 Today, we're going to talk about sharpening your chisels. Getting a good edge is really about the back of the chisel, a flat plane on the bevel and where they intersect. Let's get started with flattening the back. On new chisels, you want to do it up about an inch. If you sharpen beyond that point as your chisel wears, you'll need to reflaten it. But I'm just going to do this lower part here. And that's simply a matter of wetting the diamond abrasive and holding the chisel on their flat. I like to use three fingers and just run it back and forth over the abrasive. This chisel in truth has already been flattened, but we're just going through the steps to show you what you'd have to do if you had a new chisel. So I would work through the various abrasives. Keep these stones wet. As you're sharpening the chisel, you'll notice this black slurry developing in the water. The black is actually metal particles that are being carried away. Otherwise, clog the abrasive. Once you get to the green diamond plate, you'll notice that the back of this chisel is really reflective. Once that's done, we're going to put the chisel in this great honing guide from Veritas. What I like about this product compared to other honing guides is this wide roller that gives you extra stability. The first thing you want to do is make sure your chisel is in the honing guide properly. Make sure this hash mark is pointing to the correct chisel width. In this case, we have a one-issed chisel, so I'm going to set this at the one and tighten this thumb screw. Most chisels are sharpened to a 25-degree bevel angle. This jig has a couple cool features. If you have a really short chisel, either a butt chisel or one that's been sharpened many times, you can put this on the number three setting, and it makes the projection smaller for your shorter chisel. The other thing that's cool about this jig is it has this concentric roller. You can use it to put a microbevel on the cutting edge of your chisel so you have less sharpening to do. The other thing you can do is if your chisel has been sharpened to the wrong bevel previously, you can adjust this concentric roller so it'll sit flat to the sharpening medium. Once you have those two things set up, you put your chisel in the guide, making sure that the edge is tight to the side of this registration jig, and then tighten the thumb screws a little at a time on each side. Once you're sure the chisel is locked down, you can remove this registration guide. Once we have the chisel in the jig, we're ready to start sharpening. I like these diamond plates from DNT. They have a great long-lasting abrasive. This particular grit is equivalent to about a 220 paper. It's identified by the black dot. So we're just going to run the chisel over there until we have a uniform striated appearance and all the chips and nicks are gone. Now if you have a really beat up chisel, this could take a while. And in some cases, it makes sense to use either a slow speed grinder or a high speed grinder and a lot of water to keep from damaging the edge and get out those big nicks and then use this diamond plate to start your sharpening from a point where you're not working all those nicks out of the blade. After about five minutes of honing, I have a nice uniform striated appearance on this bevel. The chips have been polished out and we're ready to move on the next finest abrasive. Just flip the stone over. Now I'm on the blue side, which is equivalent to about a 325 paper. It's important to make sure you use all of the stone by moving the chisel around. Occasionally I swap it and end for end. And that just prolongs the abrasive so you're not wearing it out from one part of the stone. These things are expensive so you want to get their full life from them. They each cost about $60. But what's great is that they're very portable, they're very rugged, and they last a long time. You'll notice that's getting a little bit of a polish. Now we're onto the red abrasive, which is equivalent to about a 600 grit paper. You'll notice it gets a little more polish with every step. Now we're going to move on to the green abrasive, and that's equivalent to about a 1200 grit paper. All right, it's really tempting to like break off this burr with your thumb, but don't do it because you'll ruin the edge. What you need to do is have this elevated so the guide can overhang the bench and just gently run that side to side, being sure to keep that chisel flat to the plate. You'll find that these produce an edge plenty sharp for most carpentry work. But if you really want a super sharp edge, this is what you need. This is a combination grit water stone. This is a synthetic version by Norton. Natural water stones are more expensive. They commonly come from Arkansas or Japan. I'm going to start with a 4,000 grit side, which is the white abrasive. You need to get these things really wet. You can even soak them in water. And in fact, the corsair water stones you need to keep in water. The only problem for carpenters is that you can't leave these in the truck during the winter because they'll freeze and break. Just like the diamond stones, you want to use the majority of the abrasive. It's really soft and it'll have a tendency to dish out in the middle, even if you use all of it. So occasionally you'll want to flatten this by running it on the diamond stones. I'm going to do a few more passes here and then we'll switch to the 8,000 grit side. More water is better than too little. All right, I think I've finished with the 8,000 grit stone here. Just like with the diamond plates, you need to get the burr off the edge. And once again, you don't want to break it off because it's going to destroy that edge. So I'm going to hold that real tight to the stone and just rub it back and forth gently to get that burr off. Now that's a sharp chisel.