Sharpening Station

I have really been getting into hand tools for the last year or so and have picked up several planes along the way. I have not tuned up the Stanley fore plane and Record jointer plane as I had no handy way to flatten the soles. For the smaller planes, I’ve used a piece of float glass, but it was not long enough to do the job on the longer ones.

I picked up a piece of granite 9” by 42” AT A LOCAL countertop fabricator. The price was no too bad as I had no preference in color and was willing to wait a few weeks. This enabled them to make it when they had the right size leftover from another job.

I first used two long pieces of self adhesive 80 and 220 grit paper to flatten the sole. The Stanley was not too close to begin with, so I got a good workout getting it flat. The Record jointer was pretty close and only needed a few minutes with both grits to get it flat. I them used repositional adhesive to adhere several grits from 80 through 2000 for blade sharpening.

Here is the setup and the two planes I tuned up today. One of these days I would like to step up to some ceramic or diamond stones, but for now I’ll stick with sandpaper.

-- She asked me, "Who are you going to please with that?" I said, "Me."