Sharpening kit upgrae

[Petey83]

Lookingt o upgrade my sharpening stones - currently use some nice Naniwa water stones (400, 1000, 3000, 8000) but am finding myself avoiding sharpening tools as stones seem to need a lot of truing. They were bought for the fancy Japanese kitchen knives we have so the other half would also prefer me not to do tools on them!

So looking at options I have it down to some diamond stones or some sort of abrasive paper system. Diamond wise i have looked at the ultex brand stones from ITS and abrasive paper system would be the full kit from workshop heaven.

I use a Veritas mk2 honing guide if that makes a difference.

I see both setups get positive reviews but am undecided. One thing i will want to get is a very corse stone / sheet (180 grit??) as i have struggled to get really pronounced cambers on plane irons with the 400 grit stone.

Would like to hear peoples experience of both (have looked at older threads already) and help decide whats best. Have been wondering if a mixture of both may be the way to go as already have a sheet of veritas float glass. budget wise im at around the £100 mark for the full set up.

 

[MotamJoinery]

I would look at Ultex diamond sharpening stones. www.its.co.uk regularly have them for sale at £9.99.

I have been using them for few months now and they work fine.

Or if you want to go outside of your budget DMT sharpening stones are supposed to be very good.

 

[transatlantic]

I would look at Ultex diamond sharpening stones. http://www.its.co.uk regularly have them for sale at £9.99.

I have been using them for few months now and they work fine.

Or if you want to go outside of your budget DMT sharpening stones are supposed to be very good.

The highest grade for the Ultex is 1200 though. Which is probably fine for most work, but I'm assuming OP wants something a little finer. DMT do the 4000 and 8000, but they're £120.

I've been looking for something around the 4000 mark too. I've been debating trying the scary sharp system. It's about £50 for the beginner set (workshop Heaven), but I think it could be a good setup. Perhaps a 400/1000 diamond stone (£20) and then lapping plate with 5 Micron (4000) and 3 Micron (8000).

 

[bugbear]

Lookingt o upgrade my sharpening stones - currently use some nice Naniwa water stones (400, 1000, 3000, 8000)

...

budget wise I'm at around the £100 mark for the full set up.

If there were a £100 setup that equalled or beat that set of Naniwas, I think we'd all be using it!

BugBear

 

[Petey83]

Lookingt o upgrade my sharpening stones - currently use some nice Naniwa water stones (400, 1000, 3000, 8000)

...

budget wise I'm at around the £100 mark for the full set up.

If there were a £100 setup that equalled or beat that set of Naniwas, I think we'd all be using it!

BugBear

Yea I suspected it would be the case but I just want to move away from water stones as its messy and i put off sharpening as I can't be bothered to true the stones each time... plus the missus hates me using tools on them as they were bought for the kitchen knives as mentioned.

I am thinking of a combo set up now - low grit paper for getting cambers on irons or regrinding bevels, the full set of Ultrex stones from ITS and then finish with some green veritas polishing compound on a leather strop.....

 

[John15]

Regarding wear to waterstones, I find my 1000, 8000 and 12000 stones for hobby use hold their shape fairly well and need flattening just occasionally. I don't have any course waterstones - I use oilstones for that work.

John

 

[mbartlett99]

I was in a similar situation until recently - coarse waterstone is nearly worn out as well. If its a pain to do you avoid it is true of many things (including the maintenance on the boat I'm on it seems). Just bought the full set of DMTs from sharpening supplies in the states (I'm over there at the moment). Unfortunately I haven't had time to use them yet but have had one of their duosharp combos for years (finally had its day too) which was very good - quick and true.

I've been looking for bargains over here but the weak pound has scotched all that - veritas are actually cheaper in the UK - with DMT being one of the exceptions. Sharpening Supplies do ship internationally but I don't know the situation with import duty etc.

 

[TFrench]

I use the ITS stones with the veritas guide. Can't fault it. I do have an old very hard, very fine oilstone I give them a few wipes on after the #1200 before I strop them. I sharpened a full set of chisels for my mate the other day in about 10 minutes. (Took another 10 minutes beforehand on the proedge to get them to a stage where I could put them near a stone!)

 

[Petey83]

have ordered course/ medium and fine/extra fine double sided stones from ITS along with some of the veritas honing compound. Will make up a strop using some 18mm MRMDF and some leather from an old jacket. Will see you I get on with this and if necessary will look to add a fine oil stone or diamond stone to sit between the 1200 stone and the honing compound. At the lower end I may just use wet and dry on float glass if i need to re profile anything or put serious camber on an iron.

 

[ED65]

So looking at options I have it down to some diamond stones or some sort of abrasive paper system. Diamond wise i have looked at the ultex brand stones from ITS and abrasive paper system would be the full kit from workshop heaven.

There were two recent(ish) threads about budget diamond plates directly from China, any interest or do you want to stick with name brands?

One thing i will want to get is a very corse stone / sheet (180 grit??) as i have struggled to get really pronounced cambers on plane irons with the 400 grit stone.

Yes that's far too fine to be abrading a lot of metal away, especially if the iron is a little harder than average.

You can get diamond plates as coarse as 80 for sure, possibly 60, which may be the fastest hand-honing surfaces available. Can't imagine there's anything that can come close that wouldn't blow out your budget just for the one stone.

 

[ED65]

If there were a £100 setup that equalled or beat that set of Naniwas, I think we'd all be using it!

