New to woodworking and very new to hand tools, I have a few new tools including 3 new veritas saws(carcass,dovetail,tenening) 2 new planes(#5 LA jackplane, and LA Block plane), and a set of Veritas bench chisels. I went with PM-v11 on planes and chisels. Is there anything That I should be doing before putting these tools to work such as sharpening my steal or setting the saw? All I have found on the subject is how to do these things but is it recommended before starting or once they are dull?
The plane blades and chisels are normally honed first, but they should be already sharpened decently from the factory. Should only need a higher grit stone to start with.
Saws will be ready to go out of the box, planes and chisels should be honed before use. As jmartel said, a high grit stone and/or strop is probably all that's needed to get started. If you keep them sharp with periodic touch-ups and don't get nicks, then that will be enough for quite a bit of use.
My planes and chisels rarely hit anything other than my finest stone (a Super-Fine EZ Lap Diamond Plate) and a strop.
The Duosharp extra-fine is very similar in grit to my EZ Lap, so will be fine. I'd just do a few passes on that, check to make sure that everything is looking good and then proceed up to a higher grit to finish. I don't consider the 1200 grit diamond plates to be quite fine enough for a truly sharp edge. I like to follow up with a strop, others use diamond film or a very high grit waterstone. All work just fine.
The 0.3 micron film will likely do better than the strop. Be careful not to cut into it, though. I stuck mine to MDF but wish I had gone with float glass or granite.
I use duosharps up to 25um, then use mylar film in 30, 12, 3, and 0.3um using microbevels to reduce time. Here's a description. The film on glass is flatter than the stones and doesn't need dressed/flattened. I go this fine for a smoothing plane blade. Blades for other uses don't need quite the polish. A jack plane blade could probable stop at 25um (used for rough jack plane work).
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