For a change of pace, I would like to share this charming folktale from Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, of a sort traditionally told to small children.
We originally posted this little story about a year ago, but since those pesky pixies seem to have pulled it down, we are re-publishing it today for Japan’s Labor Thanksgiving Day holiday and because Tengo was such a great workman (or at least labor producer).
I have included photo extracts from the Kasuga Gongen Genki E (春日権現験記絵) scrolls painted in 1309 on silk using silver and gold paints, showing carpenters working on the Kasuga Temple jobsite.
My children and I enjoyed this story. Perhaps you and yours will too.
The Tale of Tengo and Tenjin
Once upon a time there was a very good carpenter. But he was sad because he lived alone, so he asked the prettiest girl in the village to be his bride.
She did not want to marry, but to put him off without hurting his feelings, she decided to charge him with an impossible task.
“If you will build me a big house with 60 tatami mats in a single day, then I will marry you.” (60 tatami mats = approx 99 square meters = 1065 sqft based on the standard modern tatami mat)
The carpenter was shocked by this demand, but because he wanted her for his bride, he boldly accepted the challenge saying: “I will build you this house in one day.”
His voice rang with confidence as he said this, but he despaired in his heart knowing he could not build such a large and beautiful house in one day. He thought to himself “ What shall I do, what shall I do?”
But never fear, because as you have probably guessed, our carpenter was no ordinary fellow to give up easily. Before long he came up with a plan.
He made 2,000 dolls out of straw and breathed on each while casting a magical spell transforming them all into human carpenters.
The carpenter and his 2,000 man crew then went to work.
A cross-section of the Carpenter’s plan (dimensions are in Sun (pronounced soon) and meters). Notice the coved & coffered ceiling in the family room on the right.Images from the “Kasuga Gongen Genki E,” completed in 1309The Master Carpenter and his helper use a water trough as a water level for layout. He uses a vertical string of a fixed length with a plumb bob attached to check the high stringline’s height above the water’s surface to adjust the line to be approximately level.A crew of 3 workmen excavate a hole and compact the soil at the intersection of two low stringlines installed by the Master Carpenter in preparation for placing a natural foundation stone, probably intended to support a main post. Notice the shovel: a one-piece wooden body with a joined “T” handle with a steel or iron cutting edge affixed. Bleeding-edge technology at the time. The carpenter and his young helper in the drawing’s upper half use a sumitsubo (inkpot) to snap a straight line on a timber in preparation for splitting it into boards. At the lower right, the master carpenter uses his sumitsubo inkline as a plumbline to orient his steel square to vertical against the log’s end. At the same time, he directs his mellow-looking partner at the opposite end to make a matching vertical line using a steel square with a bamboo pen wet with ink from the reservoir of his classic split-tail sumitsubo. Notice how he has used an adze to keep the log from rolling away.The carpenters in the upper right use chisels to split timbers, while the other workers use adzes to dimension and clean split boards. One appears to be of African persuasion. Notice the classic carpenter’s toolbox at the far right with a leaf-blade saw secured to the lid and a wooden mallet laying next to it on the groundAt the top of this image you can see two carpenters, one shaping the end of a round column and another sawing what appears to be a kumimono bracket with a leaf-shaped saw as he jabbers at his buddy a hundred miles an hour. In the center, more carpenters use spear planes to flatten and smooth boards and a round column after they were adzed. Notice the wood shavings curling from the curved blades, some being pushed and others pulled. Spear planes were used in Japan long before blade-in-block planes became common. The guy working on the board’s right hand end appears to have his thumb stuck in his eye. I hate it when that happens!Carpenters erecting the building’s structure. No ginpoles, shoes, or tie-offs are in sight. Probably no hardhats either. And the scaffolding is a death trap! Tisk, tisk! What would OSHA say? The planks resting on the scaffold in this image (also visible in the first image and the image directly above) have two square holes cut in each end, perhaps for tying them down to the scaffold. On the other hand, a carpenter in the upper left-hand corner is using his leaf-shaped saw to cut one of these boards, so maybe they are construction lumber and the holes make it easier to hoist the boards by hand to higher elevations. The carpenter at the far right wearing blue and climbing a ladder has an adze at his waist, but I can’t figure out what tool he has in his right hand.A diagonal view of the coved & coffered ceiling at the family room.A corner view of the family room coved & coffered ceiling. Notice the coped joints. This work is typically performed by joiners, not carpenters.The living room has an even more elegant coved & coffered ceiling with “kumimono” brackets.The living room’s coved & coffered ceiling in hinoki wood with a carved “rainbow beam” in the foreground. Nice work!
With the assistance of his 2,000 helpers, the carpenter completed building his bride-to-be’s house before the sun went down that day,
Overjoyed, the carpenter flew to the pretty girl’s house to tell her of his success. “I have finished the house you asked for. Please marry me now!”
“Truly?” she asked. Upon inspecting the work she found a big, beautiful house with 60 tatami mats, just as she had asked. “I will marry you.” she said.
And thus the prettiest girl in the village became the carpenter’s bride.
The carpenter and his bride then moved into their happy new home.
Afterwards, the 2,000 carpenters scattered throughout Japan to build houses, temples and bridges and teach many other carpenters how to build beautiful things for many years.
After several happy years had passed, the bride said to her husband “I have been silent up to now, but the time has come to tell you the whole truth. I am not really a human being, but an angel named Tenjin. I came down to earth from the kingdom of heaven. But the time has now come for me to return to heaven.”
The carpenter replied: “Ah, well, now that you mention it, I’m not a human being either, but a carpenter god named Tengo. Let’s both return to heaven together.”
So Tengo and Tenjin rose high into heaven where they still live happily ever after.
The End
YMHOS
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with all Gentle Readers by using the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, incompetent facebook, or twitchy Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information.
Matsui Precision Bevel-edged Straightedge with notch
You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
Aristophanes
This post is about a tool that looks quite ordinary but is in fact extraordinary in subtle ways.
Why Do Woodworkers Need a Good Straightedge?
When woodworking we need to be able to mark and measure straight lines and examine the precision of edges and surfaces. There are several ways and tools available to accomplish these tasks, but the steel straightedge is efficient for shorter distances, assuming one’s straightedge is up to the job.
For most woodworking tasks we don’t need a precision straightedge. But for those few activities where it is necessary, nothing can take its place. So what are some of those activities? I can suggest a few from my experience:
I use a precision straightedge as a “Standard” to check that my working straightedges and squares (the ones that are used and abused daily) are truly straight and square. This is necessary because, during use, Murphy governs all operations, while pernicious Iron Pixies dance among the piles of dandruff on his shoulders. Due to their malicious ministrations, measuring and marking tools are easily damaged, wear-out, and lose tolerance so I need a reliable “Standard” to check them against regularly. Of course, you can’t check for straight or square unless you have a truly straight line/surface to index from. It would be silly to imagine that the edge of one’s tablesaw top or jointer table are perfectly straight without first checking it against a reliable standard;
I use a precision straightedge to examine the soles of my handplanes to help me keep them straight, flat and free of wind because it’s very difficult to plane a flat surface with a screwy plane. No matter how much time I invest in truing my planes, I’ve found the results are never better than the straightedge used.
Check that lapping plates and the float-glass plate I use for truing stones and plane soles remain within tolerances. Yes, they wear out too.
