Repeatable Results With a Honing Guide
I don't use a honing guide for my sharpening routine. They don’t work so well on narrow oilstones, but many woodworkers do use honing guides on the wide 3” synthetic stones and diamond plates.
In the same way people use aids or jigs to accurately chop a mortice, saw guides for dovetails, routers to trim tenons to fit etc, a honing guide is just another example of something people use to help them get the results they want. This post is not to denigrate those that use a guide of any kind (we'll leave that to social media and the internet), instead I want to highlight a simple way of making sure you get consistent results if you choose to use a honing guide.
The method I’ve used and shared with others and applies to the No.36 Eclipse honing guide and it's many copies that are widely available now it's patent has expired. I’ve picked this honing guide as it is so accessible, versatile and easy to use. You can pick up one of these guides for as little as £5 from Screwfix (and it’s well reviewed), or an original version for less than £20 secondhand. Both work equally well. The method is very similar to one I’ve seen demonstrated by Lie-Nielsen, mine’s just more stripped back. They used to have a pdf on their website of something very similar to my approach. If they still do, feel free to put a link in the comments. As they now produce their own guide for £125 the old method they had might not be the same. Again, although the price of their guide means it’s less accessible, it’s still a fair price bearing in mind the quality of the product. Just check it will suit your tools as it's designed with Lie-Nielsen in mind.
In my view, honing guides are designed for that purpose, honing. They aren’t really a guide for grinding. I prefer to grind with an appropriate bench grinder. Honing uses light, bordering on firm pressure, not aggressive power. You still need to concentrate too, just because the tool is in a guide, it does’t give you permission to not give the task your full attention. The style of jig has a narrow wheel which is perfect if you want add camber to plane irons, and if reports are true you can hone a tighter camber than you can on the Lie-Nielsen version. When honing, your fingers must be adding consistent pressure to both sides of the cutting edge of the tool being honed, otherwise you get wonky results. You don’t have to be worried about a perfectly parallel secondary bevel, but the honed edge should not rock around.
When you take a look at the guide you’ll notice that on the side there are distances given from the jaws that dictate the honing angle of 30 degrees. Measuring this distance each time asks for trouble. Not only is it easy to slightly miss measure each time, it’s fiddly and the hand come unnecessarily close to sharp edges. You could use a protractor, but this really wastes valuable time as well. I guess you could use a sighting block with angles drawn onto it and kind of eyeball it, but this has the same issue as measuring, fiddly and unreliable.
My tip is take a suitable piece of material and make something that looks a bit like a bench hook. My example is neat and easy to store, I only use one stone for honing (shock horror, one stone and a grinder). Something about 17” long and 4” wide a 3/4” thick should do the job. Screw a lip underneath, just like you would with a bench hook. I recommend securing this lip in the vice when using it so everything is safe and secure. Screw a couple strips of wood to secure your stone to the base and prevent any slipping around when in use. Then fix two more strips of wood just in from the start of the board. Set one of these strips in the distance required stated on the guide to create a 30 degree angle for chisels (30mm on mine) and do the same for plane irons (38mm on mine). Now there are stops that allow you to get the honing angle without the faff. Add a C and a P so you don’t forget which one is “Chisel” and which one is “Plane”
So now I lightly secure the tool in the honing guide. I need to be able to shift the tool back and forward in the guide with careful guidance from my fingers, but it shouldn't be so loose the guide falls off.
I place the honing guide up to the board and slide the tool up to the stop, snug the thumbscrew up tighter by with finger pressure and finish with a final snug with a screwdriver. Now go ahead and hone! I keep this board handy if I need to work with someone who’s not confident with sharpening. Freehand is nice and it is my preferred method, but where’s the fun if you’re struggling? Sometimes we need a guide.
