Help with sharpning chisels

No. You don’t need it but it makes polishing the steel adjacent
to the edge easier for people who are learning.

I usually hollow grind chisels and plane irons and then hone
as with a flat grind with the high spots touching the stone.

I freehand it. I have jigs but learned to do it without.

Depending on my mood I might lean-in a bit and add a tiny
micro-bevel. The effect is of polishing the whole bevel
but there appears to be a rounding at the edge where
the polish is perfect and further back it is not perfect.

I might ask (in order to better advise you) what sharpening
gear do you have?

Hi Bryon, welcome to the world of sharpening.

Do you need a micro bevel? In short, no. The micro bevel is mainly used for ease of sharpening and polishing. Some use micro bevels to manipulate the effective angle such as with plane blades. Some chisels, Japanese, are recommended to be sharpened without one.

The bottom line is the chisel with a micro bevel is easier to hone as the surface area required for honing is greatly reduced with the micro bevel. That equates to less time honing and less materials expended getting there.

Good Luck!

-- Mike

It all depends on your ability to hold the chisel at the proper angle. Many woodworkers are able to do that successfully.

However, I am not one of them so I bought a Veritas MK.II and use it with the Crazy Sharp system.

-- Joe

Some of the steels used these days in cutting tools are pretty darn hard and a microbevel can be a real time saver when honing. The downside, of course, is that this microbevel will grow in size with each successive honing and you will either have to choke down the extra honing time or re-establish the primary bevel and start again. It’s up to you how frequently you do so.

-- Dwight - "Free legal advice available - contact Dewey, Cheetam & Howe""

MonteCristo’s downside of eventually having to re-do the primary bevel, is why I don’t use a microbevel. I don’t have a bench grinder, so the thought of doing a primary bevel by hand is not very appealing. Instead, I sharpen/hone frequently with fast cutting stones and finish with a strop.

Thank you for all the help I knew that I would get good sound infomation.

-- God is great beer is good and people are crazy