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Stick-out sets the bevel….. On an Eclipse-style honing guide, the distance from the roller face to the cutting edge tip is what locks in 25° or 30°. Get that projection right — and use the right slot — and every chisel and plane iron comes off the stones the same way. Mix up the slots or grab a Lie-Nielsen chart for a twenty-dollar clone and you'll hone angles that look fine and cut soft. I'm framing a Chamberlain Marblehead gunning dory this winter, and I don't have time to fight dull edges. So today: the numbers that stick.
Why it matters: Freehand honing works if you sharpen every day and never rock the bevel. Most of us don't. Asa Christiana at Fine Woodworking puts it plainly: a guide that rides on the stone holds the angle so every grit reaches the tip. The cheap side-clamp guides (the ubiquitous $15–25 Eclipse-style clones) are calibrated by projection. Measure wrong once and you keep copying that wrong angle. Wrong slot is the most common setup mistake — the narrow lower jaw is for chisels, the wide upper jaw for plane irons, and they are not interchangeable.
Materials
- Eclipse-style side-clamp honing guide (~$15–25; roller rides on the stone)
- Waterstones, oilstones, or diamond plates — a 1000, a 4000 and an 8000 (or your shop's equivalent progression)
- A ruler marked in millimeters (or a shopmade stop board with the four distances marked once)
- Optional: scrap board, stop fence and pencil for a permanent projection jig; a protractor to check a new guide
- The chisel or plane iron you're sharpening
Tools
- Honing guide (Eclipse-style for these numbers)
- Flattened stones — a dished stone will round the edge no matter how careful you are
- Ruler or stop board
- Optional leather strop with compound for the final polish
Steps
- Know which slot you're in. Narrow lower slot = chisels. Wide upper slot = plane irons. Same projection in the wrong slot gives a completely different angle. That is the number-one mistake on these guides.
- Measure projection from the roller face to the tip. For an Eclipse-style guide: chisel 40 mm → 25°, 30 mm → 30°. Plane iron 50 mm → 25°, 38 mm → 30°. Longer stick-out = shallower bevel. Shorter stick-out = steeper bevel.
- Don't mix charts. A Lie-Nielsen honing guide uses different numbers — 25° is 1-1/2" (38.10 mm) and 30° is 1-5/32" (29.36 mm). Veritas and other guides have their own tables. Use the chart that came with your guide, or check the angle with a protractor and mark your own stop board. Never borrow Eclipse numbers for a Lie-Nielsen body, or the other way around.
- Grind the primary, hone the secondary. Christiana's method: grind the primary bevel around 25° (sandpaper on glass, coarse diamond, or a careful grinder), then set the guide a little steeper — about 27–28° — and hone a secondary microbevel. Go higher for chisels you pound and chop with, and for some bevel-up plane irons. The microbevel is a narrow band at the tip; that's what you refresh between grindings.
- Work the stones in order. Start around 1000 grit to establish the secondary, then 4000, then 8000. Keep light, even pressure behind the cutting edge so the edge stays square. The guide's roller has to ride on the stone — not on the bench beside it. Stones vary in thickness; if the roller rides off the stone, the angle changes every time you switch grits.
- Flatten the back once; remove the burr every time. New tools get the back flattened and polished near the edge with no guide — once. After honing the bevel, take the blade out of the guide and give the back a few light strokes on the finest stone to knock off the wire edge.
- Make a stop board. Popular Woodworking and the Lie-Nielsen angle-setting jig idea are the same shop trick: a scrap with a fence and marks at your working projections. Butt the tip to the mark, clamp, tighten. Thirty seconds instead of a ruler every session.
MOAM's shop note: Measure once, mark a stop board, quit guessing. On the dory work — gains, bevels, frame cheeks — I want 25° for most paring and a steeper secondary when I'm chopping. The guide doesn't care how fancy the stone is if the stick-out is wrong. And if you bought a fancy guide, use that guide's chart. Mixing charts is how you spend an hour "sharpening" and still tear end grain.
Sources: Fine Woodworking / Asa Christiana, "How to Use a Honing Guide" and "Get Sharp Fast" (primary ~25°, secondary ~27–28°, stones 1000→4000→8000, back flatten once, burr on the back, roller on the stone); Lie-Nielsen honing guide blade projections (25° = 1-1/2" / 38.10 mm; 30° = 1-5/32" / 29.36 mm) and L-N angle-setting jig PDF; Popular Woodworking, "Sharpening Angles for Dullards" (stop-block approach); WoodWiki honing-guide setup (Eclipse projections: chisel 40/30 mm, plane iron 50/38 mm; wrong slot = wrong angle). Check your own guide's chart before you trust any table.
MOAM Out.