Check that the tables of stationary equipment such as tablesaws, bandsaws, jointers, and planers are true, and that infeed/outfeed soles of handheld electrical planers are properly aligned;
Check that surfaces of wooden components of special projects requiring extra precision are true.
Do you ever need to accomplish any of these tasks?
Tasks for Which the Matsui Precision Straightedge is Not Ideally Suited
The Matsui Precision Straightedge is not an expensive tool, but since it is one I rely on, it is most cost-effective to protect it from premature wear and damage, so the following are tasks for which I use a less-expensive and less-protected “working straightedge” instead of my Matsui precision straightedge:
I don’t use it for checking sharpening stones. The Matsui straightedge can do this job with style, but after a few years of being pressed against (and dragged over) abrasive stones, the tool’s precision would be degraded. Better to use a less-expensive straightedge for this job, and check it occasionally against the Matsui Precision Straightedge to confirm it’s still straight. If it isn’t, fix or replace it.
I don’t use it for daily general woodworking tasks. Once again, the Matsui straightedge can do general jobs with style, but after a few years of being pressed against (and dragged over) wooden surfaces, the tool’s precision would become degraded prematurely. Instead I use a “working straightedge” that has been checked against my “Standard” Matsui Precision straightedge;
How To Use a Precision Straightedge for Checking Tools and Surfaces
Neither the human hand nor eye can measure a straight line or a true plane with any precision unaided, but there is one technique older than the pyramids all woodworkers must be proficient at, namely to place a truly straight, simple straightedge on-edge on a surface to be checked, be it a board, a jointer outfeed table, or the sole of a plane, and shine a light source at the gap between the straightedge and the surface being examined. If gaps exist, light will pass between the edge of the straightedge and the surface being checked confirming the surface is not straight and/or flat. The human eye can detect even a small amount of light this way and both quickly and effectively judge how flat the surface being checked is with a surprising degree of accuracy.
Feeler Gauge
Another technique that yields more precise values without relying on Mark1 Eyeball is to place the straightedge’s beveled edge against the surface to be checked, and insert feeler gauges into gaps between the straightedge and the surface. If the feeler gauge selected won’t fit, then one replaces it with thinner gauges until one that just fits is found.
Once you know the value of the gap between your straightedge and the area of the board you need to true, for instance, you can divide the measured thickness of the shaving your planes takes in a single pass (easily checked with a vernier caliper) to calculate how many passes it will take to true the high-spots on a board. eliminating a lot of the guesswork that makes precise woodworking difficult at times.
To reliably perform these checks, we need a truly straight straightedge. Straight is a relative thing, but straightedges sold for woodworking are seldom straight because purveyors rely on purchasers to not bother, or even know how, to check the quality and precision of the straightedges they sell.
Another reason honest, precision straightedges are relatively rare among woodworking tools is that making a high-tolerance piece of hardened steel that is straight, and will stay that way, is hard work that most woodworkers are neither inclined to appreciate nor bother to check, much less pay for. Is ignorance bliss? I believe it is in the natures of our Gentle Readers to always strive to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. A high-quality precision straightedge is an essential tool in that blissful quest.
Challenges & Solutions
The dilemma of the straightedge is that it must be thick and rigid enough to prevent warping and flopping around in-use, but reasonably lightweight and not too bulky or it will be clumsy. At the same time, it must not be too thick, or it will block out most of the light passing between its edge and work-piece making it useless.
Another challenge the straightedge faces is the constant threat of damage. If the delicate edge is too soft, it will become dinged and deformed instantly becoming inaccurate. And if the straightedge rusts (the bane of steel since ancient times), precision will suffer.
What are the viable solutions? They are obvious and proven, but seldom implemented well. Here is how Matsui Precision does it.
Stainless Steel Construction
First, they use high-quality stainless steel to prevent corrosion. If you work in humid conditions or if you will admit to perspiring salt-laden moisture at times, then this is important, but not rare.
Properly-sized, Precision-ground & Polished
This straightedge is not an insignificant piece of stainless steel. It is available in various lengths, but in the case of the Matsui’s 400mm straightedge (a handy, reasonably-priced length), the blade is 34mm wide and 3mm thick, enough to keep the blade rigid in use and prevent warping, but not so wide or thick as to feel heavy or clumsy. It weighs 320gm, a nice balance of rigidity and weight.
Compact, lightweight tools made using quality materials efficiently have a deep genetic attraction to the Japanese people.
What is more rare is the fact that Matsui then precision-grinds and precision polishes the stainless steel (not the same thing) so the tool is as straight and flat as machinists require, because this is a tool designed to the higher standards of machinists, not just woodworkers.
Hardened & Trued
Matsui also hardens the stainless steel to ensure the tool is rigid and will resist wear and damage over its long useful lifespan.
During heat treating and grinding the metal warps slightly. After stress-relieving the tool, Matsui inspects each tool one-by-one and corrects irregularities or rejects those that cannot be sufficiently corrected. It’s called quality control, something that never happens in China or India in the case of tools intended for woodworkers.
Beveled Edge
To make it easy to see light passing between the straightedge and surface being checked, one edge is beveled. The importance of this detail cannot be overstated.
The Notch
The Matsui Precision Straightedge being used to check the sole of a 70mm finish handplane with a blade by Sekikawa-san. The notch fits over the cutting edge so one can check the sole with the blade protruding as it will be in-use. In this photo the blade has been extended waaay too far out of the mouth to make it easy to see the cutting edge. Please notice the light showing between the straightedge and the sole indicating that something is not right. The wedging pressure of forcing the blade to project this ridiculous amount has warped the block so that the most important part of the sole, the area directly in front of the mouth, is not touching. The point is that the notch makes it possible to check the sole with the blade projecting the intended distance, a job simply not possible with an ordinary straightedge.
In the case of the tool we are introducing here, Matsui cuts a small semi-circular notch in the beveled edge of the blade to provide clearance for irregularities in the surface being checked, such as welds, or in the case of woodworking tools the cutting edges of the blades of handplanes, electrical planers and electrical jointers. This is an important and unique feature.
Why is this notch so useful? The problem with using a metal straightedge to check/true the sole of a handplane has always been that, in order to correctly check for flatness/wind, the blade must be set to project from the plane’s mouth the same amount it should be when the plane is being used, because in the case of Japanese planes the wedge-shaped blade applies slightly different pressures on the wooden block at different depths in the block, producing variable degrees of deflection.
But if the blade is projecting from the mouth from the same amount as it will be in use, then the straightedge will ride on top of the blade preventing a proper examination, and at the same time, possibly dulling the blade and gouging the straightedge. The solution has always been to adjust the blade to not actually project, but to be just in-line with the sole, a fiddly process that has resulted in many dulled blades, scratched straightedges, and inaccurate examinations.
With the elegant Matsui Precision straightedge, however, the notch fits directly over the projecting blade avoiding the irritating and time-wasting fiddling normally required to get the blade in the exact position, one that ultimately yields an imperfect reading.
If you need to maintain handplanes, electrical woodworking tools, or do precision woodworking and need an accurate, reliable, lightweight, durable, reasonably-priced straightedge to help take the guesswork out of these jobs, this product is just what you need. I have been using one for years and couldn’t get by without it.
