The Truth On The Burr in Sharpening

hey y'all I'm James Wright and welcome to my shop today we're talking about the myth the legend of the mysterious Burr [Music] Burr can be one of the most useful things to know when it's sharp at what stage is the sharpening actually at but learning how to read that and understanding the differences and what causes it that can be pretty difficult for a beginner to really understand the Burr and be able to read it you have to understand what causes it and we think of Steel as something that's hard and unyielding and something that doesn't move but on the microscopic level and we will look at it under microscope it's a bit flexible kind of like a clay or a putty and it just moves around the softer the metal or the warmer the metal the more it moves and the more it becomes something you can kind of push and play with and that's what blacksmiths do is they kind of push and play and squish it around the purpose of sharpening is to get this tip as sharp as possible you want to get that down to the smallest amount possible almost down to the molecular level if you can and so when you're grinding the bevel for the most part most of the steel up here just grinds and disappears away like you would think it do it kind of Sands it off but right at the tip at that tiny bit where molecules tend to get fewer it kind of pushes and squishes and so at the tip you get this little bit that comes off out like this and it stays attached right at the tip the problem is if that Burr is thick and was created with a coarse Stone when it breaks off it might take some of the tip with it as well in which case then you'll get a larger tip which means duller but if you work that Burr down and you get it smaller and smaller and thinner and thinner until the point it just falls off then you've gotten the edge just about as sharp as you can possibly get it so understanding the durability of the Burr how strong it is can tell you how sharp your Edge is getting some people like to work the Burr on their coarse Stone and then they'll flip it over and they'll take the Burr off and then they'll go over to the medium Stone and they'll flip it over and they'll take the Burr off and then they'll go over this one and flip the burn and take the bar off and that works perfectly fine the problem is when you take the Burr off on your core Stone you're going to take more material from the tip and so you've got to restore your tip create a new Burr and sharpen again and then you take it off again and so every step you're sharpening over again whereas if you take it one at a time you just work that burst thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner and now at the end of the Burr it's fat and as it gets closer to the edge it gets thinner until you get back here to this drop and it just falls off for a lot of beginners though understanding what does the different type of Burr feel like is actually kind of difficult so I want to take you through a process so that you can start to learn what does it feel like now I don't do this every time I sharpen this is just a exercise to learn what does a good bur feel like I'm going to start here on my coarse diamond plate set it in place find the angle I want I'm just going to do five or six Strokes then I'm going to slide my finger on the bevel and see if I can feel that Burr ever so slight to me but for a beginner they probably wouldn't feel that yet so I'm going to go at it five or six more Strokes and we're going to feel it again and you want to stop when you can feel the Burr usually this is the point right here where I could get a student to feel it so here is the bevel side under the microscope and you can see the scratches go all the way to the edge but in this case as I run my finger on it you're not seeing any deflection of the Burr but if you look closely you'll see the very little tip on there it's just a different shape to it at this point the Burr is so tiny and so small but it's also very fat you notice as I was sliding my finger along it I wasn't deflecting the Burr I wasn't moving it at all it was still very solid and that means it's connected to the tip really really well usually on the course of stone you just want to go until you can just barely feel the Burr the smaller the Burr the better on this Stone because you don't want a lot of material connected at the tip you want to make that thinner so once you can feel it on the first side then we're going to go over to the next one on this one I'm going to change my direction rather than going at 45 degrees this way I'm going to turn my body so I'm going perpendicular to the edge I want to go until those scratches get right up to the edge and at this point I'm going to feel that Burrs a little bit heavier than it was before now I can see the scratches are going perpendicular age I've gotten rid of all of those 45 degree scratches and I can really feel the burp anyone now sliding their finger up the flat could feel that bird it's a very very obvious Burr also in looking at it now I can see it especially when I slide my finger but there's like this flat dull Edge or a little shiny spot that suddenly appeared right across the tip really thin a little bit and in that case I know that I'm getting a good