Flattening a Hard Silicon Carbide Honing Stone

[Phil Pascoe]

http://www.axminster.co.uk/india-oilstone-ax822726

Ours are a little more expensive than yours. I don't know I'd ruin a diamond on one though.

 

[Trafalgar]

I guess these have to be imported then. Nobody in the UK making stones? I never imagined that. Sounds like a business opportunity.

 

[bugbear]

I guess these have to be imported then. Nobody in the UK making stones? I never imagined that. Sounds like a business opportunity.

There are many differences between the UK and the USA Charlie Boy. It's one of the reasons we bother having a UK forum. :lol:

BugBear

 

[memzey]

Norton used to have a factory in Welwyn Garden City (not far from where I live). Not sure if they still do though. Doubt it. Also I thought the SiC ones were grey/black? Aren't indias something else?

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Yes, India stones are aluminium oxide.

Mike.

 

[Trafalgar]

I guess these have to be imported then. Nobody in the UK making stones? I never imagined that. Sounds like a business opportunity.

There are many differences between the UK and the USA Charlie Boy. It's one of the reasons we bother having a UK forum. :lol:

BugBear

Well of course...

On a pricing note -- I guess unless DMTs are made in the UK then they are proportionally more expensive as well?

 

[Trafalgar]

Norton India stones slightly less than $20 each over here for the big, but thinner stones:

https://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Nort ... 23C25.aspx

India Combo stones in the traditional 8x2x1 size -- $22

https://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Nort ... 69C25.aspx

Strops and strop dressings and abrasives:

https://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Strops-C11.aspx

 

[Jacob]

There's someone who agrees with Jacob in my area - I found a boxed stone this morning at the market that was over 1/2" hollow. :shock:
Charles, I don't use oilstones only waterstones but as my mother used to say when getting me to hoover or do the ironing as a child - pay attention to the edges and the corners and the middle will get done. It's years since I flattened one.

Old used stones are always hollow (or at least, not perfectly flat), just as old chisels/plane irons always have rounded bevels. That's how it was done, with no problems.

Nobody bothered with flattening until the new sharpening came along to make things difficult - the main motivation being the opportunity to sell loads of kit, DVDs , courses, articles.
As you say; "pay attention to the edges and the corners and the middle will get done".

 

[essexalan]

Never bought an old chisel or plane iron that had either a flat back or bevel in fact a lot of them looked like a train wreck. Rather than try to imitate the original owners methodology I flatten the backs and set the bevel how I like it. Nothing better than an SiC brick for this job and I like my stones flat so the OPs method of flattening SiC stones is what I personally use. It is quick, inexpensive and flattening stones takes one more variable out of my sharpening process. Naniwa sell a large range of SiC stones and they are far cheaper than what Norton offer.

 

[woodbrains]

Old used stones are always hollow (or at least, not perfectly flat), just as old chisels/plane irons always have rounded bevels. That's how it was done, with no problems.

Nobody bothered with flattening until the new sharpening came along to make things difficult - the main motivation being the opportunity to sell loads of kit, DVDs , courses, articles.
As you say; "pay attention to the edges and the corners and the middle will get done".

Hello,

How does anyone know if they had problems or not? We find lots of tools with rounded backs, rounded bevels, skewed edges and drawn temper. Strangely, blades all near full length, having done little work. Perhaps there were lots of problems and the owners just gave up. There can be no link made between the virtually unused second hand tools we find and any woodwork we see from the same era. The tools that did fine antique work would have been worn to death and then thrown away.

If 'paying attention to the edges and the centre will look after itself' was a widely used tequnique, or was one that actually worked, why are all second hand stones dished?

If craftsmen of yesterday year were often illiterate, bathed once a week and died of consumption before their children were adults, why would we emulate anything from the past. Thank the Lord things have improved.

Mike.

 

[ED65]

Well this is going to cause the vein in someone's forehead to start throbbing but I've gone to the trouble of flattening an SiC stone that cost me nothing at all. It was heavily dished on both sides when it came to me and required substantial effort to sort out. Why bother? Well I was brought up not to waste perfectly good stuff if some elbow grease and a bit of time would sort it out.

If your priorities are different that's fine, but please don't pontificate to us who have a different set.

I would however be in favour of spreading the notion that you don't need to spend much to do this kind of thing. The first few times I flattened stones I used a concrete block and I've read numerous posts from guys who use the pavement outside their house.

 

[Trafalgar]

I think I'll darn some old socks today. Now, where's that darn darning needle.... :wink:

Hopefully I'll get it done before I stroke out...

 

[Trafalgar]

Well this is going to cause the vein in someone's forehead to start throbbing but I've gone to the trouble of flattening an SiC stone that cost me nothing at all. It was heavily dished on both sides when it came to me and required substantial effort to sort out. Why bother? Well I was brought up not to waste perfectly good stuff if some elbow grease and a bit of time would sort it out.

