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And if so what do you think? I'm making a purchase from Lee Valley and might want to try a new guide out.

i find mine a bit too tiresome to get really setup right, which kind of defeats the purpose of an honing guide IMHO. if the two tightening knobs don´t get fastened _exactly_ the same, the blade skews a bit and you get a slightly skewed edge. this is a minor detail and the blade gets sharp anyway, but for the money and time investment i´d hope for something more satisfying.
it´s the only veritas product i´m not entirely satisfied with, but it does the job.

cheers,
miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I used one at a Lee Valley sharpening seminar earlier this year. Squaring the blade to the sharpening stone is much easier than with the Veritas Sharpening system guide that I have, and the thumb guides make it more comfortable to use if you are sharpening a bunch of blades in one session. Hope this helps!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Yep. Use one all the time. Whilst you do have to clamp the blade "level", it's not a big deal getting it right. Works great in most circumstances and is very good for putting accurate high angles on bevel up plane irons. It's not that great on very narrow or short blades. If you use water stones, make sure the the roller shaft is well greased or it rusts and wears.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Someone recently wrote on a ww'ing forum regarding the use of honing guides. His point was that people were using honing guides for the easy to sharpen blades but when it came to the difficult: knives, gouges, very thin chisels etc it was virtually all freehand.
He thought this was the wrong way around. It should be the 'difficult' blades that need guiding, not your average chisel or plane blade.
He has a point.

I was taught old school by old school craftsmen and I was pretty good at it. I now use the Veritas guide and get consistently good results all the time. What Trevor said about narrow blades. Not great.

Use mine for everything that will fit into it. If there are difficulties fitting narrow blades, I've obviously got it sorted out, as I don't have to think about it any more. Wouldn't want to be without it.


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What Tim said. It's an excellent jig. Or fixture. Or tool. Not really sure. But it works great for my .25" chisel up to my plane blades. I thought I was getting sharp blades by hand, but once I used the guide, my blades got much sharper. It was like night and day.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

You can achieve the same consistency with a $10 eclipse type blade guide, for everything except the shortest blades.

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

You can achieve the same consistency with the $0 honing guide, otherwise known as your hands.
I don't wish to start a honing/no honing guide argument but it is relatively easy to do without one.

Thanks for your replies. I've gone and ordered it.

I have been sharpening by hand for the last 20 years but have always been looking to increase my sharpening skills. I've done a bit of reading on the subject and even use powerful magnification to look at my sharpened tools and have determined that what I lack is consistency. So my goal is to use the guide to prep the surface with a consistent base to then hand sharpen till the surface needs to be prepped again.

FWIW, I find the Veritas mkII a bit fiddly/time consuming to set up, and prefer the Eclipse for plane blades/standard chisels, Kell no 2 for Japanese chisels/short blades.
I keep the Veritas, with the skew registration jig for skew chisels and blades.
I hate to admit it took all 3 jigs for me to get consistency for the primary bevels!
(I am getting better at free-handing the secondary bevels with practice)

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I had one for a number of year and got a good edge. I sold it when I moved to Brian Burns' "Double Bevel" system. I've gotten my best edges using it so far, but setting it all up is a bit cumbersome. The Eclipse style guide with a sharpening well (search the forum for "Lie-Nielsen sharpening" for a few links - the PDF is too large to attach) seems like the ideal setup to me. Fast, consistent, and easy to move.

I believe I bought yours, James. Works well for me. I haven't experimented with many sharpening systems but I find this one easy enough to use.....just wish I had time to use it more these days.

If I missed this, I'm sorry, but I didn't see anyone referring to the secondary bevel that you can put on with this jig. Just rotate a knob 180 deg. and you can make it sharper with that second bevel.
I do agree it's finicky and thin blades can get off track. Next time I buy one, it'll be one that clamps at the sides as someone else noted.
Also, you need some real estate for this thing. I've got a couple of oil stones on a triangular base and they're pretty thin. I'd prefer 3"X10" or so to take better advantage of it. I also use it with sandpaper doing the "scary sharp" type honing.
I don't dislike mine, but would not buy another even with the double bevel thing.