If you are interested, send us a message using the form below.
‘Be careful you don’t cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.’ ‘Girls don’t shave’, Arya said. ‘Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa’s legs?”
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
I mentioned in a previous article my belief that a love of sharp tools is embedded in the Japanese people’s DNA. I am convinced this is by no means limited to the people of these mountainous green islands. I know it is deep in mine too, and it may be in yours.
Whether they were made of bone, flint, copper, bronze or iron, humans of all races and all locations worked with axe and adze, chisel and scythe, sword and dagger to keep body and soul in close proximity for many thousands of years before written language was invented or Microsoft products crashed. Our reliance on and love of sharp tools is still part of our DNA, to one degree or another, and for good reasons.
The words we humans make and use give insight into our deeper natures, so a very brief lesson regarding a single word in the Japanese language, one that is an intentional, defining characteristic of our tools, and one you will not find in any textbooks, may be illustrative of this point.
Cutting Flavor
The word your most humble and obedient servant has in mind is “kireaji” 切れ味 pronounced “ki/reh/ah/jee. This word is comprised of two Chinese characters. The first of the two ideograms being 切 , which is pronounced in its un-conjugated form as “setsu” or “kiru,” meaning “cut.” This is an interesting character. People who study these things say it is an ancient combination of two characters. The small one on the left looks like the character for the number seven 七, but actually it represents a vertical and crosswise cut in the shape of a plus sign 十. The character to the right, 刀 , is pronounced “to” or “katana” and means “sword.” So “kiru” means to cut with a sword or blade.
The second character in the word is “Aji,” 味 meaning “flavor.” Combined, these two characters mean “cutting flavor,” but the resulting word has nothing to do with the human sense of taste and everything to do with the feeling transmitted to the user when a blade is cutting. This word is used in reference to all cutting tools from axes to swords to razors, and certainly for knives, chisels, and planes.
In the English language, the closest word we have is “feeling of sharpness,” I suppose, but it isn’t the same. The act of cutting, in the Japanese tradition, is a sensory experience, one that can be pleasant, in the case of a well-designed sharp blade, or unpleasant in the case of a clumsy dull blade. I think you now have a sense of what the word kireaji means, and how how it feels. Do you understand why it is an important word when talking about tools?
When we speak with our blacksmiths and sharpeners about the tools they produce, the kireaji we expect of their products is always part of the discussion. A blade can have a good kireaji (良い切れ味, an indifferent kireaji (どうでもいい切れ味）or a “distasteful” kireaji (不味い切れ味). It can be “brittle” (切れ味が脆い）or it can even be “sweet” (切れ味が甘い）meaning soft as a spoiled child. We always insist the first meaning be applicable because anything less is failure. Even if some of our customer’s tastes may not be refined enough to discern the difference, ours are.
We work closely with our blacksmiths and sharpeners to make sure they understand our requirements for sharpness. And just to be sure, we constantly test their blades to ensure compliance. If you buy a tool from us that has an especially sharp edge and looks like it may have been used lightly, please understand this is part of our QC efforts and not a return or a reworked reject.
If you know of other languages that have a similar idiom, please let us know in the comments section below.
Like the flavor of fine wine, rich chocolate or gourmet donuts (mmm donuts), the kireaji of cutting tools varies with materials, blacksmiths, and specifications. At C&S Tools we are not satisfied with outward appearance only, but take our products to a different level by making kireaji the very highest priority. This makes C&S Tools almost unique among retailers of edged tools.
Does kireaji matter to you?
Bon appetite!
YMHOS
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with all our readers in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google or incompetent facebook and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information.
The chisels, knives, and planes we sell are all hand-forged by ancient smiths. There may or may not be dwarvish ancestry in one or two cases, but without exception our blacksmiths make blades with unsurpassed crystalline structure that cut like Satan’s scalping knife.
The Psychology of Steel
It’s important for those of use who use such sharp handtools to understand how they think. Allow me to put on my metallurgical psychologist’s hat for just a moment to expound. FYI this hat is a highly-polished brass skullcap engraved with runes of power and decorated with multiple rings of tiny silver bells suspended from stubby brass rods attached to the cap that tinkle prettily when I walk. Much glitzier but more dignified than the aluminum foil cap with projecting curly copper wires I use to protect my mind from the brain-rays of alien used-car salesmen. But I digress.
High-quality blades are especially single-minded and simply live to cut wood. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. You will hear the chirping and tapping sounds they make when they are happy, if you listen carefully. And the shavings and chips that fly from their milky silver edges will attest to the fun they are having. They love cutting wood best of all, but the problem is they will try their darndest to cut anything they can latch onto. It’s just their nature; something we must understand if we are to prevent the servant from becoming the bloody master in the blink of the eye.
Everywhere we look nowadays there are rules and busybodies busily enforcing them. They don’t call it the “nanny state” for nuttin. Safety rules can be helpful but don’t do us any real good unless we we eventually turn them into those unconscious actions commonly called habits. Like never pointing the barrel of a rifle at anyone anytime even by accident, or putting on the car’s brakes before the vehicle crashes through the storefront, the potential consequences are just too severe to leave them as empty rules.
I don’t want to sound like a nanny, but as someone who has made one, perhaps even two stupid mistakes in his lifetime (difficult to believe, I know), I would be derelict in my duty if I did not point out one rule and a few wise safety habits worth developing especially to those of our Beloved Customers that purchase our chisels and knives and want to continue to have more than just an emotional attachment to their fingers, hands, toes and feet.
The Big Safety Rule: Don’t Let Them BiteYou
The most important cutting-tool safety rule you need to follow is: Don’t let them bite you!
Sharp wide blades can sever a lot of nerves and tendons in the blink of an eye. A deep injury won’t even be painful if your blades are sharp, at least at first, but the damage may be impossible to repair fully and too often is life-changing, and never in a good way. So the application of this rule is simply don’t give cutting tools an opportunity to do mischief.
Safety Habit Number One: Never Cut Towards Yourself or Anyone Else.
OK, now that the big safety rule is on the table, let’s break it down into three basic safety habits. First, never ever ever never cut towards yourself or anyone else.
An example. A universal mistake everyone, without exception, makes at least once is to hold down a piece of wood with the left hand while cutting it with a chisel or knife motivated by the right hand towards the hand holding down the wood (in the case of right-handed people). They slip, or the chisel or knife jumps out of the cut, or the chisel or knife is dull and they lose control, or they apply too much force, or don’t allow enough distance to slow the tool down after the cut should end. Whatever the cause, in the next instant the wood quickly changes a pretty crimson color, and the left hand feels strange. So please, never ever ever never allow your hands to get in this situation. Assume I’ve now yelled this warning into your ears 50 times and hit you with a wooden mallet with each cockroach-killing screech to make the lesson sink in. It’s that important.
Safety Habit Number Two: Reject All Distractions While You Have a Cutting Tool in Your Hand
Another common mistake everyone makes from time to time is to allow a distraction to control us while holding a chisel or knife. For instance, trying to juggle a can of beer and a chisel at the same time may place your nose or eyeball at risk (alcohol is such an uplifting beverage); Or scrambling to answer a cell phone call without setting the chisel down first may result in the sudden appearance of an inconveniently leaking red nick in your neck that doesn’t quite compliment the fashion statement being made by your hand-embroidered woodworking robes.