If your priorities are different that's fine, but please don't pontificate to us who have a different set.

I would however be in favour of spreading the notion that you don't need to spend much to do this kind of thing. The first few times I flattened stones I used a concrete block and I've read numerous posts from guys who use the pavement outside their house.

The point of course is not to ruin a $150 stone repairing a $40 stone (pick/apply an exchange rate as it suits). Obviously a concrete block, assuming it works, is vastly preferable. Synthetic oilstones here are very cheap and if fault is found with one it really is easier just to get a new one. That said, they'll easily last an entire career with a minimum amount of care in use.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I heard this tip about using concrete blocks, paving etc to flatten a stone. I tried it out on a Norton India oilstone I have which was dished in both directions, by rubbing it on a hard concrete paving slab. No discernable impact on the stone within the sort of timescale I'm willing to spend. Instead I made some improvement with judicious use of a carborundum wheel dressing stick, like this one. But only after a soak in paraffin, to avoid the stick getting gummed up with the oil.

 

[swagman]

I will get straight to the point and not skirt around the perimeters of nicety; I think both Jacob and Charles need to re evaluate the reasons they joined this forum.

ED65 couldn't have stated it any better; If your priorities are different that's fine, but please don't pontificate to us who have a different set.

Stewie;

 

[Trafalgar]

I heard this tip about using concrete blocks, paving etc to flatten a stone. I tried it out on a Norton India oilstone I have which was dished in both directions, by rubbing it on a hard concrete paving slab. No discernable impact on the stone within the sort of timescale I'm willing to spend. Instead I made some improvement with judicious use of a carborundum wheel dressing stick, like this one. But only after a soak in paraffin, to avoid the stick getting gummed up with the oil.

I've certainly never done it and using a concrete building block, paver, etc. almost seems an urban legend at this point. It does come across as a bit improbable as the stones could be of a material harder than the block resulting in the block wearing down faster than the stone, the result of which would be a very large investment in time and possibly concrete blocks as the process interrupts their flatness which is supposedly serving as a reference surface. I'm guessing it would be a day-long lollipop but don't intend to find out.

When I used sandpaper on glass I could easily walk out of an auto parts store having spent more to replenish an inventory of paper than a stone would have cost, maybe even two if somebody were running a special. The point being is that it is not outside the bounds of reason to view stones as practically disposable with the caveat of course is that they can last years and years. I've never understood the appeal behind buying a used man-made stone given the prices of new ones, at least in the US.

Participants have objected to it having been pointed out that ruining an expensive stone to flatten a much cheaper stone makes little sense. I don't really know how to react to this other than by saying what I've already said and I stand by it: I'm comfortable that the vast majority of people, assuming they understand the price of stones, would not ruin an expensive diamond stone trying to flatten an inexpensive silicon carbide stone. In theory, the diamond would work great since it's harder than SiC. but the problem is that the binders and other materials to which the diamonds are affixed are much less robust than the SiC, hence the diamonds just fall off. Perhaps they can be recovered, and used loose, to finish the project. All in all it still seems ridiculous on its face. If this is 'pontificating' then so be it.

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Advocating the continuance of the disposable society, given the state of the planet, seems a bit odd, to say the least. Perhaps we should darn our socks, too. In fact if socks weren't made in the Far East by slave labour and seen as disposable, we would all be darning our socks, patching or knees etc, but then I suspect the American textile industry is as none existant and the British one, as no one wanted to pay the higher price for home manufactured goods and mend them.

Mike.

 

[Trafalgar]

I still have the first oilstones I ever bought, they're quite old at this point. I'm not advocating anything other than common sense. If one wanted to live an almost totally self-sufficient existence it's probably still possible to a large extent. Hat's off to anybody who wants to try such a thing.

 

[JohnPW]

I prefer a flat stone.

Oil stones like a Norton might be cheap enough in the US for them be viewed as a disposable item but In the UK they are £30 (about $ 36 US) as mentioned already. Plus the fact that people in the UK are on average less well off than Americans in buying power, a new Norton oilstone is definitely not cheap in the UK.

I've read about rubbing on concrete or tarmac etc to flatten but isn't silicon carbide or alu oxide much harder, so I had my doubts. But how about rubbing two dished stones together? Or using a bench grinder to flatten?

 

[memzey]

I have picked up a number of old oilstones at boot fairs for between 50p and £1 a pop over the past few years. They were all dished in the same way which never really caused me a problem if I'm honest but being the gullible newb I am I thought they needed to be flat anyway. I just rubbed them against each other until one was flat and went with that. Turns out they both ended up flattish which may have been a happy fluke. It made no difference to their use although I will say they cut more aggressively for a while which I assume was down to crud infested bits falling off during the flattening. Would I waste my time doing it again? Nah, but if another woodworker feels that's the right thing for them to do then I'm ok with that