New Loupe

Woodcraft had a box of POS loupes out the other day. I'm a sucker for POS items because they are usually cheap and sometimes useful....many times a solution looking for a problem but what the heck, as I said I'm a sucker for 'em.

These loupes had LED lights for each lens and was marked 30X22mm and 60X12mm. I'm not sure if it is because of the LED lights or good optics but even the 60X12mm lens is useable. That isn't often the case.

I used the loupe, both lens, to check the bevel and back of a couple chisels I sharpened the evening before surgery. One chisel was a 18mm #1 White steel oire nomi, the other was a 1/2" Ashley Iles HC Steel traditional Western chisel. Both had the bevel set on Atoma diamond plates, then cleaned up on a JNat Tsushima Nagura and finished on a hard Aiiwatani Kiita.

When finished both the bevels and backs of the chisels showed a nice polished hazy finish (Kasumi finish) to the eye with the Japanese chisel showing good clean contrast between the Ha and Ji. Looking at the chisels with the loupe reviled the "why" of the hazy polished finish. Both bevel and back were free of linear polished scratches but displayed a very fine semi-matt finish and a beautiful smooth cutting edge with no nasty bits refracting light.


JNats may be slightly slower than the fastest synthetic water stones but to my eye the finish is much better and the stones need less maintenance. The only down side is the likely high entry cost and the development of JNatitis. A difficult and sometimes very expensive disease to cure.