Scary Sharp

I sharpened my smoothing plane iron today, using the Scary Sharp method with my beautiful new honing guide. I didn't make that name up -- if you Google it you'll find lots of links. It's a very simple, inexpensive, and fast way to sharpen chisels and plane irons, using "sandpaper" sheets attached to a hard, flat surface.

To get the sharpest possible edge, you need to polish a about a half inch wide strip on the back surface of the tool to a mirror finish . That takes a while, but you only have to do it once.

My plane is now sharper than it's ever been. I tried it out on a piece of pine, and produced uniform shavings so thin they were almost transparent. That's one of them in the blip photo.

Here's an action shot of me by Cynthia.