Veritas got it WRONG! Sharpening System Review

hello there Hallmark here today's video I'm going to

go over the Veritas sharpening system and why I think they missed the mark

now I've spent many countless nights scrolling through the Lee Valley website

and absolutely drooling over Veritas tools they have a lot of really well

made things that are really beautiful to look at and even more pleasurable to use

in fact one of my favorite YouTubers to watch is RC from The Mountaintop Joiner shop and he has

got a great Channel I'll go ahead and link to it below but he's kind of the one that got me kind of

looking at Veritas and thinking about buying some of their tools now I'll show you a still picture

from one of the videos I've been watching and you can tell just how big of a Veritas guy he is

that is absolute goals absolute goals so thank you RC for a great Channel once again I'll link

below y'all go check it out if you haven't already but if you're watching this you've

probably already seen him so what we have here is the Veritas sharpening system it comes with this

interesting to say the least tool for setting your angle which has all kind of different angles on

it and and then you have the main kind of honing guide now the honing guide is absolutely wonderful

I mean well built solid metal wonderful knurling there on the brass knob it actually is different

from most uh honing guides most of them squeeze it from the sides but this guy has a nice soft

thin pad right there and this knurled knob which can squeeze down in the blade and I find that it's

great for both plain blades chisels pretty much anything you can think of it even has a micro

adjustment feature which I often don't use but by basically manipulating this knob here you can

get a little bit of a lower or higher setting and that will actually help you get some of the micro

bevels and things that you may be into and here we come to the main problem it comes with this little

guide here that's supposed to set your blades you can see the bevels there and it comes in

a variety of different settings from 15 all the way up to like 35 and basically you loosen this

you can choose which one you want tighten it down and go at it but here's the problem

the main problem comes with setting this thing up you have to take a square

and line it up and then you have to kind of guess you have to kind of guess

and make try to make it you can tilt it up I guess like that and then lock it

down carefully without messing it up and then there you go and that's pretty good

here's the next problem so when you're ready to sharpen let's say like a chisel or something

we put it in there what what anyway let's say you get it kind of tightened down to where you

can still move it but to where you can adjust it but it's kind of keeps it in there for you

try to get it Square as best you can and then you come here to set it and

I I can't see so you end up having to turn it like this and then you have to kind of

mess with it and goof with it and so then in frustration you kind of

hold it up like to where you can see it and then you gotta kind of fiddle with it and get it

looking nice and then oh my gosh I am so done now the sharpening system from Veritas is about

58 bucks so it's a great way to get into honing guides or sharpening and actually this thing is

wonderful I love this oh no problems at all love it I'm going to keep this for a very long time but

this thing needs a redesign let me show you what I do to fix the problem and hopefully it may help

you if you've bought one of these so what I did I had this extra room that I wasn't using here on my

shooting board I'm left-handed so I always shoot this way so I kind of I never really use this

so I thought I'd add these little blocks of Oak right here I took the blocks squared them up make

sure they were nice and square and have a good thickness just thicker than a plain blade really

and I went ahead and went through the laborious task of setting it up properly and well on this

thing to get my proper angles and I just did the most common angles that I would use 20 25 and 30.

25 being my primary bevel on most things and then 30 being my micro bevel so then when I get ready

to go sharpen I can just load this guy up I always like the Veritas you know to where I can read it

and then I'll go ahead and kind of tighten it down roughly now I can rest and I don't

know if you can see this but this little lip right here I can rest it squarely let's do 25.

rest it squarely like that get it lined up properly

and twist it down and there we go I've seen a lot of videos about these and

they are really handy and useful so now this wonderful honey guide actually kind

of works a little better I just try to make sure I line it up here in the center

I make sure I Square it against these edges here and against the board and just really check it and

it makes it a whole lot quicker than trying to use this thing and then I can bring it on over to the

sharpening station I've got a little cheap diamond Stone here with some invisible glass cleaner

then I can take it with even pressure and begin sharpening

wow okay nice little result nice little thing there very good all

right and then I can continue on with the 1200 get grit Stone

and I usually finish up on a very high High grit a little water stone here alrighty I'm working on a

horse saddle stand so I've got a bunch of Cedar here cut and here's a little piece

and I'll just show you right here wow that is digging into that wood good gracious

wow

I'm just taking off just barely anything that is really nice wow

it moves pretty effortlessly Through the Wood even when I get a big chunk like that

it really does well then I can just choke up on it and that is shaving off just the littlest amount

the bottom line for me is Veritas is a very well respected tool manufacturer for a hand

tool Woodworking and I absolutely love their stuff and I think for 58 dollars it's just worth this

really cool honing jig this is amazing I would spend 58 bucks for this just know that when you

get the Veritas sharpening system the little bevel guide is just no good and you'll have to

set up some other way of doing it like I did or maybe use another guide of some kind or if you

do get it accurate it's going to take you about six to seven minutes uh to set it up each time

you need a new angle and hey if you like what you see hit the like button or better yet go

ahead and hit the Subscribe button and the bell notification icon I'm coming out with new videos

each week all about Woodworking and I'd like to share my journey with you I hope you enjoy

these videos also uh I'm adding to my sticker wall I finally got wood by Wright I ordered a

sticker from him and I'm actually looking at one of his drops so make sure you check

him out I'll try to link his website down in the description so you can go pick yourself up some

paste wax or maybe a leather strop or something cool like that and support him as well foreign