Case in point: Many moons ago before my beard turned white I was cutting mortises with a sharp chisel at my workbench, using the time-honored butt clamp, of course, when a yellow-jacket wasp (of which I have an uncontrollable phobia ever since a frantic encounter as a small child with a hornet’s nest in Grandma’s attic), landed on my leg. In a blind panic I swiped the wasp off my left thigh with my left hand, which by total coincidence was also holding the chisel. 40 years later I still have that big unsightly scar that ended my promising career as a bikini model before it really got started, robbing the world of great beauty (ツ)。
Professional woodcarvers all know somebody with deep, crippling injuries to nerves and tendons in hands or legs from using carving tools improperly or while distracted. Not a few have lost whole hands. The wise ones wear kevlar or steel mesh gloves when they must secure work by hand while using chisels or knives. While I don’t condone it, professional woodcarvers must sometimes violate the rules just to get the job done. These safety gloves are good for preventing slicing cuts, and help to reduce the severity of injuries in all cases, but may not stop a knife or chisel from stabbing you if it is motivated, so please don’t violate the first rule just because you’re wearing fancy gloves.
A stainless steel safety glove (right), kevlar safety glove (center), and a good reason to use a safety glove when carving
The solution? Set your knives and chisels aside in a safe manner and location before you do anything other than cutting wood. In other words, have the self control and situational awareness to reject all distractions.
Oh yea, and please don’t drink and drive chisels.
Safety Habit Number Three: Always Set Your Tools Aside in a Safe Place and So They Can’t Move
This final safety habit is related to number two above in that distractions often cause us to violate it. In this case the hazard is a chisel or knife falling from a work surface, at which point Murphy rolls up his sleeves, licks his eyeball with his long purple tongue, and painstakingly guides the tool cutting-edge first towards ankles, feet and toes. In Japan were work has traditionally been performed while sitting on the floor, a common problem is accidentally kicking a chisel. Of course, the chisel doesn’t appreciate such boorish behavior and will bite back.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t wear thick leather steel-toed work boots in my workshop. I prefer flip-flops or crocs without the heavy and dreadfully unfashionable steel accessories. The problem is that flip-flops are not tough enough to prevent a 200gram atsunomi falling cutting-edge-first from a height of 70cm from severing a toe, so I am careful to not give Murphy the opportunity to place his bomb sight on my “little piggies.” I encourage you to always be aware of both Murphy and pernicious pixies and never put yourself at their mercy.
The solution? Be careful of where and how you set your tools down and make good practices a cast-iron habit. Don’t leave them hanging over the edge of your workbench, or balanced on top of other tools where a bump from a strolling bench kitty or vibration from a hammer impact might knock them off. If you have several chisels or knives on your workbench at the same time, use a chisel box. Another effective solution is to make a tool rest by cutting some notches in a stick of wood, place it in a safe location on your work surface and rest the tool’s blades in those notches to keep them organized, to protect their cutting edges from dings, and most importantly, to prevent and perfidious pixies from pushing or rolling tools off your workbench and Murphy from dive-bombing your wiggly pigglies. This is especially important if children have access to your workplace or you have curious kitties swanning around demanding snacks and ear-rubs.
How to Develop Good Safety Habits
Everything we have discussed so far is only hot air and electrons unless you manage to actually ingrain wise safety habits into your soul. I don’t know how it works for you, but the steps below work for me. Whatever it takes please develop good, engrained safety habits.
Step 1: When you have an accident (and you will), stop working and figure out how it happened, and what you could have done to avoid it. Hopefully it won’t be while waiting for X-ray results after an iron worker drops a bunch of steel decking cutoffs on you from 14 stories above (that really hurt and destroyed a perfectly good hardhat).
Step 2: Every time you find yourself in a similar situation, stop and consider if the same bloody thing could happen again, and what you need to do differently. For instance, figuring out a clamping arrangement that keeps your left hand out of the path of travel of a bloodthirsty paring chisel is something worth taking a few seconds to do.
Step 3: Remember the pain and embarrassment of the original accident to help you make the process of thinking through potential ouchy incidents, and then using the solutions you developed automatic. In this way a good habit is born.
I can also share a personal superstition with you. Everyone nicks themselves occasionally when using sharp tools. I know I do. When this happens, I place a tiny smudge of the red stuff on the tool that bit me, and on any other cutting tools that have yet to nick me, and let it dry. I’m pretty sure this quashes their curiosity about how I taste in advance. At least I think that’s what they tell me when I am wearing my brightly tinkling metallurgical psychologist’s hat (ツ）。
There is one thing I can promise: you will find a severed tendon or damaged nerves in a hand or foot to be more than just inconvenient. And if, like me, fashion is your life, scars may tragically preclude your picture from ever appearing in the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated. Such a loss!
Be careful. Develop good habits and make them automatic. Don’t let your tools bite you or anyone else, even if they beg with those big puppy-dog eyes.
YMHOS
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, incompetent facebook or a slimy data miner and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. Cross my heart.
The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
Confucius
This is the final post in our series about Sharpening Japanese Woodworking Blades, in which I will try to bring all the information provided in the previous posts together into a single practical example. That does not mean the entire contents of those posts is repeated here, however, so please refer to the previous articles if things become confusing. I have provided some links in the text, and provided links to all the articles at the end.
But before we dive into our practical example, I would like to create some context.
Paying Debts
The purpose of this blog, as I have mentioned before, is not to sell stuff or attract clicks but to help our Beloved Customers increase their knowledge and improve their skills in maintaining and using the high-quality hand-forged professional-grade woodworking tools we purvey.
Another purpose is to pay a debt of the kind that can’t be recorded on paper, only in the heart.
In this series of posts I have carefully NOT promised quick and easy results, nor have I given abbreviated explanations or promoted dumbed-down techniques tailored to fit neatly within the publishing parameters of a book, magazine article, or a pretty little video. This is because the series is not about me, or my skills, or what I think is best, or selling stuff but rather helping our Beloved Customers obtain real long-term results and life-long skills of the sort expected of professional Japanese woodworkers. And since I can’t instruct them directly, our Beloved Customers must truly understand the principles and techniques so they can train themselves. Fragmentary instructions and short-cuts would be far easier to write about, but wouldn’t help with that training.
I share many experiences in common with most of our Beloved Customers, but I’ve also had some unusual experiences working with and being mentored by extremely accomplished Japanese professional craftsmen including sword sharpeners, tool sharpeners, carpenters and joiners. None of those gentlemen charged me a notched nickle for the things they taught. Likewise, I have never sought compensation for teaching others those same techniques. And so we come to the other reason for this series, namely to pay those gentlemen back for the time they spent and the kindness they showed me.
So gird up your loins, recall the information and techniques presented in the previous 28 posts in this series, and let’s sharpen a blade.
Removing Damage and Correcting the Bevel
We will not even try to deal with all the possible starting points for sharpening a woodworking blade. In this example we shall assume the lands surrounding the hollow-ground area at the blade’s ura are already flat, planar, and polished. If your blade is not in this condition, follow the instructions at the end of this section. We shall also assume the edge has a small chip that must be removed first. These conditions will cover 80% of sharpening jobs.
