Tools Man

 

When you always busy at woodworking activities, you often realize that your hand planer needs to be tuned and sharpened. For making a smooth and well-finished work, your hand planer blades need to sharpen regularly. Here are some rules that must be followed in addition to correctly sharpening the blades of your hand planer. However, there are different types of methods you can use to sharpen your hand planer blades, one of the easiest ways sharpening can be done by using various dry or wet grits of sandpaper on a leather strip and a buffing compound. Learning how to sharpen your electrical hand planer blades is not even difficult when you understand the know-how and obviously the tools required for sharpening.

You should address the following materials to sharpen your hand planer blades-

• A 220, a 320, a 400, and a 600 wet/ dry sandpaper

Steps that you must follow

First Step

The first thing you should do is you must take apart the hand planer by loosening the screw. You must also be sure that the blade is clean enough, and the paper shims if they are present there. Paper shims are usually used for closing the gap between the edge and the plane body. As the sandpaper has a length of 9″ x 11″, you, therefore, need to cut them into thin strips by using the 220-grit paper first. It would help if you then put that onto the flat table. You will get more details on power vs hand planer by visiting here.

Second Step

The next step you should hold and keep the bevel side of the plane on top of the sandpaper, and then you should pull the plane backward at least four to five times. On that occasion, you should give a little pressure as you pull the plane each time along the strip. Now you have to turn over the blade with the bevel side facing skywards. You then have to place the tip on the paper and then have to another tip moderately elevated. You then have to pull the blade again with the whole strip at least four to five times. By doing this, it will make a tiny bevel on that side of your knife. However, some people love to keep the backside of the blade flat too. However, the micro-bevel is very much preferable for making the basket.

Third Step

You will do the above process by using a 320-grit, a 400-grit, and by 600-grit sandpaper. You have to make sure that whenever you change the sandpaper, you should ensure that you remove any grit that appears on the blade. You then have to take a red buffing compound and rub it on the leather strip. Then, place the bevel side on the leather strip and then start pulling backward at least four to five times. You should also repeat that process for the backside of the blade. When you complete the backside as well, you may see your edge becomes much sharper than before.

It would help if you now saw how the blade is performing. To examine this, you can use a newspaper to cut. While cutting the paper, if you see a rough cut, then the blade still needs to sharpen again, starting from the 220 sandpaper. If you know the wound is clean and smooth, then your process was well-organized.

Conclusion

You may use other methods as well by following a honing guide. However, the sandpaper method is highly used by woodworkers. This process also doesn’t have any sophistication about sharpening the blades of your hand planers. As this sandpaper process is highly used, you can get the above well-defined process to make your blades sharpen for your work.