Hardly! The major obstacle would be in getting die-hards to agree that anything else was equivalent or better to what they're currently a fan of, not in actually laying on the kit

A full sharpening setup can easily be had for only a fraction of Petey's budget, even buying new. This could go from ultra-coarse to 0.3 microns if necessary, so covering a much wider grit range to boot.

 

[custard]

I'm generally a fan of diamond stones, but I'm a bit less convinced about the ultra coarse ones. I've got DMT 120 and 220 grit stones and I find problems with them. The iron feels as if it's skating across the surface with very little "feedback", but even so the scoring that's left is extremely deep, so a massive amount of work is then required with medium stones to remove the scoring. I've tried to understand what's going on by following the "reductio ad absurdum" principle, imagine a diamond stone with just a very few (say ten or twenty) but very large diamonds embedded in the surface, would this be a good sharpening device? Probably not, because you'd see the effects I describe but at a ridiculously extreme level. The iron would skate over the surface, but even so it would leave unmanageably deep scoring.

The conclusion I've come to is that for serious metal removal you're better off with a finer abrasive but a higher operating speed. By far the best solution is a grinding wheel or a linisher, but a better hand powered solution is a longish piece of 180-220 grit sandpaper. You get some of the efficiency of faster speeds (less stopping and starting at each end of a shorter stone) and the more friable nature of the abrasive used don't leave quite such deep scoring. I'm not a materials scientist so I'm guessing here, but I do have thirty or more years experience with diamond stones and as a full time woodworker I'm doing this stuff every day. Anyhow, in my workshop the sharpening station looks like this,

A linisher for major metal removal and the "scary sharp" system for final polishing, with diamond stones providing the bit in the middle. And it's that middle bit of the process, say 400 to 1200 grit, where diamond stones are at their most effective. Following a recommendation on this forum I've recently started to use Atoma stones from Dieter Schmidt, I'm impressed with Atoma's products and the thought that's gone into them. I don't think it's co-incidence that their grit range is 400-1200, I suspect it's because Atoma have also concluded that's the range where diamond sharpening of woodworking tools offers the greatest advantage.

 

[lurker]

Jacob mode:
The main problem with all of this is it convinces new starters they need 100s pounds worth of kit if they have any hope at all of getting a cutting edge.

 

[transatlantic]

Jacob mode:
The main problem with all of this is it convinces new starters they need 100s pounds worth of kit if they have any hope at all of getting a cutting edge.

I'm very much a beginner and I have decided that although I definately want to go higher than my 400/1000 diamond stone, I'm holding off until I have had experience with what I can achieve with the 1000 grit alone. I think that unless you have a good feel for what 1000 is, and what it can/can't do, then you want fully appreciate the higher grits, or even know the difference they are making.

Just my thinking.

 

[ED65]

Good thinking transatlantic. You've got to see for yourself how any honing medium works under your steel, powered by your hands.

As you might remember I've been using a 1000 diamond plate for a little over a year now and I'm happy enough that it followed by a good strop (loaded in my case but that may not be critical to success) is all 95% of us need as far as day-to-day honing goes. Most certainly good enough for plane irons except for the most demanding smoothing work.

 

[lurker]

If you wander around stately homes and churches there are 1000s of examples of shoddy work purely because folks never had the benefit of diamond plates and were producing stuff as rough as a badgers rear end.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yes, I felt obliged to touch this - https://reliquarian.com/2013/03/02/the- ... oly-blood/ - just to feel how rough it was. For one moment I believed there was a god.

 

[woodenstx]

I'm a ham fisted amateuuurere using a cheapy hone and eye balling the bevel angle.
I picked up a £2.50 "Course" diamond thing from Screwfix (its the holey type with the yellow plastic backer) and then 600 and 1000 Ultex Diamond plates from ITS (handy have a branch locally). Have to say after sharpening a few bevel chisels and some plane Irons, its "ok"... The screwfix course thing is resonable but could do with being wider and longer (oohhheerrrr), but on the whole, does agood job of removing the worst of a battered edge.
The Ultex plates... 600 is very very good, gets the marks out from the first stage, nice size etc. Now the 1000, less than impressed... It feels like its doing nothing, yes there is some particles in the glass cleaner fluid, but it really dosent remove much in terms of the marks, however 1200W/D paper polishes it up like a charm.

My feeling is the 1000 plate is getting towards the end of its life already and its barely started.


Think I'll grab those chinese plates mentioned previously as a test.

 

[memzey]

I'm going to go all Neanderthal on this thread and suggest oil stones. Almost all of my sharpening is done with a pair or old natural stones; one's a lilly white washita the other a black Ark. I then strop on a piece of mdf charged with autosol. Gets all my edge tools waaay sharper than they need to be for my cackhanded efforts and takes barely a minute. The stones themselves need very little attention and will likely last several lifetimes. Cheap as chips as well if you go to boot fairs. What's not to like?

 

[Petey83]

So looking at options I have it down to some diamond stones or some sort of abrasive paper system. Diamond wise i have looked at the ultex brand stones from ITS and abrasive paper system would be the full kit from workshop heaven.

There were two recent(ish) threads about budget diamond plates directly from China, any interest or do you want to stick with name brands?

One thing i will want to get is a very corse stone / sheet (180 grit??) as i have struggled to get really pronounced cambers on plane irons with the 400 grit stone.

Yes that's far too fine to be abrading a lot of metal away, especially if the iron is a little harder than average.

You can get diamond plates as coarse as 80 for sure, possibly 60, which may be the fastest hand-honing surfaces available. Can't imagine there's anything that can come close that wouldn't blow out your budget just for the one stone.

yes please if you could share the link to the cheap stones from the peoples republic