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Jez

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are these sharpening stones any good ?

http://www.axminster.co.uk/recno/4/prod ... -19634.htm

http://www.axminster.co.uk/recno/5/prod ... -20288.htm
(6000 grit)

Although Rob Cosmon uses an 8000, do i really need an 8000 grit or will a 6000 grit do ? since theres a big leap in price and im on a budget :x

I plan on buying two of the 1200 grit, to flatten the stones inbetween use.
Or should i wait and buy some Norton stones, these will be my first stones as collages stones (oil stones) have huge gouges in the middle :lol:

cheers,
Jez
 
I can't comment on the King stones as I've never used them but they look good value for money. I'm probably going to get a 6000 or 8000 King stone at some point, so I'll let you know if you don't get one before I do.

I've got a Norton 1000/4000 combination waterstone and I think it is really good.
 
If on a budget, I would suggest,

King800 essential
King 1200
King 6,000 + Nagura £1-60 which is not included.

as I am not fond of combination stones, too easy to pick up grit on the polishing stone when using the other side. Also one side needs soaking whilst the other does not.

best wishes,
David Charlesworth
 
Jez
How about this?
Will get you started nicely-you'll be amazed how keen an edge you can achieve :shock: Good value, too.
Cheers
Philly :D
 
Philly":a43pbhk1 said:
Jez
How about this?
Will get you started nicely-you'll be amazed how keen an edge you can achieve :shock: Good value, too.
Cheers
Philly :D

and a 1200 king to flatten with ? :eek:

thanks everyone for helping a noobie :D

cheers,
Jez
 
Jez":3ices14c said:
Philly":3ices14c said:
Jez
How about this?
Will get you started nicely-you'll be amazed how keen an edge you can achieve :shock: Good value, too.
Cheers
Philly :D

and a 1200 king to flatten with ? :eek:

thanks everyone for helping a noobie :D

cheers,
Jez

Or for flattening you could use wet & dry on a piece of glass or other flat surface. Axminster also sell the Ice Bear ceramic flattening stone, which might be useful for the coarser stone. Think it's only about £7 odd
 
I consider the King waterstones excellent value for money. As David recommended, the Triumpherate are the 800, 1200 and 6000/8000.

While I would always go for the 8000 over the 6000 if funds permit, the 6000 will work VERY well if you follow either or both these two rules:
(1) Use a nagura stone to create a slurry. Work with this slurry wet at first then, as you believe you are near the end of the polishing segment, continue to polish without water (i.e. the stone is dry-ish). At this point the grit will have broken down further and the parrticles will be finer.
(2) Rub a little Veritas green rouge (like a crayon) on a piece of MDF (my preference is a strop made of chamois leather contact glued to flat hardwood). This wil take the edge to .5 microns (8000 waterstone is 1.2 microns).

If you were to omit a waterstone (not ideal), then you could get by without the 1200 before the 800 - but you will work very much harder with the 6000. You will not like this. Or you could use sandpaper instead of the 800 and use the 1200/6000 combination. But I do not see the advantage in mixing sharpening methods. It is so much easier when there is consistency.

Forget buying a second 1200 to flatten the stones. 220 drywall (plasterboard) mesh on a flat surface is cheap and more reliable.

Use a honing guide. Not only does this make the process of repeatability more likely, but it ushers in the opportunity for microbevels - and this makes it possible to jump grits (say 800 directly to 6000) since the amount of metal to be removed is so much less.

I agree with David, combination waterstones are to be avoided. Grits of 3000 and below are traditionally kept submerged in water, while those above are stored dry. Storing a 1000/6000 stone in water will lead to the 6000 half being contaminated by the 1000 half.

One other place to save money is to make rather than buy a stone holder. This is easy enough. Do a search here for my "waterstone board".

Regards from Perth

Derek
 
The King brand 8000 grit is a great stone and cuts very fast considering it's grit size. I haven't used the 6000 but it's probably very good, as Derek states just finish off with honing compound.
My sharpening procedure is to hollow gring with a 120 grit hand crank grinder
and then move directly to the 8000 grit waterstone, absolutely nothing inbetween; which is some testament as to how well the waterstone cuts.
 
Help... I hear people so often speak, even with enthusiasm, about 'drywall (plasterboard) mesh' or similar.

Can some please let me have a link where this is described... at best with pictures for construction-dummies like me.

