Grinding Hand Plane Blades with Rob Cosman
Grinding Hand Plane Blades with Rob Cosman
Walks you through the process of grinding or reestablishing primary bevels on plane blades. Using the new diamond coated solid steel 8″ wheel. This moves metal fast and amazingly cool, blade gets luke warm at most.
Tool rest https://robcosman.com/collections/sharpening/products/wolverine-grinding-jig
CBN Grinding wheel https://robcosman.com/collections/sharpening/products/rob-cosmans-cbn-grinding-wheel
IBC blades https://robcosman.com/collections/planes/products/ibc-replacement-blade-set-2-3-8-inch
What if corner of the chip breaker was damaged? Is that something that can be fixed? I’m asking for a friend.. 😉
Rob, every time you open your mouth, I learn. Thanks for all you do!
Those are the CBN wheels. I have been using them & nothing else compares with them. You can check them out at CBN.com. The tool rest set up is the Wolverine grinding system, developed for woodturning tool sharpening. They have been around for many years. It has all kinds of attachments for sharpening. This system will work on almost every kind of grinder. You do not need a variable speed, as this system is used with the slow grinders. Thanks for the sharpening demo Rob.
Did you consider polishing the Tool Rest? I hadn’t seen this video and I wouldn’t be surprised if wax or the surface being treated to help reduce friction; in turn controlling heat with the back and forth movement on this size stone. Love to hear your thoughts. I’m a big fan. 🪚🪑
one other thing, CBN wheels also have flat sides (or can be purchased with flat sides) that can be used for grinding. whilst the wheel has a curve, there are uses for the flat sides.
If you were to buy only one grit CBN wheel, what would it be? Should it be coarse, like 80g or better in the middle around 120g? Use is mostly for regrinding plan and chisel primary bevels.
Thanks for the video. I’ll be heading down to my local store to pick up the tool rest and the diamond wheel. I’ve been looking for the best system for sharpening chisels and plane irons. I have water stones up to 8000 grit, but can also use wet or dry sandpaper. Question, do I need to use a honing jig? The cheap ones look like trouble, the Lie Nielsen look overpriced. The original Veritas looks okay, but it seems like narrower tools would be difficult to keep square.
Regarding the steel of the ibc blade being harder, does that contribute to the sharpness you are able to obtain ? I have never been able to get my wood river blades to cut as easily as yours seem. This is mainly apparent on the shooting board. Right now I sharpen to 8000 on a diamond stone then strop. Should I invest in blades or sharpening stones or just work on my technique ? Sorry for the long question.
Are the blades on your mostly used hand planes all the same size and interchangeable ?
Just bought the 6 in one of these and can add how great they are. Like mentioned, no over heating and quick cutting. I have some very thin and narrow chisels that I had to hand sharpen on stones because of the overheating and these wheels do them perfectly
those are CBN wheels right (not diamond but cubic boron nitride)? I have a set, love them. I use a "slow" grinder specific for tool steel as well. CBN wheels run much cooler, but it is still possible to burn a blade. Another benefit, no wheel grit dust flying all over the place.
Now i was actualy thinking of bying my self those wheels . But was wondering witch to buy 6” or 8” the grits . Oh and should i change my grinder it has only one speed and its fast ? Thx for clearing this up for me 😉👍🏼🌈🇨🇦
It should be noted that CBN wheels are not for general grinding. Soft steels like low carbon, aluminum, brass can load up the wheels.Occasional use may be OK if followed by grinding with harder steels to clean them out.
Do you follow the exact procedure with chisels? Thanks
Great video Rob, thank you….
Any concern about hollow grinding the blade? Have those wheels and they were one of my best investments in my shop.
cubic boron nitride is not diamond, even if it looks as it were 🙂
At what point do you have to grind away the "ruler trick" back bevel, and what do you do to avoid the problems with seating the cap iron against the back bevel from the ruler?
HI rob thanks for that video on sharping blades. cool so helpful to me and my son. he also thinks ur so cool with ur dovetail joints and went out and brought a set for himself. thank u again. we got all the information from u by just sitting at home. now its up to us to practise.
Rob what grit is that wheel?
The tool rest is THE thing to have. I like to polish it up to 600 grit and then apply a rust inhibitor / lubricant. G 96 gun cleaner is something I’ve used for decades. I don’t yet own the diamond wheel but I want one. One other plus to these wheels is that they stay flat across the face of the wheel.
Rob — Great information and demonstration! I’ll second your recommendation of the Wolverine platform. They are heavy duty and rock solid. For the woodturners in your audience, who will be using their grinder a lot more frequently than the typical hand tool woodworker, another platform worthy of consideration is the Robo Rest, produced by American woodturner, Reed Gray (a/k/a Robo Hippy). The Robo Rest is not quite as stout as the Wolverine platform, but it is certainly more than strong enough. The advantage of the Robo Rest is the ability to quickly change bevel angles when sharpening tools that have different bevels. Let’s say you’re sharpening your skew, with an included angle of 35 degrees and then want to sharpen a scraper with a bevel angle of 65 degrees. Or, maybe its a negative rake scraper with a bottom angle of 75 degrees and a top angle of 10 degrees. Whatever. With the Robo Rest, you can quickly change the angle of the platform from one angle to the next. It may not be exactly 35 degrees. It might be 36.25 degrees. (That would depend on how precise you were when the Robo Rest was installed.) But, what’s important is that the angle will be exactly the same every time. That makes retouching a tool very quick and easy. You can learn more about the Robo Rest here: https://www.robohippy.net/store
Note: I have no affiliation with Reed. I’ve just met him a few times at shows. Good guy and good product. His Robo Rest isn’t better than the Wolverine platform. It just may be a better option for SOME of us.
How long do those wheels last?
Oh man, and I just spent two hours last night putting an edge on an old plane just using my stone… Now my stone is not flat. Wish I would have seen this first. Good thing is I have 4 more planes to recondition, So I will get a grinder and this wheel.
Question about the CBN wheel, what is the dimensions of the wheel you sell? I looked in the description and couldn’t find it?
Good video, learn a lot from you Rob, thanks.
FWIW CBN is not diamond, it’s supposed to be close and it’s man made/synthetic.
This looks like it can be a fantastic method for the amount of sharpening Rob requires in his business but at a fairly high cost for a more moderate home shop user as myself. For “regrinding” my plane knives and chisels I utilize my Lie-Nielsen honing guide, a Wood River granite surface plate and 320 or medium grit sandpaper. I follow that with my Trend diamond whetstone on the 300 then the 1000 side. Back to the granite surface plate with 2000 grit wet/dry sandpaper followed by finish honing with some green chrome oxide micro fine honing compound upon a leather strop. The Lie-Nielsen guide although pricey is extremely high in quality but is durable and maintains an easy to set angle while holding the iron or chisel perfectly square throughout the process. It all stores minimally in a drawer or on a shelf which is nice in my small shop.