Preferred set of water stones

[ruby50]

I have used them all over the years but have been using sandpaper on glass (thick scraps from a local glass fitter - part of a shower door before tempering I think) for 15 years now,. Works great, minimum mess. I am hard to buy Christmas gifts for, so I suggested a medium and super fine diamond plate and got them - they are fantastic, but I still find a quick session with 2000 grit on glass them a hone with green compound improves them. Still very quick and touchups are still done on the 2000 grit.

I have not tried the Spiderco except for the "files" for carving-type tools - they work well

Ed

[Quickstep192]

Originally Posted by ruby50

I have used them all over the years but have been using sandpaper on glass (thick scraps from a local glass fitter - part of a shower door before tempering I think) for 15 years now,. Works great, minimum mess. I am hard to buy Christmas gifts for, so I suggested a medium and super fine diamond plate and got them - they are fantastic, but I still find a quick session with 2000 grit on glass them a hone with green compound improves them. Still very quick and touchups are still done on the 2000 grit.

Ed

Are you honing with the green compound on the glass?

[ruby50]

I glued a piece of thick leather down to a pice of pine that I grab in my vise, then charge the leather and pull the tool over the surface. Be careful about pushing down hard as it is easy to dub the point

Ed

[M Hayden]

The Makita 9820 wet grinder with 1000 grit water stone wheel does a great job. It handles the basic flattening and some degree of sharpening.

The Spyderco sharpmaker is, like a steel, useful for keeping knives sharp between major sharpening.

[ruby50]

I posted a question about the Spiderco ceramic stones on a woodworking forum that I frequent. Got a hit from on of the members who sold them for years:

"I used to sell these Spyderco stones at wood shows for many years, probably since the 90's or late 80's. until we retired about ten years ago. As far as I am concerned you can't buy better. The best way to use them is stroking the edge parallel to the length of the stone. I always put my finger nail on the stone and hold the blade between my finger and my thumb so that the bevel is flat on the stone then stroke back and forth the full length of the stone. Won't hurt your finger nail.This is how you sharpen chisels and end cutting blades such as plane irons etc. By doing it this way you eliminate getting a rounded end on the blade keeping it straight and square. No jigs to set up, quick and easy. Of course you hold it flat on the stone for honing the bur of the back still stroking the same way. For knives you basically hold them by the handle stroking lengthwise maintaining the bevel angle you want. As a matter of fact I usually use the side of the stone for knives holding the stone upright on end at an angle, flat towards you, and swinging the stone left and right according to the bevel you want and giving a couple of strokes pulling the blade across the corners or edge of the stone until you get the edge you want. I demonstrated this for about 30 years.

For cleaning the stone wet it, sprinkle some cleansing powder on it and use a scotchbrite pad and some water and it will clean up like new again.

I even use mine to hone carbide router bits etc."

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by ruby50

By doing it this way you eliminate getting a rounded end on the blade keeping it straight and square.

Thanks for the insight into Spiderco.

As an aside, the edges of a straight plane blade used on a smoothing plane leave "plane tracks" when smoothing a surface. For that reason a slight camber is given across the width of the blade "feathering" the edges. If one is finishing straight off the plane, no sandpaper or scraping, this becomes important.

[Bill Kraus]

An update;
Due to the fact that I was happy with every aspect of using water stones, with the exception of my brand of stones dishing out very quickly, I decided to stick with water stones. I went to my local woodworking store and bought a Norton stone, along with a Norton water stone flattener. When I arrived back to my shop I quickly pulled out my new acquisitions and got to work. You can imagine my disappointment when I found that my new flattening stone was not flat. When I say not flat, I mean NOT EVEN NEARLY FLAT. When I say NOT EVEN NEARLY FLAT, I mean that with a Starrett straight edge it was off by nearly 1/16" over the 9" length of the stone. You could see the curvature by sighting down the edge. To make matters worse, it was a convex curve on the working edge, making flattening it that much harder. I decided to go to work trying to rectify this situation with some coarse sandpaper on a granite surface plate. One hour and four sheets of sandpaper later I was still working to get the thing flat, when I decided I should not have to put this much time into a poor product. I can see a few thousands out of flat, but this was a bit much. A quick Google search brought up many complaints of this product not being flat. Looks like I'm back to sandpaper on a surface plate for flattening. Thanks to all for the advice!

[nikpearson]

If you use abrasive papers on glass the. You might be interested in what I think is a better variation on this theme.

3M make a range of lapping films, basically very precisely graded abrasives on a synthetic, self-adhesive backing. Mounted to a piece of float glass these give you a guaranteed flat surface and can produce the finest of finishes. They were developed for polishing optics I believe.

