Lie-Nielsen Honing Guide vs. Veritas MK.II Honing Guide | Tool Duel #1

so one of the most common questions I get asked Axminster is how to sharpen a plane blade how do I sharpen a chisel my first response to this is buy yourself a honing guide these things allow you to get quick consistent and reliable results with minimal effort because at the end of the day it's much more fun making blades blunt than it is sharpening them so in this video I'm going to talk you through three of the most common honing guides on the market and hopefully by the end of it you'll know which one will suit your needs better welcome [Music] told you what a dreadful name there's no point having you all the way back there let's get the camera in close okay so firstly let me give you a brief overview of all three Oni guards these two here are eclipse style honing guides and they are given that name because they're actually based off an old pattern called an eclipse or an old model called an eclipse so these basically work by clamping the blade on the side like that and you are ready to home this one here is a cheaper model by Axminster under their rider brand but it's actually a basic pattern that lost manufacturers are producing nowadays so nothing too special about that bog-standard gets the job done plus about 10 pounds for it this one here is the line Nilson Eclipse honing guide so again the clamps on the side much better machining on this and it has a few extra features that I'll talk you through in a minute based on retails for roughly a hundred and ten pounds the finally the Veritas one this one throws all of the traditional rules of honing guys out of windows and they have just done their complete own thing on it so this works by firstly you've got this protrusion stop on the front which is detachable so I have a blade here that is two and 3/8 thick I think so I'm going to set that to two and 3/8 here so there's a scale on the top that I can read off and then on this protrusion arm there's lots of numbers written on it in different colors so I usually sharpen my blades 230 degrees on the secondary bevel so on this arm I can see it says 30 degrees it's written in yellow so firstly I'm going to set my stop to 30 degrees on that point and because it's written in yellow I need to ensure that on the top of the honing guide here that is on number two which is also yellow so if that will set all I need to do flip the holding guide over pop the blade in underneath and on this Petrosian arm there's a fence that I need to push the blade up against to keep it square and only to slide it up and but it against the protrusion stop here so that's all held in place now I can clamp it down and this is one of the main differences with the Veritas one in the clamps the blade on the top so bear that in mind because that's going to come up a lot later on with that will clamp down I can then remove the protrusion on and voila like magic that is at 30 degrees and ready to home now furthermore this Veritas honing guide has a cam wheel on the bottom so what that means is that when it's at 30 degrees you can polish your bevel like that and then if you say take it from a six thousand to a ten thousand grit stone instead of putting it exactly the same angle and have to polish the entire secondary bevel you can pivot this cam wheel 180 degrees which actually lifts the blade up ever so slightly more and you can actually polish a tertiary bevel on it so you're probably thinking now bloody hell well it's a no-brainer I'll just go out and buy one of these that does everything it's guys protrusion stops it's guys cam wheel on the bottom it's got all these different angles it can do the high angle standard angles back bevels just a lot apparently but there is one major flaw with this honing guide it's fiddly look it adjustment there adjustment there adjustment there adjustment there adjustment there adjustment there there is a lot to do on this whereas an Eclipse honing guide it's just all done with that sharpening is boring well at least it is for me anyway I want to spend as little time at the sharpening station as possible and if I'm fastened about setting up all these stops on here granted yes you leave a lot of them in the same position as you did last time but you still have to plant these two to get the blade in place you still got to get this protrusion all sorted and it's just I have always found this a little bit too fiddly for my liking so with that little run however I just wanted to get out of the way before you went off and bought one of these things and closed the video let me show you how you can make these Eclipse honing guys perform the same if not better than this Veritas one basic sharpening tasks so firstly how do you replicate the protrusion stop on the Veritas mark - the answer to that is make your own Petrosian stop so this has all of the most common angles that I use and the way to use this is simply pop your blade in the honing guide nip it up a little bit slide it up against there well done just lock that in place that is at 30 degrees ready to go secondly this Veritas one has the cam wheel on the bottom that allows you to ever so slightly change the angle of the blades of the stone now these are clips though only guys do not have that cam wheel so how do you mimic that again bring your protrusion stuff out so the plane is at 30 degrees right now so I've sharpened that on my 6000 grit stone now I want to raise the angle ever so slightly and polished the very edge of it all I'm gonna do is pop the shim there loosen the honing guide a bit that has changed the angle of the blade ever so slightly lifted up and now I can polish a tertiary bevel on the end of that so there we go that's how a clip style honing guides can replicate a Veritas at very basic functions but we're not done there yet there is lots of other things that these honing guys can do and I will talk you through that now now before I go any further this video is obviously titled lo Neilson honing guide versus Veritas mark - honing guide why have I got to this one in here the cheaper one well I just wanted to show you the issue of this compared to the low Neilson one so I can just eradicate this from it because the end the day these two of premium honing guides this is a budget one if you're sharpening freehand but you don't want to splash out on one of these I will say it now get one of these because it will just save you so much time the amount of blades that get bought into Axminster where they have 50 different facets on here they've got a round edge they've got chips taken off them because the user has been sharpening them freehand it's just