bird that is something that I can visually indicate now when I can see that Burr going all the way across the edge and I can feel that Burr going all the way across the edge I know I'm getting stock removal all the way up to the edge and all the way along it but I don't want to go any farther this still creates a rather large heavy burn if I broke it off now I would be taking some of the edge with it here you can see it kind of running along the edge here and if I bring my finger up the edge it doesn't move that much but there's there's a little bit of movement you can see the nice shiny scratches that's the steel we want and that dull piece particularly over on the right you can see it moving around a bit It's Getting Thinner now we're going to move over to the finest Stone and do it the exact same way again do five or six Strokes doesn't need to be much just enough to remove the scratches from the previous step this time rather than going perpendicular to the edge I'm going to turn it back to 45 degrees and create new scratches in that direction once I've removed all those scratches now I know this Edge is pretty good also at this point I can still feel the Burr but at some point it suddenly disappears and there's no longer a burr that I can feel and that's because I'm sliding my finger on the back rather than the Burr going this way now I've flipped the Burr going that way and that means I can't feel the Burr on this side but if I come over to the bevel Edge now I can feel the Burr on that side and oh there now it's gone now it's back on this side now you can see the scratches that are going 45 degrees you might see one or two from the previous Stone they're going perpendicular to the edge but if I slide my finger along it now you'll see that Burr kind of flake and move around it's getting very very soft and this is the stage where I take it over the strop now some people are going to go to really high grit Stones because this diamond is kind of around a 1200 grit ish depending upon how you measure it and some people will take it up to four thousand six thousand eight thousand twenty thousand thirty thousand sixty thousand we're going on to pace and things like that um whatever you want to do they all work great personally I like to just take the Burr off at this point some people like to make the bur even finer by going to those higher grits but I found that that doesn't make that big a difference at this point the bird coming off the edge you're going to get onto it and it's only going to last a little bit of time under regular use so in this case I have a chrome oxide on here and I'm going to put it bevel down and I'm going to do basically the exact same thing five or six Strokes on this side and this is actually a grinding polish that will remove some steel but it will make that Burr even thinner after a few Strokes on that side I'm going to flip it over to the flat and this is the only time I touch the flat in my sharpening system at this point you want to be careful if you have it flat and you pull it back and you find that it's scratching or scraping the surface that means your Burr is too strong you need to go back to the lighter plates and make it thinner I'll do one or two strokes on the back one or two strokes in the bevel and I'm just going to go back and forth five or six times if you've made a very small Burr you may never actually see it come off because they kind of ping away or they get blown away and you're not going to actually see them come off in this case I've broken the Burr off everywhere except for a little bit right up here on the tip so I'm just going to do a couple more and now I can no longer see that dull surface on the tip I have a really nice shiny tip all the way across that Burrs come off and I can't find it on here if you're doing more than 10 Strokes per if you're doing more than you know 10 Strokes or so per Stone then you're going to create a bigger and bigger Burr and when that Burr gets really big you'll be able to see it so because of that sometimes it might be nicer to do more Strokes in the stone so you can actually see the bird come off but then you get a bigger Burr that flaps around and it may end up taking more edge with it most of the time when I'm sharpening the Burr is so small that I can't quite see it other than a slightly dull or slightly reflective surface on the tip and then suddenly that edge is gone and here's what the finished Edge looks like under a microscope really nice clean straight you see those lines that are going perpendicular to the edge those are actually scratch marks from the Chrome oxide in the strop whereas the few that are still going 45 degrees those are from the fine Stone on the sharpness tester this Edge is somewhere around 100 to 120 somewhere in that range really really really good and sharp and if I were to spend more time on it I probably could get it a little bit sharper to just tone it down a little bit more or maybe even just create a burr on just the strop and make it perfect but in reality that 100 to 120 Edge is only going to last a few Strokes before it's somewhere around 150 160. and that's usually a really good working Edge so putting in the work to make it sharper is only going to be worth anything for the first