A
Anonymous
Guest
(There's a summary at the end if you want to skip the detail)
Well, over the years, I've tried a lot of different sharpening techniques from oil stones 20 odd years ago, through scary sharp, then wet grinders, powered horizontal grinder, DMT stones and then finally Japanese waterstones which have served me very well so far. Recently I adopted Norton 4000/8000 stones as my 1000/6000 waterstone became too worn to use.
Well, quite a long time back, I decided to experiment with different abrasives on the horizontal powered grinder and placed an order at Lee Valley for some of their 15, 5 and 0.5 micron paper available here http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=33004&cat=1,43072
After a play, I put them in a drawer and forgot all about it as I prefer waterstones to powered sharpeners.
After the chat with DC at Yandles, I was looking for some wirewool and came across the those long forgotten sheets in the bottom of a drawer.
So, I glued it to my plane falttening MDF sheet with spray mount (2 of them were self adhesive) and tried it out.
After using the DC ruler trick on each paper in turn, I used a sharpening jig to hone a secondary bevel on the blade with each paper and found it only required a few strokes on each one in turn to generate a very uniform and shiny bevel. After polishing on the 0.5 micron paper, the bevel was polished better than on my 8000 Norton stone and at least as well as with the blue polish on a strop that i often use.
To test the sharpness, I decided to take end grain shavings from a piece of ash that was lying around.
Worked so well, that I sharpened most of my block and smoother planes and each took full width end grain shavings in hard-to-plane ash (none of your namby-pamby cherry or sycamore nonsense here
)
Summary
These papers sharpen as well as my waterstones and are much better than the 'traditional' wet and dry 'scary sharp' approach
The backing is plastic, not paper, which makes them tough and resilient
The 15 micron removes metal at an amazing rate :shock:
The finish from the 0.5 micron has to be seen to be believed - looks like i stropped it!!
Due to the width of the paper, the ruler trick on the back of a plane blade is much easier than with a waterstone
Due to the length of the paper, one needs less repetitions to remove the required metal, thus making sharpening faster
The cost of scary sharp may put people off (having to buy replacement abrasives often) but I sharpened the planes in the photo above and then 7 more tonight after the photo was taken, and the papers are still working fine and I have only used half their width thus far.
No need to flatten them, unlike waterstones (contrary to the many fallacies propagated around the web, flattening waterstones is very fast and easy)
On the whole, they are faster than using my waterstones, especially the ruler trick on the back of the blade, and the final bevel is equal to the best I have achieved with other methods including using a strop after sharpening on a stone
Bottom line
Will I change to these from waterstones? Too early to say although I have ordered a half dozen sheets of each which should last em a few years should I decide to change :wink: but I quite like having the choice at the moment 8)
Well, over the years, I've tried a lot of different sharpening techniques from oil stones 20 odd years ago, through scary sharp, then wet grinders, powered horizontal grinder, DMT stones and then finally Japanese waterstones which have served me very well so far. Recently I adopted Norton 4000/8000 stones as my 1000/6000 waterstone became too worn to use.
Well, quite a long time back, I decided to experiment with different abrasives on the horizontal powered grinder and placed an order at Lee Valley for some of their 15, 5 and 0.5 micron paper available here http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=33004&cat=1,43072
After a play, I put them in a drawer and forgot all about it as I prefer waterstones to powered sharpeners.
After the chat with DC at Yandles, I was looking for some wirewool and came across the those long forgotten sheets in the bottom of a drawer.
So, I glued it to my plane falttening MDF sheet with spray mount (2 of them were self adhesive) and tried it out.
After using the DC ruler trick on each paper in turn, I used a sharpening jig to hone a secondary bevel on the blade with each paper and found it only required a few strokes on each one in turn to generate a very uniform and shiny bevel. After polishing on the 0.5 micron paper, the bevel was polished better than on my 8000 Norton stone and at least as well as with the blue polish on a strop that i often use.
To test the sharpness, I decided to take end grain shavings from a piece of ash that was lying around.
Worked so well, that I sharpened most of my block and smoother planes and each took full width end grain shavings in hard-to-plane ash (none of your namby-pamby cherry or sycamore nonsense here
)
Summary
These papers sharpen as well as my waterstones and are much better than the 'traditional' wet and dry 'scary sharp' approach
The backing is plastic, not paper, which makes them tough and resilient
The 15 micron removes metal at an amazing rate :shock:
The finish from the 0.5 micron has to be seen to be believed - looks like i stropped it!!
Due to the width of the paper, the ruler trick on the back of a plane blade is much easier than with a waterstone
Due to the length of the paper, one needs less repetitions to remove the required metal, thus making sharpening faster
The cost of scary sharp may put people off (having to buy replacement abrasives often) but I sharpened the planes in the photo above and then 7 more tonight after the photo was taken, and the papers are still working fine and I have only used half their width thus far.
No need to flatten them, unlike waterstones (contrary to the many fallacies propagated around the web, flattening waterstones is very fast and easy)
On the whole, they are faster than using my waterstones, especially the ruler trick on the back of the blade, and the final bevel is equal to the best I have achieved with other methods including using a strop after sharpening on a stone
Bottom line
Will I change to these from waterstones? Too early to say although I have ordered a half dozen sheets of each which should last em a few years should I decide to change :wink: but I quite like having the choice at the moment 8)
