In the interest of the Wreck tradition of sharing tales of misfortune, I'd like to inform those who are unaware why they call it the Scary Sharp(tm) method.
I got my Veritas jig, my granite, rigged up a clamping system because the only spray glue I could find is way too blobby (anyone want a mostly-full can of 3M headliner adhesive?) and set to work in earnest.
I never did get *all* the tool marks off the back, even after spending five hours on one plane iron, but I got it down to just a couple of big ones. I worked through the grits and built up the mirror shine. It's a mirror flawed by a couple of curvy lines (dammit!) but a mirror it is. (They're far enough back from the edge that it might take me years before I need to worry about it anyway.)
So then I started on the bevel. The Veritas jig set the angle to the original 25-degrees so precisely, that I had to get through five grits before I was convinced it was doing anything at all. It was indeed. This sure beats the hell out of trying to hold the angle by hand!
I got up to 1000, starting to mirror up nicely, and I prepared to change to
1200. I set the iron and jig aside, as I had done umpty previous times, but at that fateful moment I set it just a trifle too close to the edge of the workbench.It teetered, fell. As though it were a fragile egg, I reached out and cupped my hands to catch it.
I caught it.
Damn that was sharp! I hadn't even gotten all the way up to 2000 yet, but it was plenty sharp enough to separate skin cells and capillaries, driven by its own weight, and the weight of the jig.
When the edge plowed into the fat part of the base of my thumb in the palm of my left hand, I jerked back and sent the iron sailing...
Right across the shop and smack into my barrel full of metal windchime parts.
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!
As luck would have it, it hit copper, and evidently copper doesn't dent steel, even when hurled with some force. Phew!
So I got it sharp, set up the plane, and made shavings for an hour. I still have work to do on tuning this thing up methinks, but it sure is night and day compared to the factory edge.
I guess all's well that ends well, but I have a red 1.5" reminder of why they call it Scary Sharp(tm).