# any ideas on how to sharpen 20 inch planer knives



## Guss (Sep 19, 2011)

hi i was just wondering if any one had any ides for how to touch sharpen my 20 inch knives i live 2 hours from the nearest sharpening place and if i drop the knives of when they come pick stuff up here im out over a month any ideas or jigs would be appreciated thanks


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## patron (Apr 2, 2009)

straight board
kerf's at the angle you want them
(so the knife edge is co-planer
straight across)
about half the width of the knives
up into the board the thickness 
of the knives
(wider spacing between kerf's is better
for stability)

clamp to bench upside down
run stones back and forth
then remove any burs honing the flat
(watch your hands)

here is the basic idea
this is a holder that came with my 10" planer
but a board with groves will work just as well


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## Tennessee (Jul 8, 2011)

patron is pretty close to what I thought up, mine taken from leveling and edging guitar frets.

I would think seriously about one of those Wood river granite stones you can get from Woodcraft.

With that on the bench, you can build out of wood a unit that is similar to a guitar fret edger. A 1 1/2" X 1 1/2" board, 20 inches long, with a cut just parallel to one corner, lengthwise, at the angle of the sharpened edge of the blade. Make it deep enough to just get the blade in and leave the sharpened edge stick out. With the blade inserted, the cutting edge should be parallel to one side of the long board. I will assume you have some kind of cutout in the blades for holddowns, so you need to add a tightening fixture to the board of some sort.

When done, you should have the edge of the blade sticking out of the square long board, parallel to the granite block when you lay it down flat with the edge down.
Cover half of the granite block with 220 grit, glued down, and run the blade across the edge of the paper so the blade is on the paper, the board is on the granite, back and forth covering the whole blade as best as you can. Remove the blade from the wood and reverse it on the paper, removing any backside burrs.

I have a unit similar to this that has a file inserted at the right angle instead of a blade, that I run across the edge of a fretboard that cleans off fret edges and tapers them nicely.


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## PurpLev (May 30, 2008)

here you go:



just make if your needed length to suit your knives

(there are a few of those here on LJ and on the web…)


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

You can file them in place using diamond hones. You won't
get nicks out this way. For that you have to grind. You
can file them in place with a mill file but it's a bit of work
to then go hone them as sharp as a grind on a proper
knife grinder.

There are a lot of jigs for this sort of thing in the old FWW
magazines, before all the fancy woodworking stuff stared
coming out in the 1980s.


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## Tennessee (Jul 8, 2011)

Purplev, is that stair rail? Cool idea!


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