I normally use a 40 micron, 30 micron, 9 micron, and 3 micron sheet. Coarser grits up to 100 microns and finer ones down to 0.3 microns are available. The sheets are more expensive than typical abrasive papers but I’ve been using a set for the last 12 months so they last well if you’re careful

Water stones cut a little quicker but are so messy and need flattening all the time. I have a set of Shapton glass stones which I like for their speed but they are still a little messy and require flattening every few uses. Both of these stones require something to level them which adds to the cost. I have a couple of coarse DMT diamond stones for grinding new primary bevels and flattening the Shaptons. They are flat and cut well but a full set is expensive and I’m never quite convinced the finest stones give quite such a good edge.

And finally I polish every edge on a homemade strop, one side with green honing compound, the other left bare. This produces the very sharpest of edges and can also be used to bring back an edge several times before rejoining is needed.

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by Bill Kraus

...Looks like I'm back to sandpaper on a surface plate for flattening.

Or use another 1000 grit water stone. Or use a diamond stone. Or both. I've found either work very well.

[tadol]

Thats what we found many years ago - the King stones needed flattening frequently, but they were really easy to flatten. They especially needed it because we were teaching sharpening, and it takes a while to develop a decent technique - but the harder water stones were too often not flat and were almost impossible to get flat. At that time, diamond stones were fairly new, and many of those were not as flat as one wanted, but most of the ones I've seen recently seem pretty good -

The Maklta wet grinder is awesome, but only does a flat grind - I'm intrigued with the Tormek, and would love to try one, but the price seems pretty excessive -

[Howard Klepper]

You can't make a flat surface by abrading or filing it with another flat surface. You will end up creating a convex surface, because humans are not able to draw or push a tool perfectly level and with perfectly even pressure. This is why a "flat" file is not flat, but slightly convex (tapering in thickness). It is used for flattening, and can't do that job without being convex.

You can come closer bringing the surface that is to be flattened to a larger flat cutting surface than you can by bringing a flat cutting surface to the object that is to be flattened. But to create a really flat surface, you need to bring a convex cutting surface to it to bring down its high areas, and constantly check with a straightedge to see where it needs work. Ultimately, it needs to be tested against a flat surface plate with some kind of marking pigment if you seek really really flat.

The Norton flattening stones get bad reviews for a variety of reasons, but to do their job they should be slightly convex.

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by tadol

I'm intrigued with the Tormek, and would love to try one, but the price seems pretty excessive -

I have a Tormek that is used mostly for the odd contours of lathe turning tools. It works well for those. Otherwise, I don't use it. I find it slow and it doesn't get tools as sharp as other means. Sharp enough, but not as sharp. For chisels and planes, it is near the bottom of the options I would choose.

Jet makes a knock-off machine for a fraction of the price. Reviews suggest that it is as good as the Tormek.

[Carey]

Originally Posted by Bill Kraus

An update;
Due to the fact that I was happy with every aspect of using water stones, with the exception of my brand of stones dishing out very quickly, I decided to stick with water stones. I went to my local woodworking store and bought a Norton stone, along with a Norton water stone flattener. When I arrived back to my shop I quickly pulled out my new acquisitions and got to work. You can imagine my disappointment when I found that my new flattening stone was not flat. When I say not flat, I mean NOT EVEN NEARLY FLAT. When I say NOT EVEN NEARLY FLAT, I mean that with a Starrett straight edge it was off by nearly 1/16" over the 9" length of the stone. You could see the curvature by sighting down the edge. To make matters worse, it was a convex curve on the working edge, making flattening it that much harder. I decided to go to work trying to rectify this situation with some coarse sandpaper on a granite surface plate. One hour and four sheets of sandpaper later I was still working to get the thing flat, when I decided I should not have to put this much time into a poor product. I can see a few thousands out of flat, but this was a bit much. A quick Google search brought up many complaints of this product not being flat. Looks like I'm back to sandpaper on a surface plate for flattening. Thanks to all for the advice!

I hear you. Since you still like to use waterstones- I do too, not having found
anything I clearly prefer to them- I'll mention again that the Atoma diamond
plates are good for flattening. I bought one of their 1200 plates, which was
slightly convex along its length, and then ordered a 600 replacement
sheet on ebay to put on the other side of the aluminum substrate of the Atoma,
after flattening its surface on my surface plate, which did not take too long;
maybe ten minutes. So now I have a seriously flat 600 side, and a slightly
convex 1200 surface. This works pretty well, FWTW.

Adding: I forgot to mention the noticeable advantage of the Atoma compared to other diamond plates (other than cutting like
a demon): the placement of the diamonds is such that it grabs and sticks much less than the more-or-less continuous
diamond surfaces. If you ever try, say, a Shapton stone on a DMT diamond plate, you'll quickly see what I mean.