Workers Of Wood

Good article Mike. I have a 3 1/2 to 4" felt wheel which can be chucked in DP or hand drill. The DP gives you 2 hands to control the tool plus the DP can be set to spin slower and it's closer to eye level. I also have a 6" hard felt wheel but usually I just need a touch up and the DP is quicker to use.I find 3600 rpm too fast. I use the green compound on my wheels and at 3600 rpm it's hard to get the honing compound to transfer. Oiling the felt wheel or a cloth wheel helps with the transfer (WD40 works just fine for this) and sometimes you're better to just transfer it on with the wheel not turning, especially if it's running at 3600. At that speed I also find it wants to sling any extra compound off. You can get an edge very hot at that speed too.

You can just hone with the wheel for a while but I find that the bottom side of the tips wear too and just using a wheel doesn't take enough metal off to get back to a flatter bottom and lapping to get the tip flat takes a while. You can cheat a little and slightly raise the chisel off the medium but too much will eventually bite you. I do have a cloth wheel about 6" in diameter but I just use it with a black emery bar for getting rid of scratches and generally cleaning up old Sheffield chisels and gouges which I like to collect. I also bought a set of felt bobs of different profiles for a dremel to polish those gouges. The green compound really does make a difference in plane irons, gouges, and chisels. You can use sandpaper to both lap bottoms and sharpen bevels and automotive shops and some tool supplies sell it to pretty fine grits. KMS here in BC sells Klingspor to 2500 grit in silicon carbide and it sharpens pretty quickly and is very cost effective if you don't want to sink money into diamond stones or water stones. At 2500 grit you are getting very close to scary sharp.