I'm Sharp

I sharpened up my sensitivity and discovered that accuracy is always tolerable by degrees. How can this be? I asked myself this question as I walked towards the sharpening plates for the fourth time with the three plane irons I'd been using all morning for about four hours.

"Well," I said to myself, "the more sensitive I become, the more I return to the sharpening plates and the more I return to sharpen my tools the more accurate my work becomes." Conversely, I think that it is no strange thing that when we are dull - that's in our levels of engagement and cognisance - the duller the tools we are using become too. I have seen time and time again how crafting artisans, even experienced ones, seem always so unwilling to stop working to sharpen their cutting edges on edge tools and then too their saws. Is this true then in other areas of life?

I took the morning to level up the surfaces on rails and stiles of three frames. That's 24 surfaces each adjacent to another with all the problematic grain oak carries within its coarse, interlocking grain. Three planes, four times, twelve sharpenings. Thankfully, sharpening a plane iron is under a minute for me. I just do it, but how many of us relate our lean toward laziness to the level of dullness we tolerate in our tool edges and therefore our work?

The frames are all done. The surfaces level, smooth, accurate. I am ready for the next stage in my making, but my reason for this blog is to prelude an article I am pulling together to counter the culture of being too lazy. We'' see what happens!