Honing guide is a cut above

My favorite honing guide has always been a generic side-clamping guide available from just about any woodworking catalog. with a little tune-up, these guides work well enough, and because they’re inexpensive and easy to find, I can replace them as needed if they rust or seize up. At first glance, Lie- Nielsen’s new honing guide looked a lot like my generic guide, and I wondered if there was any reason to justify the extra cash. Turns out there are a few really good reasons. First off, the workmanship is fantastic. The stainless-steel and bronze construction will guarantee that rust won’t be an issue. And with its precise machining, the guide is ready to use right out of the box—no tune-up required. The dovetailed jaws hold a plane iron securely and the finely threaded adjustment knob tightens with just hand pressure (though I still use a screwdriver out of habit). Additional jaws are available for specialty blades as well. The angled jaws are useful for sharpening a skewed block-plane blade, and the longer jaws handle short spokeshave blades. In addition, there are jaws for narrow chisels and mortise chisels. All the jaws are indexed with pins for precise alignment and the captured Honing guide by Lie-Nielsen $125 $25 to $35 for each additional jaw screws mean you’ll never lose one in a pile of sawdust. while Lie-Nielsen designed the guide to handle all of their chisels, it had a hard time clamping some of my oddball chisels

securely. That said, it is a first-rate honing guide and my new favorite for plane irons and spokeshave blades.

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