I just wanted to express my thanks to everyone who turned up to our woodworking event here in Kent at the weekend. We had a fantastic time socialising with our woodworking friends and got some great demonstrations from ATC and Workshop Heaven. Sarah put on a lovely spread and we all unashamedly stuffed our faces. Lots of laughter and banter as well as an impromptu demonstration from Steve Maskery with his excellent bandsaw tennoning jig. The crowd was impressed with Steve’s ingenuity and attention to detail. Various member brought along work they had made for us to gaze over in wonderment. Highlight was SteveB’s jigsaw puzzle that he’d cut on the scroll saw.

Pictures from the event can be found in the forum thread. We will be back next year and hope to see faces old and new. These events are so much more useful, enjoyable and relaxed than your average woodworking show. Hope to see you at the next one!

UK Woodworking Event

Last year we held a woodworking event for UK Woodworking Forum members. Commonly called a ‘bash’ these events are often organised by a woodworker with the intention of getting together with other woodworkers from around the country. In 2010 we hosted an event in Staplehurst at one of our member’s commercial woodworking workshop. The event was a great success and we welcomed nearly 40 woodworkers from all over the UK, some made very long journeys to attend. We saw demonstrations from tool retailer Axminster Tool Centre as well as a display of tools from Workshop Heaven

You’re Invited!

This year’s event will be held on Saturday 28th May at the same location in Staplehurst, Kent. There will be more demonstrations and lots of woodworking chat. Members of our forum will be on hand to offer woodworking advice and both Axminster and Workshop Heaven will be back displaying some of their products. Our workshops in Staplehurst are very easy to get to and just a short walk from the rail station. If you would like to come along, drop me a line via the contact form on this site and I will put your name on the list. You do not have to be a current member of our forum to attend. More the merrier. We look forward to seeing you there

Since I bought the Robert Sorby ProEdge sharpening system about a year ago, I have been an Evangelist for this tool. Like many woodworkers and woodturners, I have tried many different tool sharpening methods. In fact I I’m pretty certain that I’ve tried them all! For some reason I just couldn’t get on with any of them. It wasn’t until I tried out the ProEdge at a friend’s workshop that I started to realise it was something special. After a lot of thought I decided to bite the bullet and invest in the full ProEdge system. Whenever I buy anything like this I like to make sure I have all the accessories that I think I’ll need. One of my first comments after my initial exploration of this machine was that it lacked a simple way to sharpen knives, kitchen knives in particular. In fact I even emailed Robert Sorby to find out if they had plans to produce such a jig. To my surprise they said they where considering it and to ‘watch this space’. Well about 8 months later I learned that Robert Sorby had indeed produced a knife jig along with some very interesting new abrasive belts.

The knife jig is very simple in it’s construction. The knife is held in a holder which has positive stops that the spine of the knife seats onto. The holder has a long shaft and an aluminium stop which adjusts along the length of the shaft to obtain the correct bevel angle. You have the option of either a large or small holder and of course you can opt to have both at an additional cost. Also with the kit, you get a tool arm and a replacement back plate. The replacement back plate is required to elevate the knife away from the machine housing, giving clearance for the knife to move along unobstructed. The tool arm is required to give more travel over the belt for long knives. Full instructions come with the kit and setting it all up is very simple. Robert Sorby have put a lot of thought into making adjustments to the machine as quick and easy as possible. The main T handle hex key that comes with he machine will also make adjustments on the knife holder. I really appreciate it when a company thinks about things like this. There’s nothing worse than having to use 3 or 4 or 5 different tools to make regular adjustments on your machines.

Along with the new knife jig, Robert Sorby have introduced three new abrasive belts to compliment the current range. These new belts really are something special. The first is like no other sanding belt I have come across. The new Trizact A30 belt has rows of raised ‘bricks’ of abrasive material. This open form pattern resists clogging and aids in keeping the blade cooler for longer. I was somewhat sceptical at first sight, but you have to see it to believe it. In a loose comparison to traditional grit sizes, this A30 belt approximately equates to 600grit. The other two new belts are also Trizact but the pattern is very different. The grain is formed in a pyramid fashion and is much finer than the A30 belt. Again, these belts are designed to resist clogging and keep the blade temperature lower for longer. The A16 approximately equates to 1200g and the A6 3000g. These two belts are for fine honing and literally polish the steel to a razor sharp finish.

