How To Sharpen A Chisel With A $12 Jig

[Music] welcome back everyone told me to hold my hair before I turned on the camera and I forgot to welcome back to the homestead woodshop today we're going to address something that I comes up in the comments all the time and there's a lot of frustration out there from you guys are getting into woodworking and having trouble sharpening your chisels having trouble maintaining that perfect 25 or 30 degree angle today I'm going to show you something that I think is going to change all of that and give all of us near-perfect results with no practice at all so what is a sharpening Miracleman a drop on you and Alice not a miracle it's a honing guide now this is an old old design I believe if I remember right this this style of honing guide what was invented a long long time ago for carpenters you know from the dawn of time you know it's something that man has struggled with is trying to get it what's the right angle and most people agree with craving timber timber framing chisels or regular chisels or planting areas it's somewhere between 25 and 30 degrees that's kind of what we aspire to and doing that freehand is really difficult so all manner of devices have been invented to try to help assist in maintaining that perfect angle and this is pretty much the zenith or the high point of the design now this was originally manufactured for high quality in England I believe it's it back in the day and this is a this is a reproduction and this is a reasonably low quality reproduction but it's inexpensive you can get these here for around the 1213 dollar range and there are lots of companies making things similar but it is a good design and with just a few modifications we can bring this thing up to stuff and make it so we get perfect results so if you haven't seen these already if you're wondering what we're looking at so this is a guide you can see that it's got two jaws on there we've got a job at the top now this is going to be for larger tools planer irons for example or timber framing chisels right there and of course we're underneath here we're going to have a smaller much smaller set of Jaws right there that's going to work for our smaller chisels users are woodworking chisels they're so you can see that they hold in there like that see how that works so very versatile very good tool so the problem with this thing that we're running into and I have others have spoke to this and I can see it is indeed a problem is the low quality of the machining and the way it grabs a tool which is not very good problem we have right there is we have kind of a what do we call this a convex kind of a dome shape if you think about a soccer ball at the top of a soccer ball we have that round and so what we get is we get a little teeter-totter action going on in that we want to make contact here in here and also if you look and see when you're making contact on things and you want a stable platform you want three points of contact if you look closely you'll see see the radius on there I think I can draw a sharpie to highlight this do you see how it I'm going to exaggerate it there see how that one side we have that and the same thing right here well the reason for that that's nuts by design is we have three points of contact one two three and the reason why we want three is for stability it's like a four legged stool will wobble right but a three-legged stool will not wobble and that's the principle right there so keep that in mind as we're doing a modification so the first thing we need to do is we need to figure out what how do we get so we touch here here here and not anywhere else in there and the problem we have is it only tighten this up this thing because of the casting is just it's a low quality tool has that convex in it and so you were touching here and here and messing up our whole system so what we're going to do is we're going to remove material here and here let's go about it and the machine is spiced is better than a carpenter's vise you know I type ARF all the time about the importance of having even if you have a dedicated woodshop to have a small machinist or mechanics vise for just little things like this so to get this machining sorted out we're going to need a our standard mill bastard file eight-inch mill bastard five you're only going to have one that's the one you want so what we want to do here is we want to remove material on the outside of that arc right there because that's where the high point is that's what that's what's touching our our tool I don't know what type of it's what metal this is is it aluminum it kind of has the look of aluminum now there are aluminum specific files which don't load up as bad as a regular one but use what you have so we're going to try to stay those keep those lines we just want to lower yeah that's probably aluminum it's really low see how it loads up there in the file and a lot of that just the paint we're going to paint off of there this is a file card when you buy a file make sure you get a file card as well that way you keep your files clean you don't have a file card you can run it backwards on your pants to that it works pretty well with the left side done we can work on the right side here is a nice file s AUSA has vintage usa-made Nichols file sadly no longer available thing of the past once they're gone they're gone and I think I've got enough material removed there's one last thing we can check it here if there's a simple way to check that we have to do it here but so remember that that convex shape that we have right there I can see right there that it's kind of inconsistent it's a little bit lower on this side we've got some imperfections and let's just clean that up a little bit and just kind of make that more uniform and consistent leave the middle alone I just want to just kind of make those match so we do have that round shape