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Bob
From the oldest town in Texas.

I assume by "cumbersome " you mean the initial investment of time required to make the box to hold the stones ? Yes, this is time consuming, but once you have the stone surface heights dialled in correctly, the necessary MDF and laminate shims cut, and the simple jig made which automatically locates the clamping position of the blade, then using it is a breeze, IMO. Also , of course, you need to have all the grades of diamond stones and waterstones as well.

The only slightly iffy thing about the system is the advice to slightly hollow the finest grit waterstone in order to produce a camber on a plane iron. When cambering is required, I still prefer to do it freehand, on a perfectly flat stone.

I have to say that even though I am perfectly satisfied with the Burns jig, I was sorely tempted to buy the Dakota Honing Guide

The problem with almost all honing guides, apart from the Brian Burns system, and the Dakota guide, is that they register off the face of the stone itself, thereby greatly reducing the area of the stone available for sharpening, leading to uneven wear . The Burns and Dakota guides overcome this design flaw by registering off a secondary, user-supplied surface, thereby enabling use of the whole stone.

Yes, the initial setup of the stones is a bit involved. I still don't have them perfectly in plane with each other or the shims. It seems giving just one of the screws an 1/8th of a turn throws everything else off.

I was talking about the day to day setup. Pulling it down off the shelf, getting the guide, the angle guide, and all the shims. Then making sure your chisel or plane blade is perfectly square. The narrower the chisel, the more difficult it is. I tend to butt one of the shims up against the honing guide itself, and butt the blade against it, which squares things up.

I had one and it was great until I bought a set of Japanese chisels that didn't work with it. I sold it and learned to do everything freehand which was a chore but in the end well worth the effort IMO.

Been sharpening freehand for 40+ yrs and used to think guides were for those that didn't want to learn the art. I don't think that any more. Good freehand sharpening is hard to learn and it probably took me about 10 yrs to get good at it. It's a worthwhile skill to acquire but the bottom line is find something that works for you so you can get your tools sharp - that's all that is really important.

I still do most things freehand except plane blades and flat-bladed chisels; for those I use one of these Lie Nielson guides on some diamond stones: http://www.lie-nielsen.com/blade-sharpening/side-clamping-honing-guide/. I finish up by stropping on horsehide with some green compound.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

You can learn freehand sharpening in about 10 minutes. You should be able to become expert within a couple of weeks at the most. People really do love to complicate these things, doing figure of 8's and being told to use the whole stone. It's little wonder that people think it difficult.
The actual physical action or skill required isn't that great. It's nothing compared to the accuracy that is required to play a musical instrument. Banjo included.

It doesn't take long to learn how to scrape a piece of metal on a stone. To learn how to sharpen freehand and do it right - 10 min? No way and I'll be happy to sit down with an assortment of tools and your favorite apprentice and prove it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

10 minutes maximum. I know. I've taught beginners how to do it. I'm not saying they are experts but they quickly get the hang of the method.
What exactly is difficult about it? People sharpen much harder things like gouges, knives etc. freehand. Yet somehow a straight 2 inch wide Plane blade is 'difficult' and takes years of practice? To be honest your statement that it took you 10 years to get good at it suggests that you were doing it all wrong right from the start. For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would persist for anywhere near that length of time if it wasn't producing the results.
Nope.
You just need a method that is simple and eliminates some of the rounding over. Rounding under is fine.

When I free handed I use to have to spit on my arm to shave. With my new Veritas Mk II honing guide I can now do it dry. No more wasted spit.

Oh! Another one who was taught a wrong freehand method!
I must be one of those with an extremely high degree of natural talent. It must be the gene xuv128620 - otherwise known as the gene for freehand sharpening. I'm quite thankful for it. I was beginning to think that one had to spend at least eight years, meditating in absolute silence at the top of a mountain

Michael, I see your point. I was talking expert and speaking of anything with an edge, from chainsaws to gouges. No argument on plane blades, easy to teach in a short time.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"