When I took up woodworking and bought some chisels a while back, I got slightly disappointed. The chisels were OK, but not as sharp as I would have liked. I have three vintage Stanley planes. Two of them were really sharp upon arriving, but they had also become duller over time. So it was time to get into sharpening
After some investigation I bought diamond plates as they were an easy start. I also bought a jig to hold chisels and plane blades.
The diamond plates are fast to set up. The five plates go from 400 grit to 2500 grit. This made my tools a lot sharper, but I ran into some problems
The jig was also quite cheap. You clamp on the plane blades or chisels from the side. A small wheel underneath makes it easy to roll back and forth over the diamond plates. But the wheel is too narrow, so it is easy to make an uneven pressure on the blade. In addition, it didn’t hold the blade square. I tried to adjust this many times, but the blade was always sharpened with a skew which was not OK. So therefore I bought a new, and better one from hoggjern.no (my favorite woodworking shop). This one is from Narex.
This jig is better for two reasons. The first reason is that the wheel is much wider, which makes it easier not to get more pressure to one side
It is quite a difference compared to the old one. The second reason is that it is easy to hold it square.
The guides makes it quite easy to adjust by sight only, but you can also check it with a square. I did, however, mess this up at first. If the two tightening screws are uneven (lower on one side), you end up sharpening more to one side. This is easy to avoid as soon as you are aware of it, though. The result was much better.
My diamond plates were cheap, and I can see signs of wear already. I therefore wanted to try another option. Instead of buying better diamond plates, I wanted to try wet stones.
I got two stones with different grits on each side. I got 400, 1000, 3000 and 8000 grit sides.
They need to be soaked for at least 10-15 minutes before use, according to the manufacturer, but I see YouTubers mentioning hours, so they either have to be constantly in water, or you need to plan ahead. It is also easier to get water around your workbench with this, but they were easy to use.
After sharpening, with diamond plates or wet stones, you should use a leather strop for the finish. I have leather on a piece of wood and use Dialux sharpening paste on it before doing the finish by hand.
I can shave my arm with the blades after this, and the chisels are a joy to use.
(It is not cracks to the side of the edge, but wood dust after testing).
So what do I prefer, diamond plates or wet stones? It is an unfair comparison since I had cheap plates, and better stones, but if we try to look beyond that, I would say I would like to have both. The plates are instantly ready and less messy on the workbench, but if I plan ahead to sharpen I would prefer the wet stones. So I will keep both, and I might invest in better plates eventually.
The plates can rust if not dried quickly, so I built a rack for them where I place them after a quick wipe.
The wet stones can last a very long time, but might need to be flattened from time to time. The kit I bought had a another stone to flatten the wet stones, so I should be all good.
My grandfather, who made a lot of furniture, never used dull tools, and I will try to keep my own tools sharp too!