Richard Kell 625-3000 Brass Bevel Gauge
If the blade’s cutting edge bevel angle is where you want it to be, the bevel is already flat, and the blade isn’t damaged, please skip to Step 11 below.
1. Examine the Bevel Angle: Check the bevel angle with your bevel angle gauge. 27.5° ~ 30° for plane blades, 27.5° ~ 35° for oirenomi and atsunomi. No less than 24° for paring chisels.
2. Correct the Bevel Angle: If, based on the check in the previous step and the blade’s actual performance, you determine the bevel angle needs to be adjusted, correct the bevel angle using your 400~800 grit diamond plate or FLAT carborundum stone either free-hand or using a honing jig like the Lie-Nielson product, the Eclipse jig, or whatever catches your fancy. If you use a honing jig, you may want to add a drop of oil to the moving parts before they get wet. Be careful to avoid making skewed or curved (cambered) cutting edge unless that is specifically what you need.
3. Examine the Edge: Examine the blade by eye and touch. Stroke the edge with your thumb (over and away from the edge not into the edge!) to confirm its condition, and run a fingernail along its length to check for defects as described in the previous post in this series. Your fingerprints will snag on any rolls or burrs, and your fingernail will detect irregularities invisible to the eye. Assuming there is some minor damage, go the next step. If there is no damage, the bevel is in good shape, and the blade is just dull, skip to step 11 below.
4. Remove Damage: Remove chips and dings from the cutting edge by standing the blade, cutting edge down, on a flat 1000 grit stone, with ura facing away from you, tilted a few degrees from vertical towards you, and pull the blade towards you without applying downward pressure. Usually one or two strokes will suffice. The goal is to remove damage by creating a flat at the cutting edge. Examine the flattened edge with eye, fingertip, and fingernail to see if the chip or defect has been removed. Repeat until it’s gone. Don’t overdo it. Whatever you do, don’t allow the blade to become skewed! This method takes a bit of courage the first time, but it is the quickest, surest, and most economical way to get the job done.
5. Clean the Blade: Carefully clean grit and mud from the blade and the honing jig’s wheel (if you use one) to prevent contaminating the next stone. This is important.
6. Check and Color the Bevel: Check the bevel frequently to confirm full contact. You might blacken the bevel with a marking pen or Dykem to make it easier to monitor progress. This step is worth repeating between stones because it is helpful in monitoring what you cannot see otherwise.
7. Sharpen on the Rough Stone: This is the most important stone in the process. Now that all the damage has been removed and the bevel is in good shape, we need to abrade the bevel until the flat we made in step 4 is gone and we have created a tiny, clean burr. Sharpen the blade’s bevel on your roughest diamond plate or FLAT carborundum stone. If sharpening freehand, take short strokes. Always use the entire face of the stone, including corners, edges and ends as described in the previous post in this series. Turn the stone end-for-end frequently to compensate for your natural tendency to work some areas of the stone harder than others. Watch the edge carefully to make sure the width of the flat made at the cutting edge in Step 4 above gradually decreases in width evenly along the cutting edge’s length. If the flat becomes narrower at one corner than the other, apply extra pressure at the wider side, or hang the corner of the blade’s narrower side off the stone for a few strokes to correct. Stop when the flat is gone, and a clean, uninterrupted, but barely detectable burr is created. With practice, you should be able to do this without a honing jig. When using all the stones and plates in this process, keep them wet at all times, and add water as necessary. If the stone becomes dry, not only will it clog and stop cutting efficiently, but friction may cause localized heating of the thin metal at the cutting edge softening it. Remember, you’re tearing metal from an extremely thin cutting edge. You cannot see it and your fingers cannot feel it but this destruction heats up metal at that thin edge.
8. Check the Burr: Your fingertip will feel the burr long before your eye can see it. Stop when you have a small, uniform burr without interruptions the full width of the blade. Confirm this with your fingernail. Anything beyond this is just wasting metal and stones. With practice, this process will go very quickly, and you can move onto the next stone while the burr is barely detectable.
9. Create Skewed Scratches: When you have a uniform burr, work the blade sideways, or at an angle, on the stone to create diagonal scratches on the bevel removing the straight-on scratches the stone produced.
10. Clean the Blade: Wipe and wash the blade (and the honing jig’s wheel, if you are using one) to remove grit and mud. This is very important to prevent contamination of finer-grit stones.
At the conclusion of step 10, the bevel will be flat, uniform, and at the correct angle. The flat created during step 4 above will be gone, and you will be able to just detect a full-width tiny burr using your fingers.
For the next steps, keep the blade attached to the honing jig if you used one in the previous steps. Otherwise, sharpen freehand if you can. Don’t let the honing jig become a crutch that slows you down and prevents you from developing control.
Normal Sharpening Procedures
This is where the sharpening process normally starts when the blade is not damaged and the bevel is in good shape but only needs to be sharpened. It usually does not include a honing jig which can only slow things down.
11. Check and True the Medium-Grit Stone: You may decide to use more than one medium grit stone. I always use a 1000 grit, and often use a 2,000 grit stone as well. Whatever you use, it must be clean and flat. As described in previous posts, you need to check your stones flatness frequently with a stainless steel straightedge. To do this, wash any mud off the stone and pad (don’t rub) the stone’s face dry with a lint-free clean cloth or paper towel. Hold the stone up to a light source, place the straightedge along the stone’s length, across its width, and across its diagonal and check for light leaking between stone and straightedge. Make a pencil mark, such as a line or circle, on high spots using a wide carpenter’s pencil. Once you understand if and how the stone is distorted, flatten it using whatever method you prefer, a diamond plate, a specialized truing block, or my preferred method, another stone of the same grit. If you use my way you won’t need to worry about grit contamination and can save time and money by truing two stones at the same time. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
12. Sharpen on the Medium-Grit Stone(s): Work the bevel on your medium-grit stone in short strokes using the stone’s entire face from side to side, end to end, and corner to corner, turning the stone end-for-end frequently and being careful to avoid rocking the blade. A bulging bevel is bad news, Bubba. You will know you are done with this stone when all the diagonal scratches from the previous stone, especially at the extreme edge, have been removed. The burr may or may not have disappeared by now. Check with your fingerprints and fingernail. If it still remains, it should be just barely detectable. If it is still big, you need a few more strokes on this stone to shrink it. Using a loupe at this point will be informative. End your work on this stone by creating some new diagonal scratches on the bevel erasing all the previous straight scratches.
You may want to repeat this step using another medium-grit stone, such as 2,000 grit, to save wear on your finishing stones. Either way is fine.
13. Clean the Blade: Wipe and wash the blade (and the honing jig’s wheel, if you are using one) to remove grit and mud. This is very important. Remove the honing jig at this point if you have been using one.
14. Polish on the Finishing Stone: Move onto your finishing stone, usually a 6,000~8,000 grit synthetic stone. This may not be the final finishing stone you use. Be sure it is flat, uncontaminated with grit from rougher stones, and wet. You may want to use your nagura stone to create a slurry from the stone’s corners and edges that will accelerate the polishing process. The finishing stone serves a polishing function, and because it’s grit is so fine, it lacks the ability to distort the bevel badly, so you can take longer strokes and polish the blade on both the forward and return strokes. When all the diagonal scratches from the previous stones are gone, you are done with this stone. If there is still a burr left after the medium-grit stone, it should have evaporated by now. If not, the burr was probably too big to begin with and your technique needs refinement.