there okay to check it we'll put our chisel in there if you don't have a big framing chisel like this just use your planing iron it does the same thing and we're going to tighten this down now it's important to tighten it down really tight is because when that when the flexing comes into play what it's under pressure we just need to be very tight but use a screwdriver just put a little force on it make sure that you're seated and now what we're shooting for is to be sure that we can see a little bit of daylight here and here I mean we want to be making contact only on the edges like that and the best way we can do that is to put some light behind it so let's put on the lamp and see if we can see daylight coming underneath there does not be much just a sliver is enough this is another reason why I'm such a big big big advocate of having a lamp like this on your sharpening station I just use it all the time for things like this and so I'm deciding down there and indeed I can see daylight on the chisel so that machining is done well now we're not quite done yet with our machining we got to look to the jaws of the inside and what I have found on these is that they're pretty inconsistent as well meaning they don't hold the smaller chisels inside very well they've got some some low quality machining in there some casting actually and build up so we're going to take a file and we're going to say for file that means safing a file means the edge we don't want to take this edge away it's pretty thin pretty delicate it's got to hold the chisel on there but we do want to file the bottom piece right there to make that a little bit more prominent and so by safing a file is just simply putting a piece of masking tape on the areas that we don't want it to cut for example I've got it backwards here but as you can see like this I'll put it right there so we're not going to cut on the backside of the file really that material we only want to cut on the bottom so you might be thinking oh it's an awful lot of work to go through you know why don't you just buy one that is better quality than this and you can you can buy one from Lee Nielsen's got one that's really really nice $250 precision machining and that's what it cost that's what it costs for a you know us-made can't hit canadian-made wherever they're made quality machined item but this is $12 and it's totally sort of serviceable once you only have to do this once and then you're going to have you're going to have a really wonderful tool that's really helpful to you now you should be able to see from the cross-section there that these these jaws are much more pronounced much sharper and they're going to hold the chisel better we can try it out here before when I put the chisel in to the jaws and clamped it down with finger pressure it would move about I could rock it back and forth because it wasn't making contact properly now just doing that just finger tight it's it's rock solid and it's holding in there much more secure and of course I can tighten it up a little bit and even more so now we have a twelve dollar tool with a little bit of machining from the file and filing that that should work nearly as good as as a high-dollar one now that the machining is done so how is it that we can use the tool it's to be completely consistent every time so the good folks whoever manufactured this they've put on the side some very important numbers here we have chisel projection and we have planar iron projection and so what that means is that's giving us the distance that this chisel or planar iron needs to project out the front of the tool so they've given us those dimensions so the planar iron projection right there that the bottom one is referring to the projection from this top that's where you get the wide limits are going to put your planer blades the chisel projection it's going to be different because it's or those angles are going to be changing is going to be the lower set of Jaws now being that this is a big timber framing chisel we're going to use the top and so therefore we're going to use the planar projection right all right so we clamp that on there so how do we consistently measure this point to the end every time so it's exactly the same you know we're going to tinker you know take our little tape measure on there every time and and you know we're getting down to 64 seven inches or millimeters there and try to get that no of course not it's going to be different every time that's not going to be reliable so how do we do that well I will show you so the fine folks that built this little guide have been kind enough to put the chisel or iron projection on the casting however it's in millimeters which doesn't do us any good at all so we're going to have to go to the Google and find out what that conversion is in inches and as our old friend and fellow Mensa put it President George Bush we're going to use the Google to do this conversion because the Google is going to help us here all right so the projection for a planar iron here says we've got if we want a thirty degree bevel it's 38 millimeters so if we put 38 millimeters in here and we try it to Google on all right inch and a half that's pretty easy so inch and a half is going to give us our 30 degrees now if we want to do our 25 degree which some people some people do it will put 50 millimeters so we'll put our 50 in here and that's going to be not getting us getting more difficult there one in thirty one thirty seconds of an inch equals 50 millimeters so how do we figure that out so how in the world do we figure out what one in thirty one thirty seconds is when obviously our tape measure and all of our measuring instruments are in sixteenths of an inch well I mean the obvious way to do it would be have a metric tape measure in millimeters and forget all this nonsense but I've talked so much trash in the metric system you know