a very sorry sight to see so get yourself one of these make yourself a patrician stop but the issue of these ones is when you are clamping blades in them and you're tighten it down what's happened is these jaws underneath have actually splayed out like this what that has done is actually thrown the blade slightly out square to the stone now this isn't much of a problem on wider blades such as plane blades because you can just hone it like that and just keep the pressure even on each corner but when you start working on narrower chisels if it throws it out ever so slightly it's very easy to polish an angle on the edge of the chisel which isn't great so that's where the lo Neilson one is better and that the machining is much more accurate and those jaws do not splay out whatsoever so let's get this out the shop and we'll just compare the two premium honing guides let's go through a quick disadvantage off the eclipsed style honing guide and that comes with when you're using odd shaped blades so this is the Veritas NX 60 it's a premium block plane it's actually the same pattern as their DX 60 and the difference with these is that their blades are not square where this taper goes in it's actually only clamping on this blade at the last five millimeters and this becomes even worse as that blade gets shorter by the time I've taken three millimeters off this blade in a few years time this will not be able to clamp properly in the standard jaws it's kind of getting away for it now but it's still a little bit precarious this the main difference between a premium a clip style honing guide and a budget one like this these jaws on top are removable you see these screws if I take those off you can then buy different jaws for the line ups and honing guide to suit different tasks so these ones here are the long jaws and I would definitely recommend buying these because in most cases they can actually just replace these standard ones and on these jewels you have two locating pins and then opposite those you have two screws and it's worth mentioning that these screws are captive you cannot lose them which is great because I always do stuff like that there is one all the screws on it are loose so you see they all come out and then you can just drop them wherever you want yeah locate and pin locates in there as you would expect it all you do is tighten those down okay so they're all clamped in place now what I can do is pop my premium Veritas blade in there with its weird shape slide that up against the thirty degrees stop and there we go I've got far more support down the length of that blade now holds it all in place securely and that is all good now like I say I leave these long jaws in most the time because they can still accommodate my larger plane blades like this let's set that to the 30-degree stop bang that's still working with the long jaws fitted the only limitation you have with the long jaws is when you start going to angles such as fifty degrees because you can't actually protrude the blade out far enough beyond the jaws so that's the only limitation if you're sharpening 50 degrees and stuff often then the long jaws might not be a good solution for you the other advantage of the long jaws is spokeshave blades we all know how much for nightmare it is to sharpen these so get that nipped up get my protrusion stop well ah I can now easily sharpen my spoke shaped blades lovely now the Veritas one because it clamps on the top it doesn't matter about this profile on the blades it's always gonna hold it in place and obviously they wouldn't make a honing guide that doesn't fit on their tools so there you go that's all clamped in place so there we go there's a small disadvantage with the Eclipse honing guide if you do have weird shape place like that you're going to need extra jaws and likewise if you need to sharpen spokeshave blades you're also going to need these extra jaws however let me show you an issue with the Veritas which is something that a lot of people have faced and I've seen it come up time and time again in store and that issue is with sharpening chisels so won't bother setting the protrusion I'll just get it all in place now making sure that these jaws are clamping down evenly to start with I'm really going to wrench these down so that is properly tight now now that can still slide up out in there believe it or not and that is because it clamps on the top instead of the sight like these are Clips holding guides so like I mentioned before the issue with this cheaper one is that it throws the blade out of square to the stone when you tighten it down this Barrett s1 does exactly the same it can tighten these down all you want by the time you've done a few strokes on the stone that can easily shift notice a three quarter inch chisel this gets so much more worse when you take it down to quarter inch and eight Finch chisels they slide all over the place in there so what Veritas has done is brought out the narrow blade attachment to get this on all you do is unscrew this head be careful not to lose that bit and then that simply attaches to the top like that and that has converted this Honi guide from a top clamping honing guide to a side clamping one it's all done on this adjustment here now this is still quite fiddly to set up so I'm just going to clamp this protrusion arm on here basically the way to do this is to get this protrusion arm on not locked in place so it can still sort of slide side to side like that flip it over but it shares all up against the protrusion stop and this is why you kind of want to be able to slide that protrusion I'll still because you need to sort of follow the path of the chisel as it gets clamped on the side like that so it's gonna keep it all lined up you've just got to work for two parts in unison there we go take that off and now that is locked in there so that is the advantage with a sigh clamping one it's very good that varisai support this out because that was a major issue with this top clamping head now if that in mind let me show you where another disadvantage with the line Ilsan one is when you have a Finch place like that with Veritas one you can simply it gets that's a 2 inch chisel in place all lock down and that is in there rock-solid however with the line Neilson one and we just get it's all closed up because the extremely steep dovetail ratio if you try and clamp eight Finch chisels in here the top closes before it's able to properly clamp the chisel in place so that I can slide that forward and backwards in there and that's the case with both the long jaws and the standard jaws so if you're sharpening eight Fitch chisels you are going to