15. Examine the Bevel: Take a good look at the polished bevel. Are there still scratches left from the previous stone? This may be because you did not remove all the scratches from previous stones. Or it could be because this stone or previous stones in the series were contaminated with dust or rougher grit. If so, you should figure out why and correct that problem before the next sharpening session.
16. Polish the Bevel Using the Final Finishing Stone: This step may not be necessary, depending on the time available, the degree of sharpness required, and your inclinations. This extra polish probably won’t make a significant difference in the cutting tool’s cutting performance so is often abbreviated during a busy work day. If you use a natural finishing stone or a 10,000+ grit finishing stone, this is the time to use it. Simply repeat the process in step 14 above, but be sure to apply light pressure, keep the stone at least a little wet, and sharpen on both the push and pull strokes.
17. Polish the Ura: With the bevel polished as finely as you intend it to become, polish the ura on the final finishing stone only. Place the last 1/2” of blade’s length on the stone’s edge (the stone MUST be flat) with the cutting edge parallel with the stone’s length, and the rest of the blade hanging off the stone but supported by your right hand. Press down on the bevel with two or three fingers of your left hand. Be sure to apply even pressure with these fingers. These fingers press down only and do not push the blade. The right hand pushes the blade back and forth and onto and off-of the stone. Take light strokes focusing pressure on the extreme cutting edge, but without lifting the blade’s head.
18. Polish the Bevel (Again): After several strokes on the ura, polish the bevel.
19. Alternate Between Ura and Bevel: Go back and forth polishing the ura and bevel, but keep in kind that you want to limit the number of strokes on the ura side (assuming it’s already highly polished as discussed above).
20. Examine the Edge: Check the full length of the cutting edge frequently with your eyes, fingertips and fingernail. The burr should be gone entirely. The edge should be sharp, and absolutely smooth. All the rougher scratches from previous stones should have disappeared. I make a final sharpness test by shaving an ultra-thin slice of skin from a callous on a finger allowing my bones to sense the degree of sharpness. This method is much more accurate than shaving hair off the arm. If you try it please don’t draw blood.
21. Clean, Dry and Oil: After you are done sharpening the blade, rinse it with clean water or sharpening solution (Item 5 in Post 17) and wipe it dry on a clean cloth or paper towel. You may want to strop it lightly on a soft clean cloth (or the palm of your hand, if you are confident in your abilities) to remove hidden water. I recommend applying a spray liquid rust preventative to the blade that displaces moisture, such as CRC Industries’s 3-36 or WD-40. CRC3-36 is paraffin based, floats water out of the blade’s nooks and crannies, and leaves a film that will prevent corrosion long term. However, please note that, while WD-40 is very convenient and displaces moisture, it evaporates entirely and is therefore not adequate for long-term corrosion protection. If you are going to use the blade right away, a little oil from your oilpot is cheaper, more convenient, and will do the job just fine.
With practice, and assuming you have not let your stones become too distorted, this entire process from Step 1 should take no more than 10~15 minutes. This assumes the blade is chipped or damaged and you need to correct the bevel or use a honing jig. Honing jigs slow the process down but are convenient when using rough stones and coarse diamond plates.
If the blade is in good shape and just needs normal sharpening, the goal should be 5 minutes from the medium grit stone in step 11. If you can’t do that quickly right away, don’t rush, just practice and get a little quicker each time: Slow is smooth; Smooth is fast.
Note: If you are sharpening a new blade, or the ura needs to be trued and/or repaired, work the ura on all the stones used in the steps above, but be careful to limit the number of strokes on the rougher stones to the absolute minimum. Also, instead of keeping just 1/2” of the blade’s length on the stones, move it diagonally in and out towards the blade’s center to prevent the stones from digging trenches in the ura. Use special care during this process.
I recommend covering at least your finishing stone with something when you are not using it to protect it from contaminating dust. I simply wrap mine in a sheet of newspaper. It doesn’t take any time or money. Some stones prefer to read the sports pages, others prefer current affairs. Just ask them.
Conclusion
I am confident the techniques described in this series of posts will prove useful if sharp tools matter to you. Your tools may not talk much, but if you train yourself in these techniques I promise they will sing their appreciation.
I trust the gentlemen that taught and mentored me would be pleased with the content in this series of articles, although I doubt they have time for reading nowadays. I will ask them when I see them again in the big woodpile in the sky.
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google or incompetent facebook and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information.
Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small.
Lao Tzu
A key milestone our Beloved Customers should aim for when sharpening a blade is the production of a “burr” at the edge when abrading the bevel (not the ura) using the first rough stone in the series. The formation of the burr indicates that the extreme edge of the bevel side of the blade has been abraded enough.
In this post in the Sharpening Japanese Tools Series, we will examine how to raise this burr and why it is important to do so, how to use the burr to test the condition of the cutting edge as you are sharpening, and how to transition from one stone to the next finest stone in the series
Raise a Burr
The steps in creating and then abrading away a burr. The size of the burr in step 2 is grossly exaggerated for clarity. Indeed, unless severe damage to the edge needs to be repaired, you should not normally be able to detect the burr by Mark 1 Eyeball alone.
Japanese plane and chisel blades tend to have harder steel at their cutting edges than Western chisel and planes, and consequently, their steel does not exhibit the plastic deformation necessary to readily produce large burrs, or “wires” as some people call them, when being sharpened. In fact, “burrs” on professional-grade Japanese chisel and plane blades may be difficult to detect.
The key point to remember is that a clean, uniform, smooth burr signals the elimination of all major defects, chips, and dents at the cutting edge. If there are a lot of deep defects to remove, the thickness of the metal at the edge that must be abraded is correspondingly greater, and the burr developed will tend to be correspondingly larger. But a large, loopy burr or wire is not desirable because it will tend to break off prematurely leaving a jagged, ragged edge that will actually set back the sharpening process.
You want to create a barely-detectable, tiny and clean burr as soon in the sharpening process as possible. My advice is to do it on the roughest stone, although you may not be able to test if it is clean until after a few strokes on the medium-grit stone (1000 grit).
As we discussed in a previous post in this series, the way to keep the size of the burr minimal and the blade’s bevel flat is to focus the pressure of abrasion as close to the extreme cutting edge as possible, but without overbalancing and gouging the stone and dulling the edge. This is the most essential skill in freehand sharpening.
Now that we have a burr, let’s look at how to test it next.
Testing the Burr
As you are working to produce the burr, you will need to quickly test its progress, but that can be difficult, if not impossible, to do by eye alone. To make this process easier and quicker, rub the pad of your thumb or finger over the ura’s edge, away from the cutting edge, thank you very much, when using your rough stones. Your fingerprint ridges will snag on the burr long before you can see it. If the edge is chipped or damaged, the burr will not be consistent but will be interrupted at each defect. There is nothing at all to be gained and much to lose by allowing the burr to become larger than absolutely necessary, so pay attention.
Once you have a small burr, you then need to test it for defects. If you run your fingernail along the burr’s length (the width of the blade), you will feel interruptions in the burr long before you can see them. Keep working the blade’s bevel on the rough stone until the burr is consistent across the full width of the blade, and free of dents and chips.
