I mentioned in my last post about sharpening that I was revisiting my strategy. Namely I was looking to improve a process I hadn’t spent much time on at all. After much reading I came across Derek Cohen’s blogs and articles and started moving in that direction. I was so happy about finding his blog and information that I reached out to him just to say thanks and ask a couple more questions. He replied!

I had asked him some general questions about sharpening and he gave me the following two pieces of advice which I’ve been trying to follow.

First – Each subsequent sharpening medium must entirely remove the scratches from the previous one. I knew this – but he pointed out that in my last post that I had a couple pictures that seemed to show that I wasn’t adhering to this rule. The summary here is that if the back isn’t polished perfectly flat your bevel won’t meet the back at a perfect angle which means it won’t be sharp.

Second – Each stone should create a wire edge. This is the proof you need that you’re making an exact edge between the back and the bevel. If you don’t follow the first rule you won’t ever get the wire.

This said, I revisited sharpening once again to see if I could prove that I was following these two rules. I picked another chisel and started out with the back on the 1k diamond stone. After about a minute, I felt like I had a consistent scratch pattern on the back from that stone…

It’s hard to see with pictures, but the front area does look consistent for about the first 1/4 of inch. I then moved to the medium Spyderco…

Hard to see here again – but Im starting to get a good finish here but it’s not quite done. You can see a slight haze in the top right corner as well as the bottom left of the polished area. Needs some more time on the stone…

Still on the medium in the picture above. Note the top left corner still isnt the same as the rest of the polished area. Still needs more work on the medium stone…

After a few more strokes I was able to get a fairly consistent polish across the edge of the back of the chisel. Now onto the superfine Spyderco….

This is where I started second guessing myself again. I expected the superfine stone to leave almost a mirror finish. I wasn’t quite getting that – at least it didn’t seem as clear to me that I was done as with the other stones. BUT – at this point I was able to feel the edge of the bevel and feel a wire edge. I still feel like perhaps the superfine stone isn’t 100% flat and that might be causing some inconsistencies in the polishing. At any rate – I tried to continue polishing on the superfine and couldn’t get any better than this so I left it there.

I then did the same process on the bevel using the Veritas MK2 honing guide. In the end the bevel looked like this…

It’s interesting to see what looks like a micro-bevel on the edge of the blade here. The reality it that entire top area is polished. Again – I made sure that I could feel a wire edge after each stone as I sharpened the bevel.

After passing the “fingernail catch test” I tried to pare some end grain…

This was a block of hard maple. I was pretty pleased with this. I also tried some cheap pine construction timber and I think the chisel did the best it could considering the wood…

I think the lesson here for me is that the visual inspection of the scratch pattern is a good test for me in the lower grits. Well – at least through the medium Spyderco. Once I got past there, I spent a lot of time sharpening on the superfine and just couldn’t visually tell anymore. I think from there on you need to just make sure you’re getting that wire edge.

A big thanks to Derek for all of his content, taking time to reply, and for reminding me of the major goals in sharpening!