burn that bridge I can't have a metric tape measure in the house and they might see it so this is one of those tools that you might use you don't use very often but boy when you need it you need it this is an equal super precise measuring deal and it's got 60 force in 30 seconds on it so I'm going to go up to edge of my bench here and this is definitely a long work around a metric tape measure ruler would be better and I'm going to go I'm looking for 30 seconds so this has little hash cuts in it so 1 and 31 and 30 second what is it one thirty one thirty seconds of an inch I'm going to put a mark right there okay there's my mark and now I'm going to take my combination square or your combination is going to one of you guys I've already set it there right there I'm going to split that mark this is important when we have to do this one time right there and then I register that okay so there is my 1 + 30 SEC 3 1 30 seconds of an inch so this cabinet here as you know is my dedicated sharpening system this is where everything that I own for sharpening is going to be so I want I want everything here and so this is something that I've kind of been playing with here that's temporary that may turn into permanent but I'm just not sure sometimes I need to use something for a while to see if it's really going to work before I do that the full-on permanent method but I'll show you what what we're going to try out here since this is where I come to sharpen and I'm going to stand right here and I'm gonna have my stones and I go back and forth and you know kind of kind of what's worked out really good for me I want all of this stuff here close by so what I've done is I've glued temporarily a little block here at the set distance so to explain it would be being close here to show you what that means the reason for this block is a reference now we saw that our 30 degrees are 22 525 degrees was an inch and a half and I've already done this so this is representing of 30 degrees now what all I have to do now is I have a straight edge here go to a square edge from plywood is when I want to use my jig I'll simply put it on the chisel put it up here index it against the edge slide it up until it touches that block tighten it and now I'm completely every time now what I want for example if I want to do one at 25° will do one right here we're going to set this block at our second measurement I can simply loosen this bring my chisel up come in until I touch let's not glued down there till I touch tighten that up and now I have complete consistency every time every chisel that I have and as time goes on they're going to be more and more consistent because I've been filing sizzles by hand don't drop that please I've been filing chisels by hand and because I do it freehand you know they're all over the board of course we shoot for 30 degrees but what do you actually get now if I use a chisel guide I'll have consistency every single time it doesn't matter what tool now this is for the planer irons or the timber framing chisels will do the same thing on the other side for the small chisels let's go ahead and put our 25 degree block on here together now again this is tempera I just don't know if it's going to be in my way I don't think so but you know we'll just do it temporarily here so I'm just going to use a little superglue and then if I do indeed find that this works out fine you know we can put a couple little brass screws on there supers you know so probably hold forever this is gorilla super glue is no joke I'll tell you no joke at all okay so now that we've got a straight edge here we've already set that right this is going to be our 25 degrees or whatever one in 31 30 seconds or so don't leaving edges going to hold it square that down there okay press it on we can put a clamp on it to hold that lower doing our thing and there will be a 25 degree indexed so let's try the file guide on our inch and a half Roberts or B timber framing chisel which is in bad need of sharpening room and I have only freehand sharpen this and I was looking at it close and it needs some work it need some consistency so we're going to be sharpening this this at 30 degrees which is kind of what I want for timber framing chisel you know where's what the arguments 2530 degrees which is better I don't know I don't know what makes any difference I would imagine 25 degrees is going to be a little bit more a little sharper you know maybe maybe bite a little bit better 30 degrees maybe a little bit more durable let's kind of wiggle wobbling in there isn't it so it seems to me that for a chisel that needs to be very durable like a timber framing chisel that gets abuse 30 degrees is pretty good alright so let's see so just going off just initial impressions it it works really good easy to use I have exact a real precision consistency and I can use portions of the stone the edges that don't often get used now because the wheel is only going to allow us to get the jig to use half of the stone that's alright you know from time to time maybe every time we sharpen it we can just flip it over right and so we we wear our diamonds don't equally let's step back to the sharpening for just a minute the glue is dry on that and I just wanted to demonstrate here so here we go so this is our plane or iron side of course you know we have the different reference points so this is the 25 degree and you know we can put the P on there for the that's the planer PLA and all right so we can remember that now depending on what you want you know maybe some will be different than others but I can very simply here if I want to set this to 25 all I do is slide up there tighten my jig there is by setting for 25 if I want my 30 sign it up here same every time very very consistent regardless of the tool doesn't make any difference if I want to do a different one for example if they want to do a planar iron grab