I’m still progressing on getting my hand planes tuned up. I’ve finished all my chisels (though I’d like to get a few mortise chisels at some point and will need to get those sharpened). I’m doing one plane at a time but I’ve discovered something that I guess I was taking for granted.
In my post Updated – Sharpening Station and Review – Sharpening Class, I talked about the technique that I learned and adapted for my own sharpening. During the class, Jeff Zens (the instructor) talked about using sand paper on a slab of granite (very, very flat granite) to flatten the back of blades (and we didn’t talk about it, but I felt it could be aplied to the soles of planes). In his discussion, he indicated that we should start with 220 grit then move up (in a lot of steps, 320,600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1500, and finish with 2000). With this technique, I was getting very flat surfaces for the chisel and blade backs all the way to a mirror finish. With the hand plane soles though, I was having trouble getting the sole flat across the entire surface. I could get it across the majority but I could get the scratch marks on some of the edges. I felt I should be able to do better.
It then dawned on my, why do I have to start with 220. I could go lower. I experimented with 180 and then 100. I found that with 100, I could get the scratch marks across the entire surface and then proceed to 180 and then to the original starting point of 220. This isn’t required for chisel backs or plane blade backs but with hand plane soles, I found this is often necessary. Now I’m getting much better results (I’ll have to revisit the first 2 plane soles I did but otherwise, we are good).
Sometimes it’s important to learn from the instructors but not always take everything as law. That’s what I learned here.
