Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)
I have never thought to use a gouge for morticing. Interesting!

By coincidence - before reading any post here - I honed/buffed a couple of Japanese out-cannel gouges and then tried them out. Wow! They have never cut as well before.

Last evening I finished up preparing a Fujikawa mortice chisel. It needed a lot of work flattening the back - lots of work on diamond plates and diamond paste. Eventually I could get to waterstones. I prefer to hone and use this chisel (as I do all my Japanese chisels) in the traditional manner, this being a straight bevel. I did drop the primary bevel from 35- to 30 degrees. A lot of work went into getting this blade as perfect as possible. It was honed to 13000 and then I attempted to pare Tassie Oak end grain. It did this reasonably but not as well as a bench chisel with the same 30 degree bevel. I went over to the buffer and firstly did a 2-second buff at the angle of the bevel, then raised the chisel about 10 degrees and buffed about 2 seconds more. Back at the Tassie Oak, the chisel now peeled off end grain shavings.

So, one question I am answering is that it is possible to get sharper edges using a power buffer (no surprise there), and that this process is very quick. I tried for years to do this on a Tormek hard leather wheel, without success. This soft wheel produces a better result and so much faster.

Regards from Perth

Derek