Sharpening Stones

Re: Sharpening Stones

William Duffield, on the Cohansey


>If you sprung for the Norton waterstones, why not spring for the Norton stone flattening stone?

OTOH, it has been reported, by Neanderthals whose opinions I respect, that a concrete block works just fine for this purpose. And, it's a lot cheaper than the Norton stone flattening stone flattening stone that you need if you abuse your Norton stone flattening stone, the care and proper use of which you are only taught in the advanced course.

Personally, I use a coarse DMT diamond stone to flatten my Arkansas oil stones, when they (rarely) need it. A bit of stone dish is actually helpful if you are sharpening your planes blades with a camber, or you can by an Odate cambered blade sharpening diamond stone if you can't manage to maintain the appropriate amount of dish in your water stones.

You don't wnat to ruin a cast iron surface plate by grinding it out of flat with abrasive worn off of a waterstone. A granite surface plate is cheaper than an antique cast iron surface plate. In either case, you probably want to use the surface plate for reference flatness, and some sandpaper stuck to it with surface tension to do the actual lapping, and to keep the abrasives from abrading the reference surfaces.

Re: Sharpening Stones

thomd coralseacat@yahoo.au


>The simplest method is if your base stone is like 800, buy another 800, even if it's a King to your norton (to save money). If they are flat to start with just rub them together every so often to keep them flat then rube on up the line the 800 does the 1200, the 1200 does the 4000. It really doesn't mater what the jumps are. You will hear some quibbles about doing this based on contaminating the finish stones, but I haven't had that problem and this is a traditional method and is used by some tremendous workers. It works great and reduces the overall clutter level.

There are pure ceramic flatening stone but I have asked a number of importers, and never got a terribly positive answer or been warned off relative to flatness. You can use diamond stones, but it wears them out.

If you find yourself dishing the middle of your stone just make a habit of never sharpening there. Better sharpeners tend not to get sa much wear, and there is not way to wear the stone evenly without doing some odd patterns over the stone like around the edge half on and half off, etc...

Re: Sharpening Stones

Edward in Vancouver


>Easist and nastiest way of flattening stones is to use a sheet of glass and 80 grit silicone carbide. Glass is cheap, but willwear out very quickly. LV sells the little vials of silicone carbide and plastic sheets to cover the glass so the silicone carbide beds down easy and the glass doesn't wear out so fast.

Re: Sharpening Stones

Bob Hackett


>Drywall sanding mesh backed up by thick plate glass works for me.

MB

Re: one question

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI


>oil stones or water stones? These are two very different stones, and the method for flattening will depend very much on which stone it is. Oil stones are much harder than water stones.

Re: Sharpening Stones

Friedrich Kollenrott


>Hello Ron,

i flatten my waterstones on corrugated clinkers (bricks baked of clay). They are initially flattened and later kept flat easily by lapping them against each other (it takes three, but thats no problem because they are cheap). One big advantage is: The waterstones wear not more than necessary in the flattening process and consequently last longer.

If you happen to understand a litte German, you find it in chapter 10 of my sharpening tutorial:

http://www.woodworking.de/schaerfprojekt/schaerf2.html

if not (i'm afraid thats the more likely case) I can give some more explanations, but not at the moment, I'm about to start into a weekend tour and my wife is waiting.

Friedrich Kollenrott, Extertal (Germany)

Re: Sharpening Stones

Bruce, a MN Galoot


>me, too. I got a half-inch slab of glass at a garage sale, and I'm good to go. Be sure to keep the stone wet. It levels much more easily.

Bruce

Me three...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA


>I just throw it on my table saw and do them dry.

Re: Me three...

thomd coralseacat@yahoo.au


>do you use the combo blade for that?

Re: one question *LINK*

Ronald Dean


>Water stones, I find that oil stones are just too messy.

I've seen a Shapton iron lapping plate, that I thought was what I needed, but now I�m not sure. Is there an advantage to using this thing, or is it for something other than regular sharpening stones?

Thanx

Ron


Shapton lapping plate

Naaa, A dado ;^)

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

Re: Sharpening Stones

Dave Thompson


>Friedrich,

It looks like a very nice site. I wish I could read German. I tried the Internet translator (Alta vista babelfish), but they seem to have some software bugs.

Anyway, nice photos. This one in particular, I thought was a good indicator of the content:

It certainly doesn't get any better than that.

Re: Sharpening Stones

Tony - Memphis


>Those Nortons are really nice stones. I bought a set after using them in a class. I just slapped some sandpaper on a piece of 1/4" glass and went at it. It only took a couple of minutes. I used wet/dry paper. I bought the glass for a few dollars at the glass store. Seems like I used 220 grit paper. I flattened the coarse stone first. Don't make it more costly or complicated than it needs to be!

Tony