The Stone That Brought My Dull Chisels Back

For 34 years I sharpened chisels the way a job site teaches you to sharpen them, which is to say badly and in a hurry. A few passes on whatever stone was rolling around in the truck, a wipe on the leg of my jeans, back to work. It cut. It also crushed the wood at the end of every hinge mortise, and I told myself that was the wood's fault.

When I retired four years ago I decided to do it properly. I bought a new set of bevel edge chisels, six of them, 6 mm up through 26 mm, and I sat down at my own bench with a worn out hardware store stone and a sheet of wet sandpaper on a plate of glass. An hour later the backs were still dished and the edges were worse than when I started. I had taken a brand new tool and made it duller. That is a humbling afternoon for a man who spent thirty-four years cutting joints for a living.

So the next week I bought a Norton combination oil stone. The 8 by 2 by 1 inch bench stone, corundum, a coarse 100 grit side for bringing an edge back and a fine side for finishing it. I bought a simple side clamp honing guide at the same time, and a leather strop. That was the winter after I retired, three years ago. It is still the only stone in my shop and I have not once wished I had bought something else.

The first session took about an hour. Flatten the back, work the edge, then hone at 30 degrees on the 25 degree bevel the chisels came ground at. The guide holds the angle so your wrist cannot wander, which was always my problem freehand. By the end of that hour I had a 12 mm chisel that would take the hair off my forearm. I had never owned a chisel that did that, in 34 years of buying them.

The stone did not make me a better woodworker. It made my chisels do what the catalog said they would do, and that turned out to be most of the difference. Everything else in the shop got a little easier after that.

An hour on the Norton and a 12 mm chisel would take the hair off my forearm. I had never owned a chisel that did that.

Since then every project in this shop has started at that stone. The cherry bookcase two winters ago, the walnut dining table I built for Marit last winter, the shaker style end tables I am finishing now. Chisels and plane irons both, and no edge goes to the wood before it has been on the fine side. I check the stone for flatness once in a while against a straightedge, and I keep it oiled with a light honing oil. Never water. Water on an oil stone is a fine way to spend money twice.

The coarse side earns its keep more than you would expect. Last fall I caught the edge of a 20 mm chisel on the corner of a machine table and took a nick out of it you could see from across the room. I did not throw it out and I did not order a replacement. Ten minutes on the 100 grit side, a few passes on the fine side, back in the drawer. A chipped edge is not a ruined tool. It is half an hour of your evening.

What it will not do is worth saying plainly. It will not flatten a back that is badly out of true in a couple of minutes. It will not undo 20 years of sharpening freehand at whatever angle felt right. And it is a bench stone, 1.5 pounds of it, so it lives on the bench and stays there. You are not carrying it in a tool bag and you should not try.

I have used diamond plates at a woodworking class and they cut fast, no argument from me. But that is a different purchase and a different feel, and I learned to sharpen on oil. All I will say is that the Norton has not dished enough in three years to bother me, and I check it. If you already own a diamond plate and you get along with it, keep it. Sharpening is not a religion.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy the stone before you buy the chisels, because a good chisel on a bad stone is just an expensive chisel. Get a honing guide, even a cheap one, and hold 30 degrees until it feels like nothing. Practice on the beat up hardware store chisels in the bottom of the drawer before you touch a new one, and do not expect the first session to be quick. Mine was an hour and I was tired at the end of it. Keep a light oil on the stone, keep it flat, and wipe it down when you are done. That is the whole method. It has held up for three years in an unheated garage outside Boise, and it will hold up for you.