need separate chisel jaws for this honing guide as well so if you're sharpening eight fix chisels quite often that is obviously going to bump the price up of this honing guide even more because you need those extra jaws so other jaws available for this lo Neilson guide are skewed yours now these are locked into eighteen degrees and 30 degrees and that pretty much covers all the SKUs online Nielsen's range however if you need access to even more skill angles this Veritas one here will be a better option for you what you can do is get a skew registration jig which clamps on the front exactly the same as this protrusion guide but it has lots of angles on it and because this is top clamping it means that you can pop your skew chisel in there clamp it up whatever anger you want don't say if you wanted a 45 you can clamp it in there and you could get holing like that another thing that you may have seen in the Veritas range is a Campbell wheel so what this allows you to do is rock the whole guy from side to side and that allows you to put a small curve or a large gap on the of your plane blades now this has various benefits that I'll be showing you in a later video that attaches exactly how you would expect through this thumb wheel on top so there you go that is all locked down now and that honing guide is now able to tip and therefore I can put a spool curve on the front of my plane blades with a low kneel someone in the blade in place you can still rock that and site-to-site to some extent and that allows you to put a camber on the edge of your blade which is something I will be covering in a later video now this is where a lot of beginners especially see the advantage in having a wider wheel on a Veritas one because it's much easier to keep that blade Square to the stone when you're resting on a wide wheel like that because it's much harder to tip with a smaller wheel like this it's much easier to accidentally roll the honing guide ever so slightly and put an angle on this now obviously over time and lots of practice you can get into a knack of just keeping it nice and square on a narrow wheel like this but bear in mind if you're using the Veritas with a flat wheel and you're relying on that to keep your blade square once you start wanting to put a curve on the edge of your blades you will need to switch to the camber roller on these ones and another quick advantage off the camera roller on this very test one is that you can sharpen scrub plane blades on it fairly easily because those have a massive camber on them and also some shallow gouges as well I found that I can sharpen on this this one here doesn't quite rock enough to be able to get the clearance on that so with that all covered which one would I choose I know have been back and forth between all these different features I've probably confused you quite a lot but what suits my workflow best it's the line Ilsan with the long jaws fitted the reason for that is that I do not want to be messed around with fiddling all these different knobs and stuff on these ones trying to set it up I want sharpening to be a quick process because it's much more fun making tools blunt than it is making them sharp secondly to add to the fiddly mess of this having to switch between heads when you're sharpening plane blades versus sharpening chisels is it's just a nightmare to be honest you may ask Kara does not have the narrow blade head permanently installed no you can't because it only clamps up to an inch and a half I remember correctly and plane blades are usually around two inches and above if you're working with number fours and the standard sizes so that's my main dislikes for the Veritas ones yes I see it's extremely versatile and I appreciate that if you were working with skews you had that SKU registration gif every angle at your disposal that way furthermore if you're sharpening scrub plane blades and maybe shallow gouges this would be great if fitted with the camera roller but I just don't do that stuff soo that is why the line Ilsan suits my workflow better with this I can clamp my plane blades I can clamp my chisels I can clamp my spokeshave blades I can do everything with the long jaws attached to the top of this the only limitation I have is when I want to put a 50 degree bevel on my low angle Jack plane for example in which case I need to switch to the standard jaws I can also put shallow cambers on my bench planes with this by slightly rocking it side to side I don't need any huge sweeping curves with this whatsoever this suits everything that I could possibly need the only issue I have with this is when I'm sharpening my 8 inch chisel which is there because it's obsolete very thin I haven't purchased the chisel jaws yet because I find that I can just sharpen my athens chisel on my cheap Rider honing guide that still clamps just fine in the bottom section so on the very rare occasion I need to sharpen this 8 this chisel I just use this cheaper honing guide because that works for me but there we go hopefully that was useful to you and you have a clearer understanding of all the different features of the honing guides one thing I will say if you're sharpening freehand don't do it yourself just get yourself a 10 pounds honing guide and make yourself a Petrosian stop and just sharpen properly there are a lot of people out there who tell you to do it freehand but if you're a beginner trust me the amount of blades I've seen that are just an absolute dogs dinner they look like garden trowel this just curves all over them there's facets on them they just look absolutely dreadful they're not sharp and there are no way to get back to their original condition just make yourself one of these get yourself a honing guide and just give it a go because your results will be so much more consistent so if you have any questions chuck them in the comments below and I look forward to seeing all of the arguments that will arise after I have talked about the subject of sharpening I'll see you next time

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 259,043

Rating: 4.8302584 out of 5

Keywords: lie nielsen honing guide, veritas mk.II honing guide, lie-nielsen vs Veritas, What is a honing guide, How to use a honing guide, What is the best honing guide, How to sharpen chisels, How to sharpen plane blades, tool duel, sharpening, comparing honing guides, lie-nielsen, Veritas, Veritas narrow blade honing guide, woodworking, chisel, chisel sharpening, sharpening jig, freehand sharpening, freehand sharpening or jig, veritas vs lie nielsen, veritas or lie nielsen, which is best

Id: O_adhVrZFws

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2017