Honing guides for #80 scrapers

Sharpening and honing a #80 scraper

There are those who want to sharpen their #80 scrapers and are intimidated by the prospect. It takes a certain confidence to freehand them and I recommend that you use a honing guide to gain ‘feel’ to begin with. You can rehearse as though the guide were not there and in a short time begin total freehand sharpening with confidence.

This cutting iron is now too small to sharpen well.

I usually file off the old edge or edges with a 10" flat, single-cut file. You can make a 45-degree guide block, clamp it to the blade and file away by allowing the file to ride the block. See drawing below.

As in my case, where the cutting iron is now too small to use, ff you don’t have a cutting iron, you can always make one from a thick hand saw blade, a thick card scraper cut in two or buy a new one.

Clamp the cutting iron in the honing guide and align it to 45-degrees using a combination square to establish the exact angle as shown.

Push the assembly back and forth on the coarse abrasive plate until the entire bevel is established along the full length of the iron and the repeat without altering the setting on both the fine and superfine plates. After that trail the iron along the strop charged with buffing compound and this will give you a pristine polished bevel.

Now consolidate and turn the newly refined edge in the conventional manner with the burnisher.