No more dull tools!

[Jim Ball]

I've had a Tormek-7 system for several years, but I became intrigued by things I read here about Brian Burns system. After getting the contact info for Brian a few months ago from another thread, I purchased Brian's system. I put off buying the stones until this month and today I finished building the stone box & shims. The stones are a Dia-Sharp coarse and a Takenoko 8000 grit waterstone.



I haven't tried it yet. I want to put a couple of coats of varnish on everything to make it water resistant. The hand plane in the photo is an El-Cheapo from Harbor Freight. I've never been able to put a really decent edge on it. I'll use it for my first attempt. :D

[Daniel P]

Congratulations - You'll never look back.

While I use a different method, what counts is having a method and approach that is consistent and allows you to refine the practice the process of getting razor sharp edges. The Brian Burns system is tried and true, your tools will perform like never before.

ps - lap the bottom of the plane sole if you haven't already, and check the frog for burrs. With a quick once over it should work well.

[John Parchem]

It is going to take a bit of work to remove the hollow grind edges from your tools. I went from a tormek to a system much like the one shown in the pictures, it took all day to flatten the edges on my chisels and blades. But I do like the kind of edge you get with a system like Brian's.

[Jim Ball]

Just an update:

I've been using this setup to resharpen my chisels as needed that were previously sharpened on my Tormek sharpener. The diamond stone removes the hollow-ground edge quickly & with little effort. The 8000 grit Japanese stone puts the secondary bevel on very quickly also. Brian Burns remarks in the video that the Japanese stone is very easy to gouge with tool edges. I found this out the hard way! Some effort with the Nagura stone has removed most of it, and the remaining mark has no effect on the sharpening.

A couple of points not made clear or emphasized enough, IMHO, in the book and video:

1. Make certain that the diamond stone and MDF angle blocks are perfectly parallel to each other left to right and front to back, and that the diamond stone and waterstone are also perfectly parallel & the waterstone face is about 0.060" below the diamond stone.

2. After setting blade depth in the tool holder using the jig, use a small machinist's square to make certain the blade is exactly 90 degrees to the front edge of the tool holder.

The end result is an edge that can only be described as scary sharp! :D

I finally resharpened the blade to my Veritas low-angle block plane. I was surprised at the difference! I was also surprised to discover some uneven grinding on the Veritas blade - especially along a half inch wide spot on the RH edge. There's still about 1/4" of the bad spot remaining, but my shoulders gave out before I had it all removed. The blade was also not perfectly flat.