It is always fun around here when an idea becomes reality. Later this week our new honing guide will be in stock. Although I designed this tool with the specific needs of sharpening our HP6 profiled irons in mind, it will work on just about every tool in your shop. Here’s a peek of the tool in action…
As you can see, the rear roller is flat. We have had several inquiries regarding a roller that is crowned to facilitate relieving the corners of wide plane irons. Although this sounds like a good idea, the math makes no practical sense. For example, if one wants to relieve the corners of a plane iron by .002″-.003″, the crown in the honing guide roller would be around .001″. This is just not a practical idea (in our opinion) when the same results can be achieved with finger pressure applied to each corner during honing. If a more severe crown is required, a barrel shaped roller might make sense, and if you have that need, you can easily remove the stock roller and insert a shop made roller (wood will work) for your needs.
Lastly, it is not clear in this clip but the clamping bridle pivots and will accommodate aggressively tapered tools–the most common of which are Japanese chisels.
Thanks for watching.
-John
After having used this tool with ‘standard’ bevel edged chisels, I can confirm that it’s a clever device. However, the little sliding gizmo to set the 90° angle needs to be thicker. It tends to ride under the edge of chisels that have beveled edges, thereby introducing substantial inaccuracy. As far as I can tell, just doubling the thickness would solve the problem and make the device more easily usable.
You can effectively thicken the squaring rail two ways. You could remove the rubber pad. Or, you could add a small wooden extension to the top using a pocket rule to align both reference faces flush. Either case, thanks for the feedback and I will take another look at this on the next mfg. cycle.
-John