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Thread: Dry Hand Sharpening Methods

  1. #16
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    I stuck my Diamond plates to a piece of 3/4" plywood with a cleat on each end.
    It is a friction fit with my "low" bench.

    If I need better access to a plate, the board can be flipped end for end.

    Dunno about dry honing, I raise plenty of swarf with the soft steels I prefer.
    A dry plate would likely need cleaning, at some point - would it not?

    Even the hardest materials can glaze, and stop cutting.
    If the topmost layer is particles of the steel you hope to sharpen,
    won't the edge just skate, rather than abrade?

  2. #17
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    Jim,
    I am not sure why but I have not had the problem you mention with the Spyderco fine ceramic stones that I have used for several decades now. My white stones are a dull dark gray but they still seem to work well. Maybe the ceramic is so hard and compressed that the majority of the steel falls off? I soaked them in soapy water last night to see what would happen, no rust, still the same color.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    A plastic tub and a one gallon milk jug solve the no water in the shop problem for me.

    It is also easier to sharpen blades as they need it instead of waiting until they no longer cut. This is one of the love/hate situations with my Hock blades. They seem to keep cutting fairly well as the edge wears.

    My old way of doing things was to have multiple blades and change blades as they became dull. Then there would be the line up of tools to be sharpened. Now it seems a lot faster and easier to address the sharpening as a tool begins losing its edge. Especially in some of the soft woods used for my projects.

    My lathe tools and gouges tend to be sharpened on oil stones and the water stones are used for plane blades and chisels.

    jtk
    I should have said "sinkless shop", It's easy to get water like you said, but without a sink the mess drove me nuts. my shop is only 3.6X2.8 meters.

  4. #19
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    So, no glazing?

    I'm operating on conventional instuction,
    a liquid layer to keep the swarf floating off the surface.

    Where do you suppose the steel you've polished goes?

  5. #20
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    If it is working why would you want to change?

    I save grinding time by not using a micro bevel. A single bevel with sharpening as dullness is noticed keeps me going.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew N. Masail View Post
    I should have said "sinkless shop", It's easy to get water like you said, but without a sink the mess drove me nuts. my shop is only 3.6X2.8 meters.
    I have no sink, but my shop is bigger. In a small shop such as yours some other method would have to be found for a lot of my work. Though my previous shop wasn't much bigger there wasn't as much stuff in it either.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew N. Masail View Post
    I should have said "sinkless shop", It's easy to get water like you said, but without a sink the mess drove me nuts. my shop is only 3.6X2.8 meters.
    Me, too.

    Oil on diamond plates - no sink!

  8. #23
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    Amen Brother! this is what I'll have when I'm done:

    -Eze lap fine 6X2 (on it's way)
    -Vintge medium india hardly used (e-bay score on it's way from a well known seller)
    -Soft ark from natural whetstone 8X3 (just about fast enough to be a 1k if you keep it fresh with a mini dmt. wish it were 6X2)
    -Hard ark from natural whetstone 6X2 (a finer version than the soft, pores are smaller so it dosen't clog nearly as much as the soft, really nice stone)
    -Black ark from Dan 6 X 1 5\8 (2" wide would be nicer but it was cheap and fully useable for blades 2" wide)
    -Diamond lapping plate with 1micron diamond (the old plane casting I have is badly convex.. it's taking forever, if I could, I'd buy a LV plate)
    -Suehiro Dual stones 1k and 6k in 6X1 5\8 size. only 42$ shipped for the pair and I plane to make oil stone boxes for them. for the price I can't not try them.
    -Owyhee Jasper - I already have it but it's 1\4" thick so need to be glue to a stable piece of wood and them I need to lap out the milling marks.

    All of them no Water ! (-: now what to do with the Chosera 800 and 3000 bearly used...
    I also have a 10k Gokomyo, but that the finest water stone I have ever used, give a killer edge and cuts quickly, no loading, little sticking... I think I'll hold on to it for now.

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Koepke View Post
    I have no sink, but my shop is bigger. In a small shop such as yours some other method would have to be found for a lot of my work. Though my previous shop wasn't much bigger there wasn't as much stuff in it either.

    jtk
    Yeah I'm diffidently limited in such a small space. I'll have a bigger one in the future, but it is great for now. I don't think I'll ever used waterstones without a sink again though, it's just too much trouble.

  10. #25
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    Jim, I'm not sure why glazing is a factor with very hard media stones. It the abrasive is harder than steel it seems to me it will work through the steel. I can see why softer stones like my old King stones might clog with steel that might be as hard or harder than the abrasive. I'm not sure harder stones like Spydercos or diamond plates suffer from the same issues. Many of these stones, as I understand it, use some sort of binder or very high pressure and heat to hold the abrasive together. Why would it matter if small softer steel particles were on the top of the stone? If the abbrasive material was hard enough to remove the steel in the first place want it just continue to work? As I understand it many "water" stones are designed to make a slurry of abbrasive particles and softer material on the surface of the stone. Want the "slurry" carry metal particles in it? Isn't the slurry actually suppose to hold loose particles and improve speed?

    Granted the ground steel on the top of dry ceramic stones may be more fixed, but are we sure that fixing particles which are harder than steel in place with steel waste is a bad thing?

  11. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by george wilson View Post
    I only ever sharpened axes with a file. In Alaska I did quite a bit of that.

    Axes are fairly soft usually,and whacking them into bark,dirt and wood does their overly sharpened edges little good. Therefore,I found a an edge filed sharp was plenty good enough,and a lot faster than stoning them.
    Check that! Touche'

  12. #27
    My old shop was just as tiny and I used waterstones all the time. I had a table on one side and the bench at the other side. The table carried my sharpening station plus a tub with water to soak the stones. I had one of these things to spray water (forgot the English word) to clean tools in between stones, above the tub. And I had a bucket outside for flattening the stones with a dimanond hone.

    Now I just moved into a larger shop with a sink, and I find myself mightily attracted to oilstones. I am in the experimentation period yet.

  13. #28
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    My Spydercos arrived today - medium and ultra fine in 8x2". Each required about 10 minutes to flatten with a coarse diamond stone. I am pleased this does not have to be done again for a very long time, if at all!!

    They (plus a green compound strop) did a great job on the three chisels I threw at them: CPM-3V, PM-HSS, and PM-V11 ..... I wasn't messing about!

    Interesting times. Thanks for the heads-up George.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  14. #29
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    Derek, did your stones show some sort of saw or polishing marks in their surface? Mine seem to collect darker steel marks in a definable pattern on the top of the stone. I can't actually feel those marks in the surface but they show up when I work steel on them. I have not taken the time to "flatten" them yet. I have been wondering if they would work better if I removed whatever manufacturing marks are appearing in their surface.

  15. #30
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    Hi Mike

    I did not use the stones immediately. The first thing I did was to place a straight edge on the top. Both stones showed light at the centre - and the reverse on the other side, indicating a slight bend. Flattening with a coarse DMT (hey, its still working!) would have removed all manufacturers marks.

    I was concerned what the flattening might do to the performance of the stones. The extra fine stone feels surprisingly smooth to the touch. Yet both worked well on difficult steels. It occurred to me that further flattening may actually refresh the stones in the future, and I wonder if others have attempted this - George?

    From this brief encounter I cannot tell what grit equivalent the stones are. I recall David mentioned this, but I have forgotten - David, can you tell me once again?

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

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