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Just wondering.... In regards to LN chisels and plane blades, how many here hone them and what method do you use? Anyone here do more than honing to their LN stuff?
-John

Scary Sharp system

To clarify first, honing is any sort of fine sharpening, on a stone or whatever. Stropping is honing on leather.

All edged tools need to be re-ground or mega honed eventually to re-sharpen the back side. Adding a back bevel can minimize the amount of "grinding" necessary to do this. I personally don't do that (I'm lazy) but some info on it can be found here: http://www3.telus.net/BrentBeach/Sharpen/sharpen.html

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LN blades will be ready to go straight from the box. You can't say that about any other chisel or plane. Also if not mistreated it will be a long time before you need to re-grind a LN blade. I have 3 LN planes 2 I have had for 3 years and all I have had to do so far is the occasional fine grit only scary sharp touch up that is what is nice about LN tools. They grind and perfectly sharpen every tool before it goes in the box. And I don’t mean a cursory sharpening either. The job is done right. And all surfaces on their plans are also trued and polished before they go in the box. Zero work required to use. The way every quality tool manufacturer should do but doesn’t.

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Thats pretty much what I thought. I have a Norton 8000 that I'll use for these. Yes, out of the box LN tools are really some of the best around. I got a little scared when I read the post about grinding. Definitely don't want to grind these babies.
-John

John, I bought a LN 60 1/2 on saturday and used it to taper a rib assembly as soon as I got home. It cut beautifully and fast, although the sides were only .080" thick. This is my third LN plane . . . I also have the model maker's plane and a #5.

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At some point, you'll have to. That doesn't mean that you need to do it on a powered grinding wheel though. Read the link, eventually, the back side of the plane will get so dull that honing the bevel / flattening the back won't get you the sharpness you had a few months ago. At that point, you'll want to go back to your 400g or 800g stone/sandpaper or whatever to eat enough of the bevel so that there's no longer a dull back bevel.

Again, this can be avoided by honing in a back bevel per the web site's advice. I've never done it myself be he's got some fancy schmancy shavings there.

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http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Oh ok, I see. I wasn't quite sure what was meant by "grinding" but now I understand. I only asked the question in the first place because all LN products say in their small booklets that "slight additional honing may increase performance". I was well aware of how great they are out of the box. I was just curious mainly if any of you guys perform any "honing" prior to use. And if so, what is your method. From James' comment I gathered that he used his right out of the box. That's surely one of the extra perks of owning a LN tool.

I was thinking that if I touch the blades at all before use it will probably be on a very fine stone followed by some stropping with compound.
-John

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Well, I bought one of the little low angle block planes, and it worked great, right out of the box.

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Waddy

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You should not think about skipping honing. You need to re-hone and re-sharpen and so on a regular basis anyway.
And if the load is hard, quite very often. For example I resharpen the plane only after each 5 to 10 passes when leveling an ebony fingerboard...

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