 Hey everybody, welcome to this video. My name is Harold Kikimble and I am going to show you today how to put a super sharp edge on a super-dult chisel in no time flat without a lot of fuss and without buying a lot of expensive equipment. This is an idea, this idea I'm going to show you is an idea I came up with 25 years ago when I was a remodeling contractor and I have used my chisels back in those days. I still do and but it's okay. If you know how to get a super sharp edge on a super-dult chisel in no time flat like I'm going to show you here, it's no big deal if you put a nick in your chisel or it gets dull if you hit a nail, whatever. This is the chisel that we're going to use to, or I'm going to use to demonstrate how this idea works. I bought this for 75 cents at a yard sale. It is dull, it is nicked, it is caked with the tire or a caulk or some substance and it's going to be a factory sharp here in a matter of a minute or two using this technique that I'm going to show you. The technique involves a belt sander and this little jig that you see right here. This is the jig I made 25 years ago and I've used it for 25 years. I've used it hundreds of times to not only put a sharp edge on chisels but on my block plane blades too. Let's, let me just show you this, how this works. You're going to like this especially if you work in the trades and you're hard on your chisels. You're going to like this. You're going to like it. Before I begin with the demonstration, I want to take a moment and show you the jig that I developed. This on the left here, this dirty, worn jig that you see is the original. It is very simple, just a block of wood, as wood skis on the bottom. It has a metal plate here that with a couple of wing nuts, the chisel goes in here as I'll show you and the wing nuts tighten down and holds it in place. This original jig has a 32 degree angle which is good, adequate for chisels and block plane blades. But it came to the determination that a 25 or 26 degree angle which you can see here is better. So this is the new improved chisel sharpening jig and this is made out of oak. Obviously, I've got oak skis, same principle as far as the hold down clamp here. This is an example of the chisel sharpening jig that I sell. If you want one already made, you can buy one. If you want to make your own, I sell specifications, a PDF download that give you the specifications and some tips and how to and some photos on making this little jig. Or if you're confident with your abilities to just look at something and make it, a lot of people are, that's fine. Go ahead, make one of these based on what I'm showing you here and you'll be all set. Alright, so what I've done first of all, and what you would want to do is make sure you scrape off and I've actually already done it here, whether utility knife, all that dried on, caked on stuff if you have any like that. And then very simply and quickly you want to lay the flat here, flat of your chisel on a piece of fine grip paper. This is 180 and just do that, just flatten it like I have just done. Okay, that is before you put it in the jig. Okay, so here I'm showing the chisel in the jig. The chisel, you want to put it in the jig so that when you tighten it down and it is tightened down here, the chisel is laying flat as you can see here. And the front of the jig is up. See how the front is not touching? The front of the jig is not touching down. The chisel is touching first. And there's a penny's worth of space under there. Yeah, that's how you just set that. You want this thing. The jig in the back is down, setting flat back here. Put in the front, it rides up ever so slightly. You know, the thickness of a penny or so. You can see that pretty simple. This is not a real precise thing. It's not like you got to have it exactly the thickness of a penny. It's not not real precise. It's going to work out great. Okay, the belt sander right here. This is my old belt sander. This is what I use for sharpening the chisels. This is all I use it for. I no longer use this for wood. I have a new belt sander. And this is just for sharpening chisels. The bag is off. The old wood residue that was in here from years past is out of there. This belt sander is now safe to use for grinding metal. I did use this belt sander back when I used it for wood. I used it also to sharpen chisels, but I took the bag off. When I sharpened the chisels, I did it outside so that and I left the sander outside after sharpening. And I also had a spray bottle that if I saw some smoke start to smolder in there, I would pull the trigger and spray into the mechanism. And that's solved any fire problems. But it's best, far, best, far better to have a dedicated old junk sander for the purpose of only doing this. You're safer that way. That's what I recommend. And that's very important. Very important. This is the belt that goes on this belt sander to sharpen that chisel. This belt is a this is a three by 21 belt sander, three inch by 21 belt. This was a three inch by 21. I laid a straight edge on it and I cut it right down the center. Okay, that makes an inch and a half by 21, which fits perfectly on this belt sander. And being only an inch and a half wide, it I have to take a hammer and actually hit this right here for that to let me tighten up. There we go. See, you don't you don't need a good sander for this. You just you just need one that'll spin. Let's just give it a spin here. Oh, yeah. Now, so you've probably got the concept by now these skis on the jig straddle that belt, that inch and a half wide belt like so. And and I'll just be able to move this over that and get that sharpened. Now, I want to say that an aluminum oxide belt, which is what this was. This was a 150 grit aluminum oxide. These can be used to sharpen chisels, but and I've used them for years, but they wear down pretty quick. These blue belts right here, this is a 120 grit Norton, they call it a blue fire. These I think are made for metal. And although I'd use this particular belt for wood, I have you this one here is a brand new one that I'm going to use for this chisel. And these do last a lot longer for sharpening. So I have this 120 grit belt in here now 120 grit is good for your initial sharpening, shaping and sharpening. And then I'll show you where we go from there. Okay, I'm all set up. I think this will be a good view. And I'm going to I'm working this hand here is working the on and off. And then with this hand, I'll just just hold this down on the top of the sander and I'll work it back and forth. And we'll I'll do that a little and we'll take a look at what we've got. Okay, let's see what we've got here. All right, we're starting to get some shape there. We're starting to grind the angle that we need. Okay, you can see there a little bit more. We're making progress. The beauty of this belt is that it spins relatively slowly, which means it doesn't get too hot. And it's really ideal for this purpose. There you see we're making progress. Now I can feel that metal getting warm under my finger here. And if I thought this was getting too hot, I would just wait. Okay, you can see we're