Another Sharpening Post

[ken hatch]

I finished the bath Wall Cabinet and it is hung.

Work is insane, when between projects and tired from work like now my shop offers a sanctuary but little is done. Mostly I will spend my time sitting at the work bench holding tools, rearranging tools, and tool maintenance.

BTW, I've round heels when it comes to sharpening systems and am rarely a purest to any one way but lean towards use of natural stones.

Last night was one of those times but I had a little extra energy and as I've been thinking of adding Jnat stones to the mix I thought I would do an A/B test of diamond/oil stone/strop vs. Shapton ceramic stones. To make it interesting I used my normal freehand method on the oil stones and the new LN jig on the Shapton's. The irons were two 2" LV PM-v11, mounted in a LN #4 and a LV #4. While the test was purely subjective, I can say there was little to no difference in the shavings or the surface left. Effort to plane, again little difference but if I had to pick one I would pick the oil stone iron. That of course could just be my natural bias to oil stones. The "bing" of the bevel, the Shapton's win hands down, the Shapton's sure can polish iron. After many passes on some Cherry with each I looked at the edges through a 20X loop and the oil stone edge was still pristine, the Shapton, good but not perfect.

As I said: purely subjective, could the results be repeated by someone else....maybe, maybe not. Bottom line, I found it instructive and confirming my bias toward natural stones. AS always with anything wood....YMMV.

ken

[Brian Holcombe]

Interesting stuff, it's good to know that arkansas stones can cut PM-V11.

I've had a similar experience with regard to natural stones. Natural stones are composed of material slightly harder than fully hard steel where synthetics are composed of material much harder than steel. I suspect that is the reason that a natural stone estimated to be 8000~ grit will actually provide a nicer edge than a synthetic stone which is rated the same or higher.

[Jim Koepke]

One of my oilstones is a piece of jasper. It is amazing how fine a polish can be achieved with the jasper. It leaves less scratches than my 8,000 water stone.

jrk

[ken hatch]

Interesting stuff, it's good to know that arkansas stones can cut PM-V11.

I've had a similar experience with regard to natural stones. Natural stones are composed of material slightly harder than fully hard steel where synthetics are composed of material much harder than steel. I suspect that is the reason that a natural stone estimated to be 8000~ grit will actually provide a nicer edge than a synthetic stone which is rated the same or higher.

Brian,

I would not want to set the bevel on a PM-V11 iron with an Arkansas stone but once the bevel is set and there is a wire they work pretty good. I raise the wire with a diamond stone then use a soft Arkansas or Washita to "matt" the hard scratches left by the diamond stone. If I follow the soft stone with either a Translucent or Hard Black Arkansas to farther refine the matt surface and then strop to polish I end up, even on iron as hard as PM-V11, with a sharp, strong edge in less time than it took to type this.

I think you may be correct about the difference in hardness of the grit making a better edge. It could also be the effect of the grit not being uniform sized, kinda like the difference between a hand stitched rasp and a machine stitched one. What ever the reason there is a difference, one polishes one sharpens.

ken