIDC3o2dwCQ

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2017