Sharpening system Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide- this is an "all-in-one" system (in everyday life - a carriage, a gurney, a trolley, etc.) for sharpening cutting tools (mainly various chisels, iron planers, etc.) oriented to the audience, as on beginners and professionals alike. The advantage of this system is that it has everything you need to accurately set the primary bevel angles (over a wide range), as well as the ability to define the rear bevels. For ease of use, angle ranges are numbered and color coded. The device allows you to place the cutting tool on the carrier and set the appropriate projection of the blade for the desired bevel angle. This allows you to achieve a high degree of repeatability of the result, as well as, if necessary, make a controlled change. This speeds up the process of sharpening tools on stones and plates,
Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide allows you to sharpen cutting tools with a width of 13 to 73 mm and a thickness of up to 6.5 mm, both conventional (with plane-parallel planes) and wedge-shaped. If narrower in width (less than 13mm) tools are installed in the sharpening system, problems may arise with their exact positioning relative to the working surface of the abrasive bar. The base of the angle reading is carried out relative to the upper plane, since in the general case the upper and lower planes, for example, chisels, can be non-parallel. For example, in most similar home-made sharpening systems (such as a wedge placed underneath), the cutting tool is positioned relative to the bottom surface, as a result of which an error in setting the sharpening angle may occur, and due to abrasion of the wedge during operation, chamfering may occur.
The Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide is equipped with a bronze roller with a special eccentric, which allows you to make micro-lead precisely at a given angle. The roller holder is replaceable, it is possible to install a roller with a profiled surface for sharpening, for example, convex blades. When sharpening, the roller rolls on the working surface of an abrasive bar or a special substrate.
The roller holder is connected to the main part of the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide by means of a screw, which simultaneously serves as a lever for coarse setting of the angle of inclination of the sharpened tool.
For convenience, the positions of this lever are numbered and color coded:
- And whether red is used for large angles;
- Or yellow, used for standard corners;
- Or green is used for back chamfers (not valid for all types of cutting tools).
For example, if you need to sharpen in the range of angles from 15 to 40 degrees, you need to loosen the lever screw and move it to the middle position - 2 (yellow ).
The blade of the tool to be sharpened is clamped by two screws, similar to the coarse angle lever, which tighten the lower clamping bar. The screws work independently of each other, which makes it possible to fix cutting tools of almost any configuration in the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide sharpening system . The lower part of the clamping bar is beveled so that it does not cling to the working surface of the abrasive bar when sharpening. Plastic washers are placed under the screws, which guarantees softness of the clamp, increases the comfort of work and prevents the formation of scoring around the threaded connection.
The Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide includes a template for setting the sharpening angle. The front of the device allows you to fix this template when positioning the sharpened tool and setting the angle. In addition, there is an inch markings on the front. There are three scales on the template for setting the sharpening angle, which are marked in three colors, as well as the coarse setting lever for the angle of inclination of the sharpened tool. The scales on the template overlap somewhat, which sometimes makes it possible to obtain the same angle on different scales. There is a dovetail clamp in front of the template for installation on the front shoulder of the sharpening system. A positioning bracket can be moved along the template, which can be fixed anywhere on the scale to set the required angle. Opposite the most popular sharpening corners, grooves are made in the template for the convenience of fixing the bracket with a clamping screw. The clamp does not jump off the guide, since there is a stop on one side, and on the other, it abuts against the clamp of the template holder.
Also, the clamp has a special stop projection, which does not allow the cutting tool blade to go between the clamp and the template surface and allows absolutely precise positioning of the workpiece on the template. There is a risk on the setting template, which must be aligned with the indication on the scale of the sharpening system, which corresponds to the width of the sharpened tool in order for it to be exactly in the middle of the clamp. An example of installing a chisel at a given angle using a template is shown in the figure.
The roller of the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide has an eccentric axis that allows three angles of micro-feed to be set in addition to the main sharpening angle. In working order, the mark on the roller screw (which is the switch of the device operating modes) must be set vertically upward (at 12 o'clock). The first, the smallest angle of the micro-approach is realized when the eccentric is turned to the left (at 9 o'clock). The second, larger angle, is set by turning the roller mark to the right (at 3 o'clock). Finally, the largest micro-bevel angle can be made by turning the pointer down (6 o'clock).
Micro chamfer on a cutting tool, chisel, planer piece of iron, etc. can serve both for greater resistance to bluntness, and, if absolutely necessary, for quick sharpening, so as not to over-sharpen the entire approach plane. Also, for example, the sharpening of the main chamfer can be completed on a rough stone, and only a macro chamfer can be finished. But this is permissible only in cases of not very high requirements for the cutting tool, since in this version of sharpening the tool will cut into the material noticeably worse than when the entire surface of the trigger is completely brought up.
The use of the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide sharpening system for chamfering back bevels is carried out in the position of the coarse setting lever of the angle of inclination of the sharpened tool, which is marked in green
For this option for back chamfering, there is no exact algorithm for specifying the angle from the manufacturer. The chamfer angle will depend on the thickness of the substrate along which the roller of the sharpening system travels, the thickness of the stone for sharpening, as well as the thickness of the tool to be sharpened. A prerequisite is strict parallelism of the working surface of the stone and the substrate.
In conclusion, I would like to share my impressions of using this device. The first thing to note is the thoughtfulness of this product to the smallest detail, it is very convenient and comfortable to use, sharpening with the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide system not only allows you to easily and quickly put your cutting tool in order (moreover, with a high degree of repeatability and without much effort and skill), but at the same time get a lot of pleasure from working with a truly cool device. Veritas specialists have invested in this sharpener not only all their intellect and many years of experience, but also their soul.
Benefits of using the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide:
- simplicity of precise setting of sharpening angles, clearly maintained lines of descent without parasitic lensing;
- the ideal perpendicular between the cutting edge and the side of the sharpened tool (for example, a chisel or a piece of iron);
- the ability to implement micro-bevels at three clearly fixed angles;
- versatility - the sharpening system allows you to sharpen a fairly wide range of different cutting tools;
- compactness, in comparison with other technical solutions for similar tasks.
It must be said that a common feature of the operation of sharpening systems like the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide is the need for strict adherence to abrasive hygiene, i.e. cleaning the device from residual dirt when switching to stones of a higher grit, so as not to bring a coarser abrasive onto a fine-grained stone.
I would like to note that the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide sharpening system uses not a metric, but an inch scale for measuring lengths on templates, this can be a little inconvenient, but you need to know this before buying and take into account when working. The instruction that comes with the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide is in English. Although you can easily find a lot of even more detailed manuals (text and video) on this sharpening system on the Internet, including, you can fully focus on this description.