Larry Williams
Warren,

I know I was chasing wire edges for a few years before I moved to Arkansas in 1980 but I can't specifically remember how my sharpening evolved. I was more concerned about the wolf at the door than what I might want to remember in 2012.

Like others who write about this, I suppose, I was more generalizing than giving a honing schedule. What I do depends on what the tool needs. For example, when honing a plane iron with wear to the flat face I start on a medium India and first remove the wear bevel on the flat face. Then I'll raise a wire edge by honing the bevel. If I've properly maintained the size of this honed bevel, it should only take three or four strokes to raise the wire edge. No, here I don't remove the wire edge on the coarse stone.

I'll either move to a Washita or a translucent depending on the width of the iron. Starting on the flat face again, I'll first draw the iron back away from the cutting edge to lay the wire edge down and hone until both the wire edge and the abrasive signatures from the coarse stone are gone. Then I'll raise a new wire edge by honing the bevel. Again this should only take three or four strokes.

If I've used the Washita, I'll move to a translucent and repeat what I did on the Washita. The final step on the translucent is to again remove the wire edge. Each stone is dressed before it's used with an extra coarse diamond stone and the slurry is left on the stone for use.

I do strop. A 4" to 6" stroke or two on both the flat face and the bevel. This removes any remnant of the final wire edge.

My honing area takes up about a square foot and a half. Mostly because I have extra stones and slips there too. Opening the stone boxes, dressing, honing and clean-up usually takes less than a minute.

Unfortunately, most of the time we spend working on plane irons involves freshly heat treated new irons. That's more difficult and time consuming. We've tried everything I've heard of to speed the process up. I'm sure we've tried everything people have read about here.

Does that answer your questions?