Now comes the fun bit! Until now all you have been doing is setting the scene for real sharpening. Sharpening is accomplished by honing an edge not grinding it. It is not necessary to hone the whole of the ground surface that you have just created. It is only necessary to hone the very tip and, because of the way I shall teach you to do it, this is what would automatically happen. So a good looking, well honed chisel would have a ground bevel and a polished strip right at the cutting edge of maybe 1 mm or so wide. If that polished strip gets too wide, say 2—3 mm, then that is an indication that the honing angle might be getting a bit large and now may be the time to touch up once more on the grind stone. I don’t know any professionals who use honing guides, but then professionals are sharpening tools all the time and don’t have the time to fiddle about with honing guides, but for the amateur there is no shame in using an aid to accuracy such as a honing guide. It will slow you down but it may enable you to do this very critical operation more accurately.

Let me just step aside for a moment and talk about the nature of sharpness. A keen edge is one that eats wood, it devours it. A cutting tool with this keenness requires the very minimum of power to push it through the timber and this reduction of power gives the operative much greater control. To repeat, keenness gives you efficiency which gives you control and it is this control that all would—be craftsmen are seeking.

So, how does one determine whether or not an edge is truly keen? A test that I was taught is the shaving test, that is, would a chisel shave the hairs on the back of your hand? This is quite a good test but I have learned that a quite ragged edge will also shave quite well and the test I would propose is a little more stringent. I believe that if an edge is truly keen, it will be so fine along the cutting edge that light will not rest upon it. Take a chisel and look at it very, very critically if possible through a strong magnifying a glass. Place the chisel in a direct source of light, a table lamp, an angle poise lamp or, best of all, a direct ray of sunlight. You have got to be completely honest with yourself here and move the edge of the chisel around until it is in such a position that it could catch rays of light directly on the cutting edge. If you can see a glimmer there of anything, if there is a glistening of light, little white spark marks, then your cutting edge is not keen. It is probably not even sharp. I don’t propose that you do this every time that you sharpen a chisel but it is necessary to do this in order to acquire the understanding of what a keen edge should look like and feel like. Once you know that, it is possible to sharpen it to a standard with which you are familiar.

To hone an edge, first turn a burr then polish it off. All the books tell you this and it sounds easy doesn’t it. The problem is, it is not. Let’s take it one step at a time. Take a chisel that is in pretty good condition, the back will be highly polished from corner to corner and the front will have been recently ground to 25 degrees. Take it to the water stone, to the 1000 grit brown water stone, settle the chisel with the bevel down at the far end of the stone. You will now have the polished side at an angle of 25 degrees to the brown surface of the Japanese stone. What you want to do is to draw the tool back towards you along the surface of the stone without changing your grip. If you do this correctly only the very end of the chisel, the front 1—2 mm, will be touching the surface of the stone. It is necessary to lock your elbows into your sides and rock backwards on the balls of your feet in order to maintain the correct angle. It takes a bit of getting used to but it’s worth practising. If you have not done this before I suggest you learn the theory by using a honing guide. Once you are more familiar with the whole process of getting a really keen edge it will be just a matter of technique to dispense with the honing guide.

OK, so you pull the chisel back towards you. Do this a couple of times more until on the polished side of the chisel you can feel a slight ridge at the cutting edge. This is a burr. Without a burr you can’t produce a keen edge. You have got to have one. Go and look at it under the magnifying glass and in the bright light. Your next task is to polish this burr off.

Polishing the burr off is the final and critical task before you. Now you should transfer to a much finer honing stone. We use Japanese 6000 grit gold stone for this purpose. Firstly, do exactly what you have done on the brown

1000 grit stone but do it on the gold stone. What you are doing is polishing the burr at the same angle. One or two strokes will be sufficient then turn the chisel over onto the other side, the polished back. Put the back flat on the surface of the honing Stone and pull it towards you. Don’t work in a figure of eight, don’t push it away from you, instead pull it towards you. Now turn it over onto the other bevel and repeat the process. Keep watching that burr, watch it like a hawk because sooner or later it will part company with the edge of your chisel. It may come off in one single piece or it may crumble and disappear like dust but sooner or later it will come away from the edge of your chisel. What you mustn’t do is knock it off. You have to polish it off. The polishing action is simply weakening the junction between the burr and what will become the cutting edge of your tool.

All this sounds very difficult but I’ve seen my craftsmen wandering upto the sharpening bench giving a chisel one or two licks on the brown stone and one or two licks on the gold stone and walking away, the whole process has taken no longer to do than it has to describe it. If you are not sure about the sharpness of your tools I do urge you to have a go at improving them by the techniques I have described in this article on one chisel. Don’t take any short Cuts, do the whole process from flattening to grinding to final honing then see if it makes a difference to your workmanship. I will guarantee you that a truly keen edge will give you greater control of your work.

first published in The Woodworker Magazine by David Savage in the series CRAFT OF CABINETMAKING 12