FedX arrived with lots of fun today

Re: FedX arrived with lots of fun today

Bart Leetch

>What no hand sharpeners on a hand tool forum. Guess I'll have to shop around on another forum to find some.

So what's the white plate...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA

>next to the stone pond? Is that diamond powder on top of it?

Don't worry there are plenty of hand sharpeners here, their just shy.;^)

Re: So what's the white plate...

Bart Leetch

>Scott

That is 90 grit Silicon Carbide used on top of a protective thin piece of PVC that is moistened & placed on top of a piece of tempered glass that came with the pond which fits inside the lip of the pond used to lap the stones flat & then a thin plastic cover came with it to top it off when not in use.

Skip using the grit on the stones

Jim in Burlington On

>I save the grit for plane bottoms. Much prefer to glue wet dry paper onto the glass sheet. Sharpening is such a zen thing you couldn't enjoy tv at the same time:)

Re: flattening stones

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>Water stones or oil stones, Bart? I like my water stones because I know they are easy to keep flat. I have purchased some dished oil stones at flea markets and such thinking I could figure out a way to flatten them without spending weeks but have not yet done so. The 90 grit silicone carbide may be a big help. I could put it on top of a plastic laminate peice and set it on a glass plate. I have some fine oil stones purchased on the cheap that would be nice if I could find a reasonably easy way to dress the top. I find the silicone carbide paper I purchase locally will hardly touch the hard oil stones; I can remove a little bit of material in a long while but that is it. I'm thinking maybe a mill used to flatten steel might be the way to go?

Re: flattening stones

Bruce, a MN Galoot

>A bunch of years ago, my brother gave me his Norton Multistone, a trifecta of oilstones mounted in a triangular holder that rotates through an oil bath. He's a chef and had no need to keep the stones flat at all. Indeed, there was as much as an 1/8" dish on the coarse and medium stones, both sides.

Dished as badly as they were, they were just about useless, so I tried everything that anyone suggested: concrete block, brick, sandpaper on glass, my garage floor. They all worked a little bit, but the going was so slow that I gave up on those methods and the stones. Then one day I came across a POS oilstone that my dad had left. It was junk because it was so soft it virtually disintegrated every time I tried to sharpen something.

That was the ticket. The combination of that soft, junk stone against the harder norton stones had those suckers flat in no time flat.

Bruce

Re: flattening stones

ThomD

>Also if it terribly dished you can reduce a lot of the material witha stone chisel.

Long before you guys were born

Henthorn

>I read where a guy tied a cord around his stone and then hooked it up behind his kids tricycle. In those days before television and when radio was new there wasn't a lot for kids to do. So they rode tricycles, made soap box racers using buggy wheels and skooters out of skate wheels and the like. They spent a lot of time riding and racing. The kid pulled the stone for several days and it was perfectly flat.