These belts are a 3M product and I think will work very well with woodworking tool blades.  They are capable of getting a very fine finish and as such will take away the need for honing stones in most workshops.  The speed in which the ProEdge can be setup and it’s accurate repeatable results means you can literally go from shaping a primary bevel to honing a razor edge all on one machine in moments.

Once I had everything setup (a 5min task), I went through the kitchen drawers and pulled out just about any knife I could find. Each knife was laid out on the workbench and I set about sharpening them. A lot of my knives were very blunt. So I decided to start on the old 240g belt to obtain a fresh clean edge, removing any dings or burrs. Obtaining the right angle can be a little tricky at first, but you soon get a feel for the way the jig is setup. You place the knife in the holder, set the aluminium stop on the tool arm and lay the knife on the belt. You can then judge the angle by eye. Kitchen knives seem to vary greatly, so it’s best if you just match the previous bevel. If the angle is too shallow you will see a gap between the tip of the blade and the belt. In this situation you need to move the aluminium stop down the shaft (towards the floor). Obviously move the stop up to achieve a shallower angle.

To sharpen the knife you simply turn the machine on and stroke the blade along the belt. When you approach the end of the knife you need to pull the handle towards you a little to follow the bevel to the point of the knife. Then, if a double bevel knife, flip the it over and do the other side. Even the bluntest knife should only need a couple of strokes on each side. Remember that, if you do have a knife with a bevel on each side, you must keep the number of strokes even for each side.  You may think that, if sharpening a batch of knives, it would be best to do all knives with one belt, then change to the next belt and do them all again, etc. That’s not a good idea here because the tool holder does not have positive stops of pre-determined bevels. Each knife will have a slightly different bevel and repeating that setting exactly three to four times, would be difficult. So it is best to take a knife through all belt grits before moving to the next knife. Changing belts constantly may sound like a chore. But this is where the ProEdge excels. Changing a belt takes less than 5 seconds. The belt automatically tracks when you turn the machine on and you’re good to go.

The results are really very pleasing.  My knives rarely get properly re-sharpened, despite the amount of use they get.  I also sharpened some older cheaper brand knives and it these that really showed astonishing results.  I think it’s because the steel used is not as good as the Globals and as such blunt quicker.  They also do not respond well to being honed on a steel.  The Global knives have a tendency to stay sharp for longer and respond well to being honed before each use.  I did the paper test for each knife and they all passed through the sheets effortlessly.  However, the real test was in the kitchen.  I found the best way to work out just how well they had been sharpened would be to cut tomatoes.  Before sharpening I found I had to push to break through the skin, whereas when sharpened, all knives simply fell through the tomatoes with the weight of the knife.  Perfect!

So you can probably tell that I like this jig and you would be right. I think it’s great!  There are a couple of niggles that are minor, but worth noting. I found that there is a limit to how wide of a knife you can use. Or at least, there is a limit to the bed length. My most used chefs knives are between 45-55mm wide, I also have a meat cleaver that is very wide around 70mm. The widest blades overshoot the bed when set at the right angle. This means that they are unsupported when being sharpened. I experimented with way to fix this problem. One idea was to remove the set screws that the knife sits on in the tool holder. The knife is then free to sit much further down on the securing screws. This helps, but at certain shallow angles, the body of the tool holder can contact the belt. So far I have not had enough time to work out a better solution. One option could be to drill out holes to have a second location of the set screws that are lower down. Another minor issue is the time involved with setting it up for knife sharpening mode. Whilst it’s only a 5min job, it’s a mental barrier to gathering the motivation to sharpen the knives. However, in reality, I am more likely to sharpen the knives all at once, every so often. I use steels to hone my kitchen knives before each use and this reduces the need for constant re-sharpening.

I really like this new addition to an already great tool. I have no problem highly recommending this product. This jig was sent to me by Robert Sorby to test. They told me that I would either have to return it or buy it when I had finished reviewing. Well, there’s no way I’m sending it back, so it looks like I’ve just bought a new tool!

Robert Sorby have made a short video on the Pro Edge Knife Sharpening Jig and I encourage you to take a look.  Seeing how simple this jig is will really illustrate how useful it is.