Veritas sharpening guide -- micro bevel

[EricU]

In preface, I have been lax about sharpening for a number of years. Various reasons, long hours at work, fixing up a house, other hobbies, I'm sure there are a lot of people that have this problem.  Getting into the shop and sharpening just didn't seem like something I wanted to waste my time on.  Obviously, this is a problem that builds on itself, because it's a lot easier to sharpen if the tool is already close to being sharp.  I wasn't sharpening often enough to be any good at it either. So I bought the full set of Veritas sharpening guides.  Getting used to the narrow blade clamping mechanism took me a while, and raised my blood pressure a little.

I use waterstones.  I thought the roller adjustment to put in a microbevel was a pretty good idea.  But I'm a little confused about how to use it.  

I have a King 200x, 800x, and an 8000x.  I have another green stone that I can't tell if it's coarser or finer than the 800x.  Most of my blades need some time on the 200x just to get them back to where I can start with the others.  I have never been very successful with a grinder.

So when in the sharpening process do you use the microbevel setting of the rollers?

[AHill]

Once I've established the bevel of the chisel, I go immediately to the microbevel.  No need to sharpen the whole bevel  After multiple honings, I'll reset the bevel again and add the microbevel.

[EricU]

ok, that makes a lot of sense.

[Downwindtracker2]

That can be a lot of work.

Once the initial bevel is established ,I find  the rest of the honing isn't too bad. So I just use the bevel.

[Joel Runyan]

So when in the sharpening process do you use the microbevel setting of the rollers?

Pretty much never. The micro-bevel setting is only meaningful if you're using the guide to first establish your primary bevel, which would only conceivably happen if you were using a really coarse medium to grind to the primary bevel instead of a wheel, which is sort of a waste of time.

The key is just to find luck with a grinder, honestly. It's about as dull as work gets, but grinding a relatively lower angle on all your blades and then using the guide to hone a micro-bevel at the standard settings (most of my chisels are at 35, for instance) is the way to go. 

With that said, I will use the micro-bevel setting when a blade's current micro-bevel is getting too long to quickly hone (closing in on an 1/8"), at least a handful of times if I'm too lazy to immediately re-grind.

[DaveParkis]

I would add that you might want to add a stone between the 800 and 8000. Yes, you can just jump to the 8000, but an intermediate stone will (IMHO) save time.

[barryvabeach]

Eric,  I set the roller at the highest position ( arrow up ) on my coarsest stone  ( actually I use micron graded sandpaper ), then roller to the middle on the second to finest, then arrow down on the finest stone.    Brent has done more studying than most, and he explains it all quite well  http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/bevels.html   BTW,  I use a grinder for the primary bevel,   then 15 micron, 3 micron, then 1 and .5 micron.   Once I have a good grind,  and I can just use the micron paper for several honings before I go back and regrind.

[EricU]

I've been trying to figure out what grit my 3rd stone is.  Not sure if a microscope will tell me.  I haven't seen reference to a King stone that is green other than the 200.

[Steve Friedman]

I've been trying to figure out what grit my 3rd stone is.  Not sure if a microscope will tell me.  I haven't seen reference to a King stone that is green other than the 200.

I don't think a microscope will tell you, but I think there's an easy way to tell.  Put a blade in the honing guide and get the bevel completely flat on one of the stones.

Now, move to the mystery stone and run the exact same blade over it a few times - but let half the blade hang over the edge of the stone.  After a few strokes look at the scratch pattern and you'll immediately see which stone made coarser scratch marks.  Make sure you have good light and some magnification.  I think 5x is plenty, but more is better.

If it looks really abrasive, it may be a carborumdum stone.  Norton makes a coarse that they say is 120 grit.

As an aside, if you hate to sharpen, buy a lot of planes.  Do a big sharpening session periodically.  When one plane gets dull, just grab a sharp one.   



Steve

[cputnam]

Let me add a big + 1 to Allan's comment. The less steel you work on the faster it will go and the less you wear your stones and guides. The leading 1/32" or less is all that counts.