couple Strokes sometimes if I notice there's a section where the birds just not coming off and I'm going back and forth and back and forth I may go back and re-sharpen it and redo the Burr and then it comes off or I might just be like yeah it's good enough and I'll take the bird and I'll run it through the edge of some soft piece of wood and that will pull the Burr right off sometimes you'll see this big Burr and it falls off on the end and it's great but the Chisel still feels dull and what caused that usually it's because the bird got too big it got this big flappy thing and as you bend it back and forth and back and forth it ends up taking some of the tip off of it so that's why you usually want to have a smaller Burr the smaller the Burr the less it is to feel usually the sharper The Edge you're going to get this is one of those topics where people can go hog wild and crazy and do all kinds of crazy tests to show the perfect way to get there honestly there's no practical reason to do that if you really want to get the edge incredibly crazy sharp that's that's great but understand it's only going to last that way for a little bit and then it's going to be in somewhere in the 150 range it'll be there for a long time that's just the way most steals work even some of the really high grade Magna cut Steels you're only going to get a few Strokes at that really Keen Edge so don't worry about it too much most of the time for me I only feel for the Burr on the coarsest stone that lets me know I have reshaped my Edge and I have a burrow running all the way across I can feel it on the flat side all the way across that lets me know I've got an edge all way across then I can take it onto the other stones and as long as my sharpening technique is good I'm just going to be taking a few Strokes to remove the scratches from the previous plate on each sequential plate until I get to the strop and then I take the Burr off I don't refill for the Burr I don't check scratches just because I I've gotten to the point where I know that this many strokes at this particular feeling and I've gotten rid of it sometimes with different Steels you'll notice that the Burr acts very differently if you have a cheaper soft steel you may notice that it just never comes off it folds back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth never comes off you could have an A1 you could have an A2 Steel that's really hard and the Burr just falls off by looking at it because it's become so brittle that it just snaps so different Steels and different hardnesses and different types will behave very differently and so sometimes you need to understand what your particular steel feels like on your particular sharpening system understanding the Burr what it feels like at different stages and how it looks an ax can be a great way to understand your chisels and your way of sharpening but don't worry about it too much it's not one of those things that you have to become overly zealous about and actually turn it into some form of the Burr religion it's just a good indication to understand where you are in the sharpening system I hope this answered a few questions for you and I know it's probably going to create quite a few comments because there's a lot of people who believe one way or the other or do different things on it and that's great that's one of the fun things about woodworking it's a sport that there is no right way to do it as long as you're doing it safely and carefully then go have fun try out something that works for you and what have you learned about a bird there's something I should have talked about that I didn't is there something that you use it for all the time please let me know that down in the comments down below I do read through all of those and I answer as many of the questions that I get and occasionally you'll get a video like this from one of the questions so thank you for that it does actually help out the channel as well because putting comments questions thank yous the like share subscribe thank you it means a lot to me because it helps us get in front of more people helps the channel grow and just is a lot more fun but if you want to go even farther there are a bunch of names over here those are some of the Fantastic wonderful benevolent gorges and beautiful people over on patreon because that patrons we wouldn't exist you guys are the ones who keep us going between patrons and memberships people click the join button down below or hit the thank you button you guys are the ones that sponsor this channel rather than some company wanting me to tell them about what they make I hope you like that and if you do then think about clicking the buttons and joining and becoming a member I think they'll do it for now and until next time have a wonderful day it got cold in here so let me ask you this if you've taken off a burr sometime in the past does that mean that it can fly I have bird

Channel: Wood By Wright How To

Views: 20,917

Keywords: Wood By Wright, wood By Wright 2, Hand tools, Handtools, Woodworking, burr, bur, turning a bur, turning a burr, sharpening, sharpening a burr, how to turn a burr, how to tell if you have a burr, what is a burr

Id: WHLpywJpfU0

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023