SERVICING AND SHARPENING WOOD PLANES AND CHISELS

There are two categories of people who sharpen their own tools: the purists and the more practical. I am very much in the latter group. I use my tools, they occasionally get dropped on the floor — which is concrete — and I have found that, for general purpose work, tools do not need to be razor sharp; even if a bit uneven, they still do an acceptable job. When I get to the finer work, I pull out my special tools — the ones I spend more time sharpening and look after better. Your tools work better if they are sharp, but it’s also, in my opinion, a better strategy to spend a few minutes as needed sharpening up your tools, depending on what you’re working on. It isn’t that hard, and you don’t need much in the way of equipment.

Honing guides

For wood planes and wood chisels — not wood-turning chisels — you need one of each of these honing guides: the one on the left (photo 1) is for the wider wood plane blades; the one on the right is for chisels. You also need a double-sided sharpening stone and some oil — again the practical side of me kicks in here; I am using up clean, left-over oil I have lying around. It should be on the thin side. Transmission oil seems to work well.

Starting with the wood plane here (photo 2) we have a typical veteran Stanley wood plane, probably made in the 1950s or 1960s (IMG 8830). You may remember seeing one in your grandfather’s toolshed — back when you couldn’t go to Bunnings or Mitre 10