david weaver
Warren, if you mortise a plane or something out of hard maple, you will see tiny chips in the edge if you look at it with light and magnification. If you do not, then I would assume that you are diddling through the process, or you're not using a chisel to do that to begin with.

That comment was probably in response to someone who was discussing the need for wear resistance in chisels. I don't see the need for wear resistance. I think you're confusing how large of chips I'm talking about, and if you don't see them, it would be because you've never had the occasion to use a chisel heavily or perhaps you've not looked closely at an edge under some magnification. Perhaps I should've described the size of the chipping earlier. If anyone is looking at the edge of a chisel and seeing nicks with the naked eye, then either the chisel is garbage or the user is abusing it.

I guess I don't follow how you can't keep an edge in the same shape with a hollow grind. There are two routes you can go with a hollow, I can tolerate either of them, they are both quick, and the second would not decrease the "intimacy" you're talking about, nor would it keep you from frequently touching up your edges frequently enough to never notice the "chipping" i'm referring to above (you know them already). The two methods:
1) add a couple of degrees manually (no guide) to the primary bevel and sharpen the edge of the chisel
2) reference the hollow against a stone and do the same thing you'd do with a flat bevel - sharpen only a single bevel, and refresh the hollow as needed.

I assure you that in general use for joinery and other such things, your edges are no sharper than mine, no more quickly arrived to, and nor are mine any less "intimate".

I don't, however, care how hard a chisel is with the method that I use, nor what steel. And I don't have to have great stones to get a very good edge regardless of the hardness of the steel. To me, that's a lovely benefit.

But chisels aren't the only thing to be sharpened, planes are included, too. You will see significant wear on the iron if you are dimensioning your wood by hand and doing so in quantity, and the hollow does the same 1, 2 above, except the edge of a good plane iron will need touch up because of the level of wear, and not because of impact.