I have been a full time finishing carpenter for 15 years. I learned carpentry from a very skilled master carpenter, and the very first thing my master taught me was not how to use power tools or how to make cuts. He told me "In order to do a good job, you must first learn how to sharpen your tools." So, he taught me how to sharpen chisels.

Ever since I learned the sharpening process, I fell in love doing it. There is something special to doing a mundane, repetitive task that allows the mind to wander off or go empty; it feels very soothing and therapeutic. It's not to say that sharpening a blade is easy; I think it might fall into the category of easy to learn, but hard to master. One might think to sharpen a blade, you simply move it back and forth along the sharpening stone. That is partly true, but the hard part is keeping the angle of the blade consistent against the stone. Also, one should attempt to utilize the surface of the whole stone in order to avoid creating dips and valleys in the stone. Like many other tasks, sharpening takes repetition and practice. The more you sharpen, the better you get at it.

After learning to sharpen my chisels, I've also moved onto sharpening kitchen knives for my wife. I love hearing the sound of the stainless steel blade grind along the whetstone. Hearing the rhythmic sounds while moving my arm and hands back and forth along the whetstone clears my mind and relaxes me. As a result of my hobby / obsession, my wife's kitchen knives hardly ever get dull.

I use artificial whetstones for the kitchen knives. I like to pass the knives first through the 6000 grit stone, then through the 8000 grit stone to finish, provided that there are no chips or damages. If there is damage on the blade, I start on the 1000 grit stone, then 3000, and finally work my way through 6000 and 8000 to finish.

The stones that I use for my chisels are not marked with grit numbers, but the coarse stone is more rough, because my work tools get chips and damages quite often. There are 3 different grits, and I usually just run the tools through the 2 higher grits if there are no chips or damages to the tool.

I usually gather everything and do a sharpen session every now and then.

The mundane and repetitive task of sharpening has its payoff too. I usually run the kitchen knives through the paper test and it's extremely satisfying to be able to easily slice through paper with a sharp knife, while listening to the sound that it makes. Not to mention my wife never complains about her knives being dull. This video shows the paper test on one of the knife.

I run my chisels through the leg hair test. The blade must be sharp enough to cut the hair of my leg in the middle, not at the base, but in the middle. Don't click into the link if you don't want to see my leg/foot, you have been warned, but this video shows my leg hair test.

After a sharpening session, which usually takes at least a couple of hours or more, depending on how badly damaged are my chisels, I always take a moment to admire the proof of work of sharpening; namely, how incredibly sharp the blades have become. The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction simply makes me feel good, which is probably why I love doing it and keep coming back to it.

Do you also have some mundane and repetitive task that you enjoy doing? Please share!