Honing gauge
Build this simple, useful gauge yourself
One of the most important items in my honing kit is a honing guide. I cannot maintain a constant honing angle without it, and I think the same applies to most of us.
The honing angle on my honing guide is set by extending the blade a specified distance from the front of the guide. When I first bought the guide I set the extension using a steel rule, but I found this awkward and had difficulty achieving accuracy. To improve this I have made a gauge from MDF that makes setting up a blade in the honing guide simple, fast, accurate, and exactly repeatable. It ensures that the blade is set at exactly the same angle each time it is honed, which minimizes both the amount of metal removed and the honing time. It has settings for both chisel and plane blades.
Building the gauge
The dimensions of the gauge are 150x80x20mm. The top stop blocks are 40x26x11mm and the bottom block is 75x38x16mm. There are three longitudinal lines marked into the top with a marking gauge, spaced 20mm apart.
On the chisel side of the gauge, the distance from the gauge end to the stop is 30mm, and this projection will, on my honing guide (an Eclipse 36), give a honing angle of 30°, which is the correct honing angle for a general-purpose bench chisel. There is room for an additional stop to be attached to give a finer honing angle for specialist paring chisels.
Similarly, on the plane side, the stop is set 38mm from the end of the gauge, which on my honing guide gives a honing angle of 30° for a plane blade.
How to use
To use it, the gauge is held in a vice, the blade is loosely mounted in the honing guide, the guide is pressed against the end of the gauge, the blade is pushed forward until it comes up against the stop, and the holding screw on the honing guide is then tightened. While doing this the blade needs to be held parallel to the lines marked on the top of the gauge, which ensures that the blade is set at right angles to the honing guide.
The gauge is simple, but it has been accurately made. The lines on the top are at exactly 90° to the ends of the gauge, and the stops are set at exactly 90° to the lines — that is, parallel to the ends.
There is now a honing guide on the market that includes a more sophisticated gauge that works on the same principle. It is not cheap. For those who use a basic honing guide such as the Eclipse, this simple gauge is cheap and effective.
The gauge is simple, but it has been accurately made