Sharpening blades | Cape Falcon Kayak

Every time I sharpen my tools I have the same two thoughts: ‘jewelers rouge and leather cuts metal way faster than it seems like it should’ and ‘I should probably do this more than twice a year’. I really am a tragic excuse for a woodworker but luckily skin on frame building is pretty easy.

My current sharpening setup is a 1000 shapton stone, a 6000 shapton stone, a harbor freight honing guide, and a leather strop. A little piece of green scrubby pad is a recent addition which helps to clear any stubborn slurry from the stone.

The Shaptons are new for me and to be honest I’m not as stoked on them as I wanted to be. The softer stones dish out faster than the harder stones which is exactly the opposite of what you want. With the opposite problem you can be less vigilant about flattening and actually end up with a better blade shape but with this problem frequent flattening is a must.

My chisels are random derelicts which are fine for the type of work I do but I’m insanely picky about block planes. When I used to teach classes in person, people would bring every type of block plane you could possibly imagine and I had to put an edge on each of them and get them running well for paddle carving day. About 25% of what showed up at my shop was so unusable that I would just set it aside and hand the student one of my pre-sharpened planes, another 50% generated significant aggravation and about 25% was at least decent. Interestingly these ratios did not break down along lines of cost. I saw just as many $100+ planes that completely sucked as $15 ones.

My personal favorite block planes are these two old 60 1/2‘s. I bought the Record from a friend for 20 bucks about 10 years ago, and I appropriated the Stanley from another friends workshop after he passed away. (Thanks Ryc!)

You used to be able to pick these up off eBay or in thrift stores for just a few bucks but the supply is getting scarce. I wish Stanley would reproduce this exact plane. It’s a perfect tool.