-gerard-
 
Gerard

Plasterboard (drywall) mesh in 220 grit is available from most hardware stores. It looks like this...

Pictures of my waterstone board. Mesh on the left.

waterstoneboardWC.jpg


And a close up:

Waterstoneboarddetails.jpg


It is designed to be clamped onto a sander. Here I have clamped down only the one side, which allows you to swab up the water/mud that will collect underneath.

The mesh is flat and stiff. I have only had good experiences with it. ... use David's technique of scribbling lines on the stone before sanding it back (face down).

Regards from Perth

Derek
 
Gerard,

I have bought Plasterboard (drywall) mesh in a B&Q warehouse. I have an old water stone but have not tried using it yet. Still waiting for the tuit. :oops: :roll:
 
Aha... so this mesh is something that a plasterer would use in a sander to 'smooth' off the intersections(?) between sheets of gypsum plaster boards? Or is it something incorporated into the wall during construction?

Sorry to be so dumb about this, but my experience (as an engineer) has shown that it is often the best thing to ask such naieve questions, so that all may synchronise their knowlege based on a common ground of facts.

-gerard-... who is wondering what drywall mesh is called in german?

Btw... I myself use stones, from a skip in the stone masons yard around the corner, to flatten my sharpening stones. That is one of the (few) advantages of living close to a snobby graveyard, where people erect THEE MOST POMPOUS mauseleums(?) to their beloveds... ones with several rooms for prayer, and for dining while remembering the dead (macabre). Is there such a thing as a snobby graveyard for the dead?... or is it rather for the living?
 
Jez - lots of good info here on waterstones, but in my view are not suitable for student use (I make the assumption that you are at college). They are incredibly messy things to use and as Mr C has mentioned in F&C, they require ideally a permanent set up with a sink and running water to boot, not something you can easily do at college - I know, I've been there. In addition, they are very easily 'dished' unless you are very carefull and are quite fragile, making them susceptible to damage. If your college is anything like mine was, you need to throw all your kit and cr*p into a toolbox at the end of the day and shove it under the bench till the next workshop session: no, waterstones in that environment are just not practical.
What I would seriously look at is the diamond option. DMT stuff is expensive but Axminster do their own for about £10 each - not the same quality of diamond as the DMT, granted, but enough to get you started. Also buy the honing guide (Eclipse clone) and DC modify it. Second and foremost, go to your local friendly cobblers shop and scav a smallish piece of supple leather for a strop. Glue the leather to a piece of mdf and dress it with Starmax jewellers rouge (available from Axminster) and vaseline, work into a smooth paste and rub well in. This will give a fantastic edge which you will find difficult, for the price, to better.
Finally, make yourself a small honing gauge for use with the guide for accurately setting the honing angle each time (looks like a small bench hook - there was a very good post on the forum recently) - Rob
 
CONGER":2n9t1z1l said:
Aha... so this mesh is something that a plasterer would use in a sander to 'smooth' off the intersections(?) between sheets of gypsum plaster boards?
I think so. Dunno if it helps, but the stuff I got was packed like this.

Rob makes a good point there - could be a bit of a 'mare. With regard to the college's oilstones, I noticed the chaps as the Falmouth Marine School at Axminster last year were mentioning their college "stones" were diamond as everything else went out-of-true with numerous different hands using them. Pretty forward-thinking for an educational establishment I thought.

Cheers, Alf
 
thanks alot for all the great info :D

Woodbloke - I was not going to take these stones to collage, i have a Norton medium oil stone which i take to collage and then i touch it up on collages fine oil stone.

i was planning on sharpeneing my tools before i went to collage with the water stone and then maintaining them with the oil stone at collage.
I wanted to buy some more some stones for my new workshop which will be finished soon (hopfully) :x

about the slurry, do you wipe it off after each use and then use the nagura stone again everytime you use it ?

cheers,
Jez
 
CONGER":3loq9tdq said:
Aha... so this mesh is something that a plasterer would use in a sander to 'smooth' off the intersections(?) between sheets of gypsum plaster boards?

Yes. It is a a bit like wet and dry sandpaper except the abrasive is bonded to a flyscreen like mesh instead of a sheet of paper.
 
Here are a few pictures of a waterstone/sharpening board I made. I also use the drywall mesh for flattening my stones.