In the case where you need to remove serious damage to the cutting edge, you may want to use a loupe to ensure the defect has been transferred entirely to the burr and is not longer in the cutting edge.
If you are careful to focus the abrasive effect of the stones on the extreme cutting edge instead of the rear of the bevel, the burr created before moving onto the medium grit stones should be barely detectable. Once again, except in the case of removing large chips or blade damage, creating a big burr is not only a waste of time, stones and steel, but if the large burr is torn off during sharpening, it will leave behind a tragic amount of damage that must be repaired by once again abrading the edge and raising a new burr. Don’t start chasing that tail.
Best to create just enough of a burr to confirm that damage has been removed and then encourage it to evaporate.
Don’t forget to check the angle of the bevel with your hand-dandy bevel gauge. See the section on Pixie Predation Prevention & Pacification in Part 11 of this series.
After the burr is in good shape, then polish the bevel on the medium and then fine stones. The burr will be polished off without special effort.
Assuming the ura is already polished on your finest finishing stone, you shouldn’t need to touch the blade’s ura on any stone until the final finishing stone.
Transitioning From One Stone to the Next
Recall that the purpose of each stone used after the roughest stone in the series is simply to replace the deeper scratches left by the preceding stone with finer scratches. In fact, there is nothing to be gained and much to lose by moving onto a finer stone before all the scratches from the previous stone have been replaced. Therefore, it is important to check that all the scratches from the previous stone have been polished out before moving to the next. This is not always easy to confirm without magnification, so to make it easier and surer, I suggest you skew the blade’s bevel on the stone for the last 3 or 4 strokes to make new diagonal scratch marks at an angle different from those produced previously.
These skewed scratches will be at a different angle than those produced by the next stone, of course, and will be easy to differentiate from the new scratches with the nekid eye. When the next finest stone removes them entirely, you will know you have probably spent enough time on that stone, and can go to the next. But don’t forget to skew the blade again before going to the next stone.
Of course, there is no need to skew the blade on the final finishing stone.
Summary
We have discussed three important sharpening techniques in this article which you must master if you have not already:
Raise a burr by abrading the blade’s bevel on your rough stones using your skillful technique;
Test the burr for size and completeness using your fingertip ridges, and for defects using your fingernails. If the burr is incomplete or has detectable defects, continue to work the blade on the rough stones on the bevel side only until the burr is good.
Skew the blade during the last 3~4 strokes on each stone (except the final finishing stone, of course) to create diagonal lines. When all those diagonal lines are polished off by the succeeding stone, you will know it is probably OK to move onto the next finest stone in the series.
You now have some powerful tools to use when sharpening your excellent tools, and none of them cost you a nickel. How’s that for value? (ツ)
Be forewarned, however, that if you use these techniques you may be forced to choose between a glamorous career as an international professional fingernail model or the quiet life of an expert woodworker. What to do what to do…..
In the next and final post in this series we will use all the aspects of the sharpening process discussed previously to sharpen a blade step-by-step. Be there or be square.
YMHOS
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google or incompetent facebook and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information.
If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.
Woodrow Wilson
The subject of how to use the face of your sharpening stone is so basic and seems so unimportant that few give it the attention it warrants. But it is not trivial: it deserves its own post because it can truly make a big difference in the time and money you spend sharpening.
Money Down the Drain
Instead of focusing his attention on the blade alone, a wise man will make a conscious effort to use the entire face of his sharpening stone from edge to edge, end to end, and corner to corner instead of digging an oval swamp in the center of his stone’s face.
This habit will help to keep a stone’s faces flatter over more strokes longer, saving time truing the stone, and extending its life thereby saving money.
Remember that you paid money for the stone, the entire stone, not just the hollowed-out oval area in the center most people create when carelessly sharpening. How much of a stone do most people throw away? Idunno, 20%? If you paid $100 dollars for the stone, that means $20 was turned into mud and washed away without providing any benefit to you at all. And don’t forget that you had to spend time cutting down those high spots to keep the stone’s face flat. That makes it more than a $20 loss if you count your time worth anything, which you should.
Why not use the sides and ends of the stone too?
Developing Good Habits
When developing these intelligent work habits, use a carpenter’s pencil to cross-hatch the stone’s surface to help you keep track of the areas you have not yet touched. Industrial diamonds are made from graphite, it’s true, but pencil lead is still softer than the finest sharpening stone and won’t affect the sharpening process one way or another.
Also, before and while sharpening, frequently use a thin stainless steel ruler to check the stone’s face lengthwise and crosswise at various locations, and of course on the diagonals to monitor wear. Don’t guess, lazy bones, examine. Between ruler and pencil you may discover you have developed less-than-efficient sharpening habits. With some thought you will also figure out how to change those habits so your sharpening efforts will be quicker and more cost-effective.
Before long, you will be able to detect uneven wear and warpage fairly reliably without using either tool as much, so stick with it until you do.
Hang Ten
One conundrum you have probably already discovered is that it is impractical to use the extreme right and left sides and both ends of the stone’s face to sharpen a blade. Or is it? Here is wisdom: Teach yourself how to sharpen with one corner of the blade hanging off the stone part of the time, alternating between right and left corners, of course. Strange as it may seem this technique is effective at not only keeping your sharpening stone flatter, but for keeping the cutting edges of your blades straighter. If this doesn’t make sense to you, think about it real hard. Then give it a try and you will see what I mean.
And since you are taking short strokes anyway, why not work the blade crosswise at the ends of the stone? A lot of expensive stone going to waste there.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but you will find that making short strokes will make it much easier to use the entire face of the stone.
If you feel this post needlessly states the obvious, or is “verbose,” allow me to remind our Gentle Readers once again that the purpose of this blog is not to provide entertainment, sell stuff, troll for clicks or snag subscribers but to help our Beloved Customers develop good work habits through education. Some of them are newbies, and others are old hands, but if I were to write only for the professionals then I would be neglecting the newbies, so if you know this stuff already please congratulate yourself and celebrate your good fortune by buying a new carpenter’s pencil.
YMHOS
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google or incompetent facebook and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information.
My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don’t even notice it any more. It’s just my reality.
Ethan Hawke
The Taming of the Skew
You will have noticed that it is easier to keep a blade stable when sharpening its bevel if you skew it on the stone. There is nothing wrong with skewing the blade so long as you understand the natural consequences of doing so and compensate for them appropriately.
Let’s examine some of those consequences.
First, a skewed blade tends to wear-out, or hollow-out, the center area of the stone quicker. This is inefficient, wasting time and stones, but can be compensated for if you pay attention and work the blade evenly over the stone’s entire face.
Second, people tend to place uneven pressure on a skewed blade, wearing the blade unevenly.
In addition, the leading corner is exposed to more fresher, larger grit particles (which cut more aggressively) than the trailing corner. As a result, the blade’s leading corner tends to be abraded more, causing the blade’s edge to gradually become skewed or rounded in shape over many sharpening sessions. This is definitely bad, and is often mistaken for the work of those devilish iron pixies. But if you are aware this can happen, and pay attention, you can compensate for it.
Third, and I have no way to confirm this, I am told by the guys with microscopes that diagonal scratches at the extreme cutting edge leave it a tad weaker, causing it to dull just a bit quicker. The way to compensate for this is to keep the blade’s cutting edge perpendicular to the direction of travel during the last few strokes on the finishing stone.
