A question to which the answer is always “yes”

As the saying goes, a bad workman blames his tools, but what the saying doesn’t allow for is that a tool cannot be expected to do its job without also investing the time in taking care of them. Or as another saying goes, a blunt knife is a dangerous knife, the same applies to chisels. Even just honing with a leather strap will give it a slightly better edge and you will soon realise how much easier it is to work with a sharp chisel. We all know it, but it is all too easy to fall into bad habits of not doing so.

The quality of a finished piece will be impacted by the quality of the tools used to make it, in particular the level of maintenance that has been put into ensuring they are able to do the job. However, for you as the person using those tools, the biggest difference you will notice will be in the ease in which you can use them.

Whether you use wet stones, oil stones, or sandpaper, or a fancy machine sharpening your tools is important. There are many ways to keep your blades sharp, none are particularly superior to others. In our workshop, we use a sharpening machine, but suggest that if you are investing in equipment to maintain your tools that you take the time to research what would be best suited to your requirements. The benefits of a sharpening machine is that it can be quick for honing and top ups and you don’t need to set up a guide. This suits us for being able to regularly keep on top of maintenance of our tools. The downsides of this approach is that it is slow for doing a full reshape or sharpen and it can over heat the blade. The sandpaper used by a sharpening machine wears out quickly as opposed to water stones which are much more hardwearing.

Top Highwood Furniture tips for keeping your tools sharp:

store in a dry place
hone before each use
have a sharpening station set up in the workshop to make it less of a chore to keep things sharp

For further information in anything in our blogs feel free to get in touch.

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