George Vondriska

Sharpening Chisels at the Right Angles

George Vondriska
Duration:   6  mins

Description

George Vondriska demonstrates the best way to sharpen woodworking chisels at the right angle using Darex equipment. A WoodWorkers Guild of America (WWGOA) original video.

Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.

Make a comment:
characters remaining

One Response to “Sharpening Chisels at the Right Angles”

  1. Mike

    George, right on but for soft woods I use 20 degrees for chisels as I do a lot of hand cut dovetails with pine or popular as secondary wood; one note about the Work Shape is that for chisels it is off by degree or two from 90 (at least mine is), but not an issue if that's the only shapening and honeing system you use. Also I don't recommend the Work Sharp for turning tools, there are much better systems for that.

A question that I get asked a lot by student woodworkers is what's the right angle for the bench chisels that I'm gonna use in the shop all the time? And there are a couple answers to this. One is you wanna make sure that you're sharping at the same angle every time. So when it comes to your choice of sharpening equipment, make sure it's something that you can consistently get results out of. Now, to be more specific, a lot of woodworkers use either 25 or 30 degrees on bench chisels.

Here's the deal with that. If we sharpen at 25 degrees, we're here someplace, if we sharpen at 30 degrees, we're more up here someplace. When we come down here like this at 25 degrees, we're effectively getting a pointier edge. Now, it's not fair to say sharper, but at that shallower angle, the edge is a little bit pointier. It is gonna dull a little bit faster.

When we bring that up to 30 degrees, it's a more robust cutting edge because we're at a higher angle. So if you have a chisel that you're gonna use for say chopping mortises into hardwood, I'd like to have that up at 30 degrees because it's gonna take that heavy use better. 25 degrees is a great angle for a chisel like this one, this bevel edge chisel, where I'm likely to use this for something like pairing in between dovetails or that kind of application. So it's key that you can set the angle on your tool, make sure that when you're using that tool, your sharpener, we can come in and easily get consistent results on the bevel of the chisel. So in this case, I'm able to change the angle on this bed, variety of different settings, and, making sure I'm still on 25, get repeatable results.

The other thing that's really, really critical is that as we sharpen, we wanna make sure that we maintain perfect 90 degrees from the cutting edge to the side of the chisel. So again, it's gonna come down to your choice of sharpening method, make sure that the method you're using, like this one, can provide that perfect 90 degrees for you. Now, when we talk about sharpening, we've got a couple of things going here. You wanna be able to rapidly advance through your grits. So in this case, I've got an abrasive on this side of my record player type device.

I can flip that over, go to a finer abrasive on the other side, because I have good repeatability on the settings, that makes it real easy for me to get a finer hone now on that bevel with the finer grit down on top of it. Now, the last step here, we're not done yet, we worked on the bevel, don't forget that you have to lap the back of your bench chisels. So I'm gonna put my fine grit back up, lapping the back means we wanna get the back nice and flat. So now what I wanna do is lay the back of the chisel perfectly flat onto the sharpener like that and work on the back of the chisel to get that dead flat. That's gonna really go a long way toward improving the chisel's performance.

Now, let's take a second and talk about plane irons. For plane irons, it's more common to sharpen those at 30 degrees. So I'll change my setting a little bit there, widen out the space here so my plane iron can fit in there. From that point, the approach is gonna be very similar. Going to come up here to work on the bevel.

After the bevel has been completely sharpened, I'll lay the plane iron flat on here in order to lap the back of that. That takes care of bench chisels and plane irons, one more thing we wanna look at, and that is maintaining the correct cutting angle on a lathe chisel like this one. Here's my advice for people on lathe chisels, and that is when you first get a chisel, keep the angle on it that the manufacturer put on it until you get better at using the chisel and sharpening the chisel. And then, in the future, you might choose to adapt that to your own turning needs. So what we wanna do with this one is keep the same bevel that we have right now.

So the challenge is how do we know that we're taking the exact same amount off the entire chisel? Here's a great answer. This is a nice tip for sharpening. What we'll do is color that bevel in with a felt tip. Now, a good question would be, what good is that gonna do me?

And the answer is I can watch the felt tip get removed. I can watch this black part get ground off and that's gonna tell me if I'm holding this at the right angle or not. The way I'm gonna watch it is that in this case, this abrasive is slotted and the disc it's mounted to is slotted. So this is gonna go on like this, and I'm gonna be sharpening from below. And as I'm doing the sharpening, I'll be looking down through the slats and I can actually see the chisel, approach the abrasive, and then I'll roll it through the sharpening motion, watching that marker come off to make sure that I'm holding the exact angle.

For a lot of people, sharpening lathe chisels just seems like a mystery. A combination of things here, a good sharpening machine, that felt tip trick really can help demystify it, make it a lot easier. Now, remember, when you're sharpening in your shop, lathe chisels, bench chisels, plane irons, we want repeatability, we want consistency. We wanna make sure that the angle that we sharpen at is the same every time and the tip of the chisel stays nice and perpendicular to the edge of the chisel. All things that you can get by choosing the correct sharpening device for your shop.

Get exclusive premium content! Sign up for a membership now!