A bit of a grind

Having reverted to Japanese chisels a while ago, I'm very happy to use them with a single bevel of 25deg (or 30deg) which I can quite easily maintain with the 3M lapping films from Workshop Heaven. It's just a question of working down through successively finer grades until I finish on the 1 micron paper, which is around 8000g or the .3 micron which is much, much finer...

The thought of trying to re-make the primary bevel on much thicker and wider plane blades makes me turn a little pale and queasy though. Yesterday morning, a quick examination of the blades on four of my planes revealed that a little re-dressing of the primary bevel was required as the secondary was becoming just a tad too wide to take a really keen edge.

When I first set up the 'shop, a 'must have' purchase was a Tormek wet grinder, a really superb piece of kit which is getting a bit tatty now, but none the less, is still good. It's seen so much work over the years that the wheel has now been reduced by a full 10mm in diameter, but yesterday it was still a breeze to re-grind four plane blades in around twenty minutes.

Had I been trying to do the same job on the 3M papers, I still wouldn't have finished the first one...