going to get it in view here. You can see we're getting out there where we belong. I can take this and kind of look at it. If I need to, I can shift the handle one way or the other here. But I'm looking good for now. Okay, yeah, we're looking good. That's getting quite warm. I'm not where I want to be over here. I've still got a little bit of unevenness in the front of my blade. What I want to do is get this very end metal to peel back to get a little flap of metal on there. A wire edge, I guess they call it. And while I'm talking here, this is cooling down a bit, which is desirable. Yep, we're getting there. Now it's getting too hot for my finger. Now I don't have to hold my finger there, but it does, you know, right here when I'm doing this, but it does let me know how hot it's getting. And if it gets too hot for my finger, I'm going to pull it off. Now you can't tell, but I can tell because fingertips can detect very small things that this, I'm getting a wire edge here up here, up here, but not down here. I still have a little bit of neck in the blade. So we'll keep going. Okay, you can see the nicks right there. Now I could and I have taken this and just ground it flat. You know, turn it on. Grind a flat there before putting the edge on. And you can also take a square and you can check the squareness of, let me get in view here, you can check the squareness of the end of your blade if you want, but generally for a carpenter's chisel, a working chisel like this, you can eye it up pretty well. Okay, now I could just tell by the sparks, I don't know if they were visible to you that I'm just about there. The sparks were coming off the front pretty evenly across. See, I got a little smoke coming out of here and that's something. I haven't used this to, you know, on wood for years, but there may be a little bit of residue yet still down there. Okay, we're almost there. Almost there. It's getting hot and I've got that wire edge almost all the way. I can feel it right here with my fingertip and I'm letting this cool down as I talk, but you could see a little bit of unevenness right here. All right, little gouges yet still in there. Those will come out another little bit of grinding. Really close. Now, if I had water here, I could just dip the under this in water. It's not a bad idea, but this is not overheating. It's just getting hot. It's not overheating. It's not changing the temper. It's not blowing along this edge. If I had a really fast stone or a belt like this, it might do that. In fact, I could probably do that with this belt, but I'm being careful. A little by slow. I've got that wire edge almost all the way across. I can now not just feel it, but I can see it. I don't know if you can see it, but I've got a little bit of section right here that still needs to be, needs to get sharp. Can you see that wire edge? One of those things that that I don't think my camera will pick up. Now we're there. I'm there. I don't see if you can see that wire edge. Right, it's all the way across. I can fold it back and forth. I'm going to go just to touch more right here. This is really there, but I'm going to just touch just to touch more. I'm happy with that. I've got a wire edge all the way across there. Get it up real close here and see if you can see that. Maybe you can see it. My camera battery is almost out. I've got to stop and recharge, and we'll come back to this. The blade is shaped pretty sharp as it is right now, but we're going to get it even sharper. I'm going to do that by taking off this 120 belt. It's still lots of good grit. Those blue belts are exceptionally good. Now I'm going to take that 150 grit belt that the aluminum oxide, these are your common belts aluminum oxide. This has been used. It's got a little bit of grit to it, but not much. It's really worn down quite a bit. I'm going to put this in there and get that going. Give it a pull here. All right. Now what I'm going to do is something kind of neat. I'm going to charge this 150-bit aluminum oxide belt that is pretty much smooth. It's really worn down. I'm going to charge it with this honing compound. This is the Veritas green honing compound. I bought it from Leavale. Good stuff. This is really going to put a final finish on. I just turn it on and push this engine. Got that loaded right up with that honing compound. Now we'll come back. We'll get our I haven't changed anything. It's still in the jig just the way it was and we'll hone it. You could see a few sparks coming off of there, but not many. Let's see. You could see that wire edge. I guess you could see it best right there. It's actually coming off. I can recharge the belt a little. You can see the edges peeling back here and the honing compound peels back with it. You can turn over here. You can see that is getting shinier. There's scratch marks from the 120 blue belt, but it doesn't matter. This is a working chisel. You'll see this is going to be very sharp. Now I could have gone down from the 120 to something finer to a finer belt, but for all practical purposes, as a working chisel for a remodeler or carpenter, this is all you need. Now I'm going to say that's good enough. You can see that that edge has come a long way. I've talked a lot here. If I wasn't talking so much, I would have had this done a long time ago. It only takes a couple of minutes to do this. You can do it on the job site. No problem. That's good. I still have a bit of a wire edge there and I'm going to strap this next. Now traditionally, or typically, I guess perhaps I should say, you would drop a sharpened edge on leather, but you can strap it, you've got an old pair of jeans on. You can strap it right on your pant leg. And or another option. Pivot over here if we can. You can strap, believe it or not, on cardboard. Just back and forth, you're breaking the wire edge. Do that a few times. And you've got a very sharp, you got a very sharp. I like to test, I got dirty fingernails as usual. It's from gardening as much as woodworking, but I like to test the sharpness of a blade by holding it on my fingernail and seeing how far down I can bring it before it slips. And I'm down, you can see I'm down quite a way. It's not slipping. I got to bring it right down. This is, you know, a dull blade will slide right off. And then you, the lower you come, this is one sharp blade. Let me find a piece of wood. Yeah, it's a sharp, this is ash. And sharp chisels are such a joy to use, aren't they? By this chisel at a yard cell for 75 cents, put two, three minutes of sharpening into it. That is a great tool. Make a jig, buy a jig, get my specifications, whatever takes, get yourself a sharpening jig, whiz-bang sharpening jig, and get your chisels sharp. Everybody will wonder how do you keep your chisels so sharp? You'll have the sharpest chisels on the job site. Very easy. Check out my website. Got a link in the description below. You can find out how to get the PDF specifications, how to package, and, or you can buy already made sharpening jig. I got used to sharpen this chisel. Thanks for watching everybody. Here's to sharp chisels right there. Beautiful, isn't it? Don't cut yourself.