Re-Establishing the Inner Bevel and Polishing

Now that I've gotten the outer bevel established and a medium polish put on using the medium grit India bench stone, it's time to turn my attention the the inner, concave part of the cutting edge.  Using a soft arkansas slip stone, I begin working the inside bevel:

I find it most helpful to place the edge just over the bench or the lid of one of my stone boxes - it helps keep the tool stable and gives me more control over just how I want the slip to go over the edge.  Rolling the tool allows the slip to access the entire edge.  I add honing oil frequently directly on to the tool, as the edge of the slip stones tend to plug up fairly quickly.   I keep a rag handy to wipe off the swarf when it gets too thick.

Because this is a cabinetmakers gouge and not a carving gouge, I want to keep the inside bevel to an absolute minimum - just enough that I can clean up the edge, and to finish removing most of the wire edge.  Carving gouges will usually have a slightly larger inside bevel, but here I'm only looking for about 1/32" or so - maybe even less.  The angle is slight, only about 5 degrees - I find a small bevel helps to maintain an edge longer, as the geometry of the point makes it stronger.  

When I've finished with the soft arkansas slip, I go immediately to a hard arkansas slip of the same shape, and repeat the process, polishing the edge until I've got a nice sheen all the way across the edge.  The wire edge doesn't always come completely off during this stage - that can also happen during the next, when I'm sharpening the main bevel on hard arkansas.  To show just how much there is at this point,  here you can see where I've removed it with my thumb.  The wire edge is actually relatively large - much larger than normal because of me chasing down the errant corner:

After the hard arkansas slip stone, I proceed on to the final polish using the hard white bench stone, but often the process isn't quite so linear.  I usually return to the slip during the final polish at least once, and usually a couple of times to "chase the burr" off of the edge. 

Final Polish

First, make sure you wipe the tool down to remove any of the contaminants from the previous stones - you don't want to add grit from those stones to your polishing stone and possibly ruin the edge.  Adding a few drops of honing oil to the finest stone, I repeat the stroke I was using with the India Stone, only this time on the Translucent White Stone.  Here's another graphic version of how to do that, one I've seen version of in many different books:

The top shows the first direction, and the bottom shows how to turn the gouge on the return stroke, obviously.  You start to see a polish develop on the face of the bevel, and the burr disintegrates and falls off - not always all at once, but a piece at a time, until it is completely gone.  Here, a nice shine has developed on the bevel:

The photo doesn't do it justice, but it's not a mirror shine either - that's really unnecessary as stropping will clean up the very edge for me in the next step.   You can also see the remnants of the wire edge on the left side of the gouge that still needs to be removed.  A little more work with the fine polishing, and most of the burr is gone, though you may still be able to feel just a little edge with your finger - that will be removed when you hone the edge with some leather.  Here's a shot of the opposite side at that point, showing the inner bevel I put on the edge with the slip stones:

A couple things to notice here - the first is that the edge is perpendicular to the axis of the tool, and remains so all the way to the corner.  The other thing is the corner itself - I've restored the right corner to closer to square - the one I was "chasing down" earlier - is not as rounded off as it was when I started sharpening this gouge.  A rounded off corner is best avoided, as the gouge will lose it's effectiveness working up to the edge and into corners of the wood.  Notice there is still the slightest radius, just enough to give the edge a little strength.  An absolutely perfect corner won't last long, as the weak point will simply break off almost immediately during use.  Now, the edge is ready for stropping.  

This is also the stage that forms the burr on the edge.  You can't really see this bur, but you can feel it...  run either your fingernail or your finger over the cutting edge (starting from the handle end) and you will feel it catch on the edge ever so slightly.  This edge will be removed by honing in the next step of the process.