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I'm fairly well convinced that my ears are different than yours. The music I like isn't going to sound the same to you. It's almost impossible for me to share with another person what the Heartless Bastards sounds like to me. Language is too imprecise.

Same goes with the eyes (and tastebuds). How you experience a Paul Klee or a Hebrew National is impossible to share with me.

The problem is that our senses are tied to our big, dumb brains, which process and filter the waves of information our organs receive.

And so it makes me crazy to explain how to sharpen to people because it involves so many senses (except taste I think) that are processed. And there is so much information that comes in through our eyes, fingers and ears that beginners cannot focus on what is important.

So here is what I see when I sharpen a plane iron. I'm going to show what it looks like on the unbeveled side, which I call the "face" and others call the "back."

Above is what the face of a smoothing plane iron looks like when it is fresh from the wrapper. The vertical scratches are deep and are left behind by the manufacturing process. These have to be removed. So I begin by abrading the tool on my #1,000-grit waterstone.

After a short time on the #1,000-grit stone the metal gets a scratch pattern that looks like this. I move the iron back and forth diagonally on the stone and examine it every couple minutes. I'm looking for where the deep vertical scratches go all the way to the end of the iron. That's where the metal is weakest and the edge will begin to break down. The arrows point to where I see problem scratches. When these scratches disappear at the end of the iron, I can move on to the next grit – #4,000 grit.

Usually #4,000-grit stones start to give me a good polish. And so the #1,000-mesh pattern is generally replaced by more of a polish. Some #4,000-grit stones don't do much polishing, but most do. Try working the iron in one direction – this brings up the polish faster.

If I can see the deep vertical scratches, I might need to drop back to the #1,000 grit. In the drawing above you can see some #1,000-grit scratches and one deep manufacturing scratch at the right that are problems. Usually I'll drop back to the #1,000-grit stone here for a few minutes to get that deep scratch out.

I'll also start to see faint horizontal scratches left behind by the #4,000-grit stone. When the #1,000-grit scratches and manufacturing scratches are gone, move to your next stone. For me, that's the #8,000-grit waterstone.

This stone should bring up a nice mirror-like polish. You might have some horizontal scratches from this stone, but those generally aren't a problem. Look for any #1,000-grit diagonal scratches (as shown with an arrow above). Keep working until all the vertical and diagonal scratch marks are polished away right at the cutting edge. Don't worry about the scratches that don't make it to the edge.

I'm sure all this looks different to other experienced sharpeners, but these crude pencil drawings are about as well as I can explain it without coming to your house.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I sat down in a restaurant's booth in early April and waited for my pan-fried noodles, I knew that I had found a new workbench material.

For the last couple years I've been researching alternative materials for building workbenches – materials that are strong, inexpensive and widely available. And for the last six months I've been pestering Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick to build a workbench using LVL – laminated veneer lumber.

You're unlikely to find LVL in a home center, but it is widely available in commercial lumberyards. Contractors use the stuff to cross long spans because it's incredibly stiff, straight and reasonably priced. And it comes in 60' lengths (if you need it that long).  

In the wild, LVL looks like a piece of dimensional stock – the stuff Megan bought today looks like yellow pine 2 x 12s. But as you get closer you can see the edges and ends are laminated. Our 1-3/4"-thick pieces had 16 plies of yellow pine, each with a dark glue layer.

The stuff is pretty cheap, too. A 1-3/4" x 11-7/8" x 24'-long piece of LVL was just $110. (You can also find the stuff in different thicknesses and widths, though it's harder to find.) But how will the stuff fare in a workshop? And will it look decent?

That last concern was Megan's objection to LVL.

Back at the noodle bar, Megan and the other magazine's staff members approached the booth. I pointed to the table.

"This is LVL," I said.

The woodworker who made the restaurant's table ripped the LVL, turned it 90° and laminated it up. They put a nice finish on it and it looked great. Megan's objection to LVL disappeared as soon as she saw the table.

Today we brought the stuff in to build an 8'-long bench for Megan. The bench's design is going to be a blend of the Roubo and the Holtzapffel benches (the Holtz-bo). It will have a leg vise in the face vise position (with a wooden bench screw from BigWoodVise.com). And it's going to have a quick-release vise in the end vise position.

I'm certain the design will work. And after today I think the material will work as well. It came into the shop fairly dry – a couple of the sections were a few points above the norm. It jointed nicely on our powered jointer with a carbide cutterhead. And it ripped beautifully and easily on the table saw.

Next up: The big question. What will the glue do to the high-speed steel knives in our planer? And how will the scarf joints in the lamination fare when they are machined?

By the way, our full investigation into this material will appear in a future article this year in Popular Woodworking.

— Christopher Schwarz

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