Taunton's Complete Illustrated Guide to Sharpening

by Thomas Lie-Nielsen

This step-by-step reference provides quick access for learning this essential woodworking process. More than 750 photos and drawings illustrate the equipment available for sharpening and the methods for getting sharp edges on all types of tools -- from basic chisels to molding planes and jointer knives.

Among the subjects

Genres: Woodwork

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 7, 2004

Reviews

[January · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am in the middle of building my plane collection and I have been considering going with one jointer plane and switching out the blades, but I have been intimidated by the idea of sharpening different blades to different bevels and back bevels and knowing which ones to use in which situations. This book fixed that problem. In that, this book is worth several hundreds of dollars in multiple planes.

My only sticklers (albeit minor):

The first third of the book made too many assumptions about my background in sharpening and used terms and techniques without defining them first—terms like dressing the stone, back bevel, primary vs. secondary bevel vs. back bevel, single vs. double cut files.

The captions are annoyingly redundant, restating often word for word, a sentence already in the text. Conversely, several times body text refers to photos ("Here I am using waterstones...") that are nowhere to be found.

All in all a good reference book. I plan on purchasing it as I build my blade collection.