I used to sharpen my chisels and plane irons with the waterstone just sitting on the bench and I would flatten the stones using wet or dry sandpaper stuck to a plate of float glass. I have found that this board makes things a lot easier.

I have used 16mm ply to make the board and the 'islands' that the stone and the glass/flattening media sit upon.

Pic1.jpg


Pic2.jpg


To provide a flat base for flattening the waterstones I have a piece of 10mm thick float glass 230mm x 280mm. This is held in place on the board by 4 short lengths of 9mm square tassie oak that I have screwed in place. I used 9mm square tassie oak so that the top of the tassie oak sat below the top of the float glass. The clamps that I use to hold the abrasive media in place are made of 3mm x 25mm aluminium flat bar and 1/4 inch bolts/wingnuts.

Pic4.jpg


The idea behind sitting the float glass on a kind of 'island' is that is raises the height of the top of the glass above that of the 1/4-inch bolts and the wingnuts that I use to clamp the abrasive in place. I can therefore overshoot the edge of the glass with a waterstone and not have to worry about hitting the end of a bolt. The 'island' also raises the glass up away from any slurry/water that spills over from the waterstone during sharpening.

I chose the dimensions of the piece of glass based on the dimensions of a sheet of sandpaper. Wet and dry sandpaper is also 230mm x 280mm so I can still choose to use wet and dry sandpaper stuck to glass for flattening or lapping if I wish. If I do this then the clamps on the board are not used but the piece of glass is still held securely on the board.

The abrasive media that you can see clamped in place on the board is the plasterboard/drywall mesh that we have been talking about earlier in this thread. It measures 108mm wide by 375mm long. There are 2 strips of it shown clamped to the board in the pictures, one is 220 grit and the other is 150 grit. I have a 220 grit waterstone and so I got the 150 grit mesh for when I need to flatten it.

You can see in the pictures above that the waterstone itself is also sitting up on a little island. This serves the purpose of raising the top of the stone higher up off the top of my bench which in turn gives me more clearance when flattening the backs of chisels and plane irons. I have placed the stone on the right side of my board (when you face the bench) because when I flatten chisels etc. I hold them out the right side of the stone. If I had placed the waterstone on the other side of my waterstone board the glass and abrasive media that I use for flattening stones would be in the way.

Similar to the flattening area of the board, having the waterstone raised up on a little island keeps it clear of any slurry or dirty water etc. that spills over from the waterstone flattening process.

Pic3.jpg


I have used a 3/8-inch bolt/wingnut to make the clamp for the waterstone. I put the clamp so that is closest to me when I stand at the bench because when I sharpen I have the blade/honing guide oriented as shown in the pictures. With the clamp oriented as shown, if I overshoot the waterstone during the sharpening process I will hit the bolt/wingnut with the roller on my honing guide and not with a tip of a blade.

Finally, I have screwed a batten to the base of the board so that I can keep it steady on my bench by clamping it in my vice. The whole thing has been sealed with a couple of coats of polyurethane.
 
I tried waterstones for several years with some limited success but I've found that diamond stones are far more reliable from all aspects. This is the current set up at present:

stuff.jpg


DMT course stone for initial back flattening
DMT fine continuous stone for general use, including the honing of very narrow stuff (ie 3mm chisels which are very difficult to hone on a waterstone without making a huge groove down the middle of it and also for the preparation of DC modified chipbreakers :wink: )
DMT extra fine, for the final hone of wider blades. I use the DC ruler trick as do many others but the ruler here is located on a couple of blocks of oak into which some panel pins have been tapped in. The ruler now doesn't move around and I don't have to rely on the slurry on a waterstone to hold it in place, which was a real pain.
A strop glued to a piece of mdf, dressed with red jewellers rouge and Vaseline. Important that a cover is made to prevent the ingress of workshop crud onto the leather
Eclipse clone honing gauge, suitably Mr C modified (see back issues of F&C) together with the honing guide for setting blade/guage distance.
Lubricant on the stones is central heating oil, or paraffin - wonderful stuff

This is the curent set up and is practically bullet proof for my use - its quick, accurate, clean and very effective - the strop gives an incredible edge after the Extra Fine stone. The only thing I might consider is a ceramic 1000g stone for putting on a micro bevel, but I'm not sure that this would make any noticable improvement. I know its each to his or her own, but I booted waterstones into touch a long time ago - Rob
 
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