Easiest Blade and Chisel Sharpening

[Rich C]

Do you have any evidence that everybody used them and didn't use water stones? Or is "everybody" in this context actually just "you"?

 

[D_W]

I've used waterstones and diamond plates for nearly forty years without any problem. Water stones? Why critcise something you've never used, anyway? Why even bother to comment on them/................The impression I got was that they endlessly need flattening and they are short lived. Also they involve water which causes rust and may be incompatible with woodwork itself, on site or on work bench. Are you sure you've been using them for 40 years I thought they were a relatively recent enthusiasm? Ditto diamond stones - 40 years ago they'd have cost a bomb.

I'd imagine that we have the japanese version of waterstones because their coarse natural stones stink. Yes, I have them. Both types. when you work wiht a good norton crystolon and india and go up from there in fineness if needed, you'll wonder why anyone ever needed waterstones in the first place (aside from a big format that's easy to use with guides). Nothing made in the world of japanese stones will cut consistently with a fresh crystolon in oil (fresh is more friable) simply because the coarse stones are the same thing as crystolon in japan, but water is an unsuitable carrier. They're generally faster than coarse diamond stones and more uniform at a given grit level, and won't care about soft metal (where as soft metal will pull diamonds off of electroplate).

However, if you grew up in japan sharpening hard chisels on what are essentially silica-based stones (the volcanic stones that japan is famous for - those have natural aluminum oxide in them - but they're mostly fine stones only - like 4k grit equivalent and up) .....anyway, if you grew up using those, you'd find a lot of favor in the synthetics, and they have to be a little bit soft if they're not fine and you're using them with water - water allows a coarse stone to load.

But the coarse work was still done with crystolon stones, even if they didn't use oil.

Diamonds are not a new thing, as folks are mentioning, but they are newly cheap in quantity in the last 15 years or so.

Waterstones don't need to be flattened unless they load - the fact that they're often a bit soft makes them pretty easy to keep flat by use only unless you're using a guide.

 

[Racers]

I would prefer to spill water on a piece of wood than oil, but I guess it's not just me that would have that opinion.

It's funny how some people readily believe the negative comments about something rather than the positive, I guess it fits their views, no point in questioning your self is their.

Pete

 

[Bm101]

Op has stated he's happy to have his issue resolved 10 odd posts ago. A good result for him because he doesn't want to flog a dead horse and is actually keen to get on with cutting wood now he can put an edge on steel. Yet here we are, still debating the ins and outs of ducks a*se. Again.
=D>

 

[Jacob]

Do you have any evidence that everybody used them and didn't use water stones? Or is "everybody" in this context actually just "you"?

Yes. I was there 50 odd years ago knocking around with woodworkers and other crafts people. 60 years if you count school woodwork. Norton (or other brand) double sided oil stone was near universal standard. Sharpening jigs were there but not common. Japanese waterstones were unknown.
It all kicked off in the 80s or later.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There's little wrong with oilstones, I just prefer water stones. If you use them a little carefully they don't hollow all that quickly and as Pete said - I'd sooner have a drop of water on my hands, tools or wood than a drop of oil. I have never had a spot of rust on anything.
Anyway I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this thread as it's always the same, just going around in circles.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Actually I did pick a very nice natural stone, harder than **** and very fine yesterday ....... for a quid.

 

[D_W]

There's little wrong with oilstones, I just prefer water stones. If you use them a little carefully they don't hollow all that quickly and as Pete said - I'd sooner have a drop of water on my hands, tools or wood than a drop of oil. I have never had a spot of rust on anything.
Anyway I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this thread as it's always the same, just going around in circles.

Your luck is better than mine, but in fairness, I didn't always end a shop session by wiping my tools. I live in an area that's dry in the winter, but above 63% relative humidity in the summer (especially because my shop is halfway underground, and thus cooler than the already humid outside air - increasing the RH).

Something rusts every year. If it's a chisel that I've sharpened in the last 6 months with an oilstone, then such a chisel will be safe. I'm not that bothered by rust, though - clean it off, use the tool. I started hand tool woodworking with the lie nielsen type plan. Brand new cast tools with bright fresh surfaces - a rust magnet. Waterstones, and camellia oil in a bottle. Eventually found that the oilstones will eliminate the need for camellia oil, and longer term rust prevention is far better undertaken with wax, and if very long term, a very light coat of shellac on milled surfaces. Wasted a lot of time wiping tools back then. A lot. Popular forum topic at the time, of course.

I sometimes forget how nice it is to wipe the oil off of a chisel at the end of the process (instead of the water) and be done with rust prevention.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Where I am atm the r.h. is 81%, which is quite low. Most days it's higher.

 

[Lons]

We sold DMT diamond as well as waterstones in the early eighties and from memory in reasonable quantities so there were enough customers around happy to pay even though they weren't cheap.

I also bought at the time as I got good discount though I might have got the combination waterstone free tbh and both are still in very good condition despite being regularly used. No rust either just as there isn't from my Tormek but then I do wipe tools religiously after sharpening.

As a hobby woodworker I'm not doing peacework so the alleged few minutes extra it takes is of absolutely no concern to me and possibly applies to a majority of users these days.

