You've just bought a set of chisels
you're not sure how to get them ready
for work
we call it initializing or preparing
a chisel, you just bought a brand-new set
like these are, never been out of the
package and you look at the chisel and
it looks sharp, feel sharp, is it sharp?
we're not really sure, let's have a look
these are, look, this is cutting but
look at the surface of this wood and you
see the torn surface so it does cut but
this is only been ground to about 150
maybe 200 grit we want to take it to a
much higher level so how do we do that
we bought the chisel we look at this
side we look at the bevel, can you see
there are grinding marks in there, if you can
see the grinding marks usually it's not going
to be refined enough even though they
will say on the packet sharp, danger and
things like that. So we just got these
chisels, what we want to do is somehow
check this back for near flatness, now I
don't want you too obsessed about
flatness you can really obsessed about
flatness and it's not necessary because
generally we don't use the flat face but
very much
we generally lift up to dig down into
the wood ,we chop with it, we do things
like that ,so it's not necessary always
but we do have to have something to
shoot for so we might as well say flatness
so I'm going on this face here
this has never been offered to a stone
before my stones are flat if you don't
have flat stones use some paper on some
plate-glass, that will get you somewhere
where you need to be, now this chisel has
a hollow back
so what would I do that, can you see is
hitting here and it goes all the way
across the edge, it was very narrow on
this side, inaccurate grinding, yes
fairly inaccurate, but what we do have is
we have an edge we can go a little bit
more
like this you can see is widening, do we
need to get this hollow out of here
absolutely unnecessary, you do not need
to do that, go to the next grit here
polish that face, keep it dead flat, do
not lift up, like that, then go to this
face here and polish that up face out, this
is 1200 grit superfine we polished all
the striations left by the course, by the
medium and by the superfine stone and
now we've got a flatness there which is
what we need
we're going to turn over, this is a piece
of wood just a block of wood and I'm
going to charge this with buffing
compound for steel, stainless steel and I
flip over onto this face and I just rub
this back-and-forth, see how it's going black
there, so I'm polishing out this
back face
and now it's starting to shine if I
clean off this, this is already got to
the edge here, it's polished out, I can
actually see my face in that edge and
that's plenty good enough for this
chisel so I'm not worried about any more
now I have to focus on the bevel so I've
initialised the back face of my chisel
I go back to my sharpening plate stones
wet stones, ceramic stones whatever kind
of stone you are using I'm staying with
diamonds
so now I'm going to work on the bevel
here I feel for the angle, there's the
angle that the original ground angle put
on there by the manufacturer and I push
it that angle back and forth what that
creates is a camber on here, I like
that camber I can feel a burr on this
underside, I go to the next level, do
exactly the same no difference
I'm still feeling for this burr 'cause I want
to feel it is even it feels nice and
even
I go to the super fine and I spend a
little bit more time on this one because
I'm taking all the scratch marks the
striations out from that very coarse
stone medium stone anything that was
left by those two grips and I flip
over and I pull and look what happened
there
there is a burr, that's the burr just
remove the burr from the length of the
chisel so that means I got the full
width of my chisel
onto the leather side of the strop this
time not the wood inside, make sure it's
charged enough with some buffing
compound and then place the bevel on
here, the heel of your hand on here
good firm grip and pull so I've gone 30
times, this side is buffed out here just
to make sure there is no burr left on
pull that side and I'm going to take the
chisel, this was the side that we had
before, I'm going to go to this side and
see what the difference is here and
there we have it, that's the polished side
this is ultra smooth on this side if I
flip over to this side
I've got this coarse grain so that's
what we achieved that was super fast and
that's how we prepare our chisels for
daily use and from here on we just
sharpen it periodically once twice a day
three times a day we do exactly the same
as the last part of that, never needing
to touch this face apart from just to
break the burr.