Dukester wrote:

of the blades. I have Lee's book on sharpening, but can't find anything
on
how you grind the initial bevel? No way I'm trying the bench grinder

I tried doing it on my belt sander, but then I eventually realized I have a
bunch of screwed up plane irons in my inventory. Not screwed up beyond
salvaging, but screwed up enough that I'm back to doing it the old
fashioned way. The sander was not removing material evenly, even though I
did everything humanly possible to ensure that it should have every
opportunity to do so. Sigh.

So now I get the initial bevel the same way I do everything else. One
stroke at a time. It's extremely tedious, and takes forever, but there's
almost no opportunity to screw anything up at that speed.

I tried the stationary belt sander and did nothing but make a mess. I
got what I thought was a close bevel, but using the Veritas honing jig the
honed line always seems skewed - I could never get it perpendicular to the
blade
edges.... Finally I got close (after 3 hours), then tried planing the

It's tricky. It helps to check with a square against both sides of the iron
or chisel before setting the knob. Make sure both sides are square, then
it pretty much has to be really square. Then tighten the absolute hell out
of the knob. Then be very, very, very, very careful not to skew the
iron/chisel as you work. Even with the knob as tight as humanly possible,
it's still possible to knock it out of alignment with a well-placed fart.

edges...but my jointed edges do not make an invisible seam when glued
together...argh..saw it in half...start over.

Jointing with hand planes is kind of a bitch. Not a good way to start off
learning to use hand planes. In fact, I finally sucked it up and bought a
mechanical jointer to solve this particular problem. It turned out to be a
real bitch to get things to come out right with that too. Sigh. But if I
don't remove much material, I don't have much opportunity to turn perfectly
good wood into trapezoids.

tools, start with new planes and get new blades etc., and a Tormek or
Makita
wet grinder for sharpening? It seems like I've spending way more time

If I had $300 to blow without feeling any pain, I would buy one of these in
a heartbeat:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...35&cat=1,43072

just trying to fix and fiddle with stuff or tools that are already
crippled and attempt to learn repair, sharpening etc. than actually
working wood.

I'm kind of in the same boat, but I'm muddling through. My stuff works in
spite of the edges that aren't quite square.

http://users.adelphia.net/~silvan/sm...p-p1010025.jpg

Some of them are really markedly not quite square, like really not even
remotely close to square, like really skewed all to hell. But they still
make shavings. Planes with bungled irons like this are completely
worthless for jointing though.

Anyway, I feel your pain. The boat I'm in is a little different. I have
all these mirror polished edges, and I thought I was a world class
sharpener, plane slinger and tweaker and fettler extraordinaire, but then I
discovered that I had bungled damn near every plane I own without even
noticing. Some sharpener I am. I also discovered really pronounced
shiplapping on a project I thought I had done such a good job of planing.
Turns out I actually suck at this. Oh well, nobody else noticed, and that
project has been in use for over a year now without anyone seeing the
shiplapping until I specifically went looking for it.

So the lesson you can take from this is that screw-ups like us can still
make stuff out of wood anyway. Screw it. It's not like we're getting
paid, right? We still make better stuff, mungled and bungled and
beflungled though it may be, than the vast majority of tool-less wimp wussy
boys who don't know which end of a hammer to use to open a paint can.

Cheer up.

--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/