How To Set Up A Japanese Plane, 16 micron Shavings! 

I've heard these sorts of arguments before and I used to clean my stones and blades while moving up the grits. I stopped doing it because of laziness and to be honest I have never noticed a difference when using Japanese style or Sharpton stones. These stones tend to use materials that are equal to or get harder as the grit goes up, so any larger material carried over would be quickly pulverized by the harder and finer stones. It could be that other stone types or sand papers are based on partial size only and don't necessarily increase in hardness at the grit increases. In that case if larger partials get transferred to the higher grits they would not really get ground down but could continue to cut the blade and stone at the lower grit (just speculation). I would argue that the more convenient sharpening is the more you do it, and a 30k edge doesn't last long. If you have free time to walk to your sink with your tools and sharpening station, then set your station up and wash each stone between uses good for you.

He does what he finds works for him

@@travsb1984 agreed. I don't go as high as 30K, my finest stone is 12K, and for just that one stone, I always make sure things are cleaned before hitting it for final polish. The lower grades ... meh. It's fine. But a little care with the grind residue doesn't hurt... Pretty messy stuff.

Mindblowing.

Update, 20 min later and after switching to my biggest wood mallet the blade finally popped loose!

scrapeception ...

LOL!

no. the surface is small enough that it can just be flat.

Just don't ever drop the sucker.

Same here .. definetly three thumbs up. Greets from Berlin.

You stone that whole side as well as the actual edge which eventually flattens it out, it's on an incline towards the edge so the hollow recedes as you flatten it

the black/grey stuff is essentially a fine grit polishing compound, you can just wash the block after. but leave it on while sharpening it reduces wear on the stone and makes the results better for your edge

@@TheFlyJunky you dont know what you talking about, the slurry from the coarse stones dont polish, it will ruin a high grit edge

@@simonvolsmann It's possible that he meant: leave the slurry on the stone while you're sharpening ON THAT STONE (without any kind of statement about what to do when switching between stones).

I wondered the same thing; when going from course grit to a fine grit I always clean the item I’m working on before going to the finer grit. In this case the diamond plate, used to flatten the honing and polishing stones, should be cleaned prior to each transition. I have a 4 sided leather strop coated with 2, 1, .5 and .25 micron diamond spray. I clean the surface of the counter and the blade I’m stropping after each phase to avoid cross contamination; otherwise you lose the effectiveness of the higher grits. Hopefully he is cleaning but it’s been edited out for brevity.

Most likely not since they mostly work in soft wood. I bet you could find some though

Maybe that will get you 5 micron shavings :-)

Yup I agree, during my materials science degree, we used to polish metal samples, to 1 micron finishes. If you lost control of the sample (fingers get pretty numb and wet..) it could fall into the basin surrounding the polishing wheel and get contaminated with the slurry from the previous grits and scratch up. Would have to start the whole process again to get that perfect mirror finish for the microscope.. Though that's really nitpicking. 16 micron shavings are insane!!!

He was showing scratches after 30k stone it could very well be from lower grit contamination.... who am I to talk though, my planing shavings resemble Tom the chainsaw carvers floor

Totally.. Leaving dirty polishing stones. A sepuku is in order..

You guys sound like the real deal when it comes to stones. I know there are several opinions about which stones to sharpen with. What do you guys recommend? What's a seppuku?

Kory Coster at that point it's really just sharpening for the heck of it. From personal experience i can tell you, there is absolutely no noticeable difference between 12k and 30k. Heck, even 3k finished with a strop and metal polish is very close to 12k.

For real I go to 8 k then I give up

@@Erowens98 not if your trying to get competition grade shavings lol.

@@Erowens98 there is a difference it just doesn't matter for woodworking. However, it does matter for competitions and to Japanese craftsmen who use the finish the plane leaves.

when you mix the slurry from the waterstones

people get a little OCD with sharpening.. I wouldn't worry a whole lot about it.. he's already going much higher then what is needed.

Wow, good to know. I was automatically cleaning mine off just because I didn't like the slurry on them, guess I was doing something right.

Really with all the knowledge and training I found that very surprising he used the atoma dia plate on all of them with out rinsing! Theres tadition and then there's "monkey see, monkey do!" Just because he did it, but don't do that! But good tips and review overall all young grasshoppers!

Good thought though. I can tell when I've sanded a board enough by the sound the sandpaper makes. At the beginning it makes a crisper hissing sound that gets more muffled as the sandpaper dulls.

Most Japanese planes come at a 40 degree angle - made for working softwoods - you can get some at 45 for hardwoods ( somewhat generic) but if you have especially hard or difficult grain you need to have a custom dai made at a steeper angle ( I have seen some up around 57 - 60 for curly grain etc. ...) the blade itself is still fine just needs ( as you say ) a different presentation angle...

I hadn't heard of Mujingfang before. I do see several similarities to the HNT Gordon planes I reach for when the going gets tough