EDIT:
Whilst our showroom was open to the public the business was firmly aimed at local business and I had 2 reps covering those and the retail side was a small percentage of sales so it's unlikely many of our stones were private sales.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

... I do wipe tools religiously after sharpening.

That's what clothes are for.

 

[D_W]

Where I am atm the r.h. is 81%, which is quite low. Most days it's higher.

In the US, it's unusually for temperatures to be low enough to get RH that high. There's someone from memphis who peruses the forums who claimed 95 degrees and 90% humidity (which isn't actually possible - a 75 degree F dewpoint, which makes for extremely uncomfortable hand woodworking - results in an RH of about 50%. The 50% figure makes it sound tolerable, but it's not. If the temperture drops to 80, the dewpoint generally drops, too, unless it's raining or foggy here).

For you guys in the UK (where a farmer who came over here put it as "we don't have enough heat to grow corn"), I guess if you can get a dewpoint in the high 60s and temps in the mid 70s, you can get some high readings.

googlemonster says typical RH for london is 46-85% (another one says avg. 79.6 - appears to be dueling low-rent data websites), and states that UKers will come to the US and complain about the humidity in the south and midwest (even though it's numerically lower).

At any rate, outdoor humidity above 63% here is rare, but many of us have tools in basements and garages, and the temp drop provides the mechanism to initiate rust.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

88% now. I visited my sister in Auckland and commented that the humidity was 95%. Huh! she said - you should be here when it's high!

 

[D_W]

http://www.dpcalc.org/

This is pretty useful for finding RH at a given temperature.

I didn't follow at first that you're in NZ, but a view of the climate data on wiki suggests why your rates are so high - the average temperatures are fairly low - or I should say, very consistent. It's hard for people in the midwest and south to notice humidity too much at 75 degrees, except that magazines and newspapers and such get soft feeling. Being landlocked, as we are (most of us), the swings are extreme, and the result here is often that older English tools brought into the united states will crack in winter - something already apt to happen over time anywhere given that wood never springs back as far as it contracts, and even in favorable storage, will shrink over the years because of that.

Never considered it, but NZ would qualify as the land of rusty tools with low temps and high humidity like that. Tools don't last well here in most places, either, but at least they get a rest over the winter when the temp drops! (average dew point here in January is -18 degrees F, or very close to the same in C (a little bit more, I guess - maybe like -25C). Average in july is probably 60F, some stretches more favorable, and sometimes a week or so in the 70s for dewpoint - yucky combined with high temperatures. Now that society has gone soft, they tell people on the news not to go outside when it's above 90 with a dewpoint like that.

 

[AndyT]

Phil's in Cornwall. The old forum software displayed locations - now you have to click on a user's picture to see it.

 

[D_W]

As a hobby woodworker I'm not doing peacework so the alleged few minutes extra it takes is of absolutely no concern to me and possibly applies to a majority of users these days.

Indeed. I went bonkers over sharpening and getting as lazy as possible about it during the course of switching over to hand woodwork. I sometimes forget that quite a lot of the woodworking population doesn't finish with planes, nor do they do any rough work with planes, and they may sharpen something once every few shop sessions whereas I may work in the shop for two hours and sharpen something in heavy use every 20 minutes (more often if chopping with chisels).

 

[SammyQ]

Coming back from Agra to Delhi at midnight, motorway gantry sign said:

39°C, 100% humidity...

Daytime temps were 48°C or so and in the monsoon, we had small (1m across) clouds drift in through the open doorway of the hill station school I was working with. You wouldn't believe it unless you saw it. One colleague thought the local cook was spiking our meals with extra "herbs" ( marijuana is as common there as nettles are here).
Surface rust was everywhere as you might expect and the rickshaws ( tuk-tuks) structural integrity had to be carefully weighed up before embarking(!!). Yes, I know, thread drift, sorry.

Sam

 

[Phil Pascoe]

No, I'm in Cornwall. Our climate isn't unlike NZ, except we have a few days of frost and/or windchill in the winter that they tend not to have. Thankfully from a rust point of view there is only a few degrees variation over 24 hours, which is often about average - 6c to 10c atm - so unless you're providing intermittent heat rust isn't too much of a problem. Humidity is up to 91% tomorrow.

 

[D_W]

Coming back from Agra to Delhi at midnight, motorway gantry sign said:

39°C, 100% humidity...

Daytime temps were 48°C or so and in the monsoon, we had small (1m across) clouds drift in through the open doorway of the hill station school I was working with. You wouldn't believe it unless you saw it. One colleague thought the local cook was spiking our meals with extra "herbs" ( marijuana is as common there as nettles are here).
Surface rust was everywhere as you might expect and the rickshaws ( tuk-tuks) structural integrity had to be carefully weighed up before embarking(!!). Yes, I know, thread drift, sorry.

Sam

I'd imagine that india is terrible as far as dewpoint and humidity, but that sign was a bit of a ruse. It's suggesting a dewpoint that is 7 degrees F above the highest ever recorded anywhere on earth (95F is the highest ever recorded, or 35C)

 

[John Brown]

"In the US, it's unusually for temperatures to be low enough to get RH that high."
Confused.
My wife was raised in Spokane, WA.
Either they have much colder winters than we do, or her pants are on fire.