a planar iron here we're going to sharpen a planer and we want that planer for our number four Stanley at thirty degrees right you get it you see what's going on here all right we just slide that forward does it make any difference very very useful this your universal if we want to go to the and I made these so like it could fit and all my tools they so if I want twenty-five simply slide the twenty-five in there now I've got my setting for my twenty five let's take a look at our work here see how well the chisel guide worked how well it what the results are proof is in the eating of the pudding here right so we can see right there see that that was the twenty five degree and then I tried the thirty degree and we were up there so what that tells me is that my hand sharpening over the years on this chisel I have somewhere ended up just kind of naturally somewhere right in the middle between the two so these were you know roughly around twenty seven degrees or so is kind of what I was getting with them which is probably just fine you see a little bit of inconsistency or see it's deeper here than here you know that might be telling me that you know maybe I've put a little bit too much pressure on this side or on the other so hard to say maybe I had been grinding it crookedly before and this is just bringing everything evening it out but this is really interesting to see that now because that I have you know two three two different bevels right there I'm not worried about that over time and I will consistently use this this is I do not think this is a gimmick I think it's a very useful tool over time that I will eventually get that back to the 25 degrees that I wanted but there's no reason to get excited and try to get it all in one bite and it doesn't matter we've got long as we've got a good cutting edge across there and I can tell you it is indeed sharp and it's probably never been sharper so is the chisel sharp you know that's what I always wanted to know is it do we have results and let's take a look here so I got to butcher paper and this you know this is this is a big piece of steel this is really a big piece of tool steel it's thick it got a pretty sharp angle on it that's a lot of material and to get something like this that's heavy sharp enough to slice paper is pretty impressive for me especially someone who's really struggled with sharpening tools it's it's really good so what's my take on that chisel guide that chisels ready for use so uh you know I started something I did the cutting test that we did on that that was on the course stone I didn't go through the medium and the fine so that paper cutting I thought it was like well it could have done a little bit better that was a pretty coarse coarse stone on there so I'll go back and finish up on the final do much better nor did i strop it so that's pretty good for a course that's really good actually so what's my take on this on this guide so you know I was did a little bit of looking around when I was kind of putting together this video and I saw comments from from several people several guys that were very experienced wood wood wood workers and some of them were had disparaging comments about saying oh you don't need that and that's that's that's kind of a crutch or you need to learn to sharpen your chisels by hand and and of course it's nice to be able to sharpen your chisels from hand and take the stuff out of it and not have to deal with this thing but yeah that's fine if you if you're a retired guy and you have nothing but time on your hands and and you can work for weeks or months or years to perfect your method and get your chisels and you're planning irons perfect good for you I think that's wonderful I haven't achieved it I I would like to hope that I could someday but for the rest of us the common guys we still need to have sharp tools we still need to have consistency with our planning irons and tools and for $12 a little bit of work with a file you know maybe half hour so have something like this that produces such good results and gives us consistency I think it's really really good really wonderful I mean does a guy want to invest in the one hundred and fifty dollar version of this liam nielsen is going to be more precise and I'm not going to have to do the machining on that's up to you you know it's your call but you can have 10 of these for the price of one of those and I'm not saying that doesn't have a place I would love to have one don't get me wrong but would I buy one knowing that how much I like this guide and how useful it is after having this one no I don't think so I can't speak for the future but for now I think I would be completely happy with this it works really good so if you're having problems getting your chisel sharpened claiming your irons twelve dollars I'm going to put this in my Amazon store wrangler mark comm would be Amazon affiliate link I think it's like twelve and change free shipping I would recommend you get one of these it seems to be very good pretty well put together and once you do that initial little cleaning up it's a great tool so that's it hope you enjoyed this I hope it was helpful to you and we'll see you guys on the next video [Music] you

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 368,791

Rating: 4.7955818 out of 5

Keywords: chisel, woodworking, how to sharpen, how to sharpen a chisel, sharpening, chisels, plane blade, blade, honing, hand tools, woodshop, hand plane, woodworker, workshop, hand tool, handtool woodworking, hand tool woodworking, traditional woodworking, woodwright's shop, wood by wright, white oak, roy underhill, wood, how to, handtools, hand planes, tools, make, plane, tool, carving, hardwood, wood working, hardwoods, how-to, howto, hand, router, joinery, woodwork, diy, mortise, lie-nielsen, dovetail

Id: XA_KDe7lsls

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2017