• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Working through the honing compounds

Reggieb

Reggieb

New Shoots
Joined
Apr 25, 2024
Messages
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Name
Rob
LOCATION
Worcestershire
Early on in my woodworking journey I bought a honing paddle which came with green honing compound. It's been used for the last stage on my plane iron and chisel sharpening process since. I've found it really good way of getting a polished finish after my final 1200 diamond plate.

A few months ago I started using jewelers rouge after the green compound when I wanted to go that little bit further. I fixed a leather offcut to the other side of the paddle and that works a treat.

I want to do some carving and have been buying some second hand gouges. Some have come sharpened to a mirror finish, which I've found difficult to match.

Fortunately I've now found a solution: I bought a pack of leather offcuts from eBay and then two new honing compounds. Yellow coarse, and pink which is a little between the green and rouge.

I then cut some channels in a wood offcut. Loading leather rectangle with the four compounds in four quadrants, resting it in the channels starting with the yellow. I can hone the gouges. Rotating the leather to a finer grade each time I work through to the rouge.

It's working a treat. I'm finally getting the gouges sharpened to the level I'm after.

I still need to go to the diamond plates if the gouge edge is damaged, but I'm hoping this hone regime will work for routine sharpening.

1000005361.jpg
 
In in-cannel gouge for carving? That's unorthodox. I tried but failed to find any use for them carving, but they're great for hogging off waste in awkward-to-get-to spots in ordinary joinery now and then.
 
That's an optical illusion - that's the back of the gouge.
 
I use autosol on a bit of mdf.
I have a leather strop and a small amount of compound but I can’t really see much return for the hassle.
I’m not into carving though.
 
The leather wheel(s) on a Tormek produce a mirror polish on the back of a carving gouge - Rob
 
Woodbloke said:
The leather wheel(s) on a Tormek produce a mirror polish on the back of a carving gouge - Rob
Click to expand...
But then I'd have to buy a Tormak! Though yes, I have heard they are very good.
 
Lurker said:
I use autosol on a bit of mdf.
I have a leather strop and a small amount of compound but I can’t really see much return for the hassle.
I’m not into carving though.
Click to expand...
Hassle perhaps, but I must admit to quite enjoying sharpening. Good job though as I prefer working with hand tools and I've learnt the key to doing that satisfactorily is sharpening.
 
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