So in summary, habitually skewing a blade while sharpening is fine, but may cost a little efficiency, and may cause your blades and stones to become distorted.
Please read the quotation at the top of this article and consider whether or not your sharpening reality has become skewed without your realizing it. I know mine was for a long time.
These aren’t things you wouldn’t have figured out for yourself eventually, Beloved Customers and Gentle Readers, but now, at least if you pay attention, you’re a few years ahead on the learning curve.
In the worst case, at least ignorance isn’t an excuse anymore.
YMHOS
Shakespeare’s Shrew, Katherine Minola, played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1987 movie. In this photograph she’s obviously watching someone skewing a plane or chisel blade while sharpening it. She has the classic “squint eye” down perfectly, as did Clint Eastwood, of course.
If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please use the questions form located immediately below. Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google or incompetent facebook and so won’t sell, share, or conveniently and profitably “misplace” your information.
Festina Lente Doors in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy
We have discussed many details about sharpening in this series, and while this may be the shortest article of the bunch, it is by no means the most insignificant. For some it will be the most difficult technique to master. The classical references shouldn’t prove too onerous.
If our clever Gentle Readers pay attention to their blade’s movement when sharpening, they will notice how each reversal of direction tends to cause the bevel to rock forward and backward on the stone’s face. And what happens when we let the blade rock-n-roll? That’s right, the crapulous bulging bevel rears its ugly head and spits in our eye.
Short strokes, somewhere around 1-½ inch in length, make it easier to keep the blade from rocking.
A Gentle Reader named Oskar observed that, following the logic in the previous sentence, shorter strokes result in more, not less, reversals in stroke direction, and therefore shorter strokes should lead to more rocking rather than less. I concur with Oskar’s analysis and conclusion and am adding the following clarification to avoid confusion.
A short stroke results in smaller changes in the angles of one’s joints during the stroke compared to the changes during a longer stroke, making it much easier to maintain the bevel at the correct angle on the stone’s face. In other words, in the case of short strokes, the angle of joints at the beginning of a stroke does not change much by the end of the same stroke, making it easier to manage joints and tendons during and between strokes yielding greater repeatability.
In addition, shorter strokes tend to focus one’s attention on properly indexing the bevel on the stone during each individual stroke, attention that tends to wander more during long strokes.
Please note that this analysis is simply my opinion, and perhaps not a weighty opinion at that because I am not a physician, nor have I conducted physiological studies and dissections upon which a rigorous opinion should be based.
I know that making short strokes feels inefficient, and it is compared to a machine, but you, Gentle Reader aren’t a Cyberdyne Systems product. However, with practice, you will find you are able to increase the distance and speed of each stroke especially as your focus and hand-soul coordination improves and your wrists and elbows relax and become trained.
Long extravagant strokes on rough or medium grit stones are for sharpening axes and kitchen knives, not chisels or planes.
The exception to this rule is the finishing stone, as mentioned in the previous article.
Festina Lente
In conclusion, and in order to improve your classical education, let’s review our latin lesson from the previous article: “Festina lente” translates directly as “make hast slowly.” It is defined in the dictionary as “proceed expeditiously but prudently.” We chose to translate the phrase as “Slow is smooth; Smooth is fast. ” At least two Roman emperors, one Pope, and the powerful Medici family of Italy, back in the days when emperors, popes, and noble merchants had real power measured in armies they controlled and cities and continents they ruled, thought these two words important enough to include in their mottos and coats of arms. The words even appear in the original French version of the tale of the “Hare and Tortoise.” They are also relevant to sharpening if you are clever enough to understand why.
YMHOS
Woodwork in the Laurencian Library in Florence Italy with the Medici’s motto of Festina Lente and the turtle with a sail carved into it.
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If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tzu
When using the rough stones, and especially when learning basic sharpening skills, it is best to sharpen the bevel in one direction only, lifting the blade off the stone, or at least removing all downward pressure, on the return stroke. The reason for this seemingly inefficient movement is simply that, at least for most people, trying to abrade the blade on both push and pull strokes is extremely likely to cause the blade to rock creating the dreaded bulging bevel.
There are certainly many exceptions to this rule, and we actively encourage you to try to develop the concentration and muscle control required to sharpen in both directions on rough and medium stones, but be aware it may take some years. In the meantime, remember the ancient adage and imperial moto: festina lente, which we chose to translate as “Slow is smooth; Smooth is fast. “
Part of the difficulty of sharpening in both directions is the resulting loss of concentration: the swing of the thing is hard to sense. Perhaps another part of it is due to the difficulty of controlling the complicated and constantly-changing angles of bones and joints. Both of these natural mental and physical tendencies can be overcome by talented and determined people given time and daily practice, but in the case of everyone I have ever talked with on the subject, it takes many years of focused on-the-job practice, and extreme concentration at first to overcome pre-existing bad habits and avoid developing importune muscle memory.
Which Direction?
At this point you need to make a decision, unless you have already made it inadvertently. That is, to sharpen on either the push stroke (pushing the blade away from you) or the pull stroke (pulling the blade towards you). Most people choose the push stroke, as do I, but in reality the pull stroke is actually a little more efficient because the pressure tends to focus closer to the bevel’s front instead of back, and rocking is reduced. Whichever direction you choose, use it consistently.
However, and this is critically important, when it comes to the final finishing stone, work the blade back and forth in both directions. The finishing stone is not abrasive enough to change the bevel’s shape, and since you need to polish the last few microns width of blade’s cutting edge, a very tiny amount of unintentional rocking is actually helpful, as mentioned in a previous post.
Training Techniques
If you decide you want to develop the ability to sharpen on both push and pull strokes, I can share some helpful guidance that was given to me many years ago by a sword polisher.
The first step in training yourself is to begin by lifting the blade on the return stroke (either push or pull depending on your preferred direction). All the things mentioned above apply. Becoming proficient with this technique is foundational. Strive to project your senses into the blade traveling over the stone, indeed right down to the last few microns of the cutting edge.
When you are able to create a sharp edge while maintaining a flat bevel consistently and without much concentration using this “one-way” technique, then move on to the second step, which is to keep the blade in contact with the stone on the return stroke, but relieve all downward pressure. Begin slowly with full concentration and strive for smooth motion. It’s at the transition from one direction to the other where those nasty iron pixies cast their spells of confusion.
And finally, when you have mastered the “light-touch” technique, try applying downward pressure in both directions, beginning slowly at first and with full concentration striving for smooth motion.
Remember, don’t grip the blade like a thrashing snapping turtle, but hold it lightly in your hands like a small bird: too tightly and it will be crushed; too loosely and it will fly away. Don’t lock your wrists or elbows, but actively and consciously rotate them to keep the blade’s bevel always perfectly flat on the stone (your stone is flat right, right?). And don’t forget to use your small, thin stainless steel straightedge and brass bevel gauge to frequently check the bevel for flatness and proper angle.
And as always, brutally crush bad habits, and don’t allow new bad ones to take root.
Sadly, this is a skill that, once learned, tends to deteriorate with time unless practiced frequently. As with cherry blossoms, muscles, tendons and eyes are neither static nor eternal. Setsunai, desu ne.
YMHOS
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