Sharpening

[baldkev]

For a minute there when it was all shotguns i thought we'd lost the topic for good

None of them had finished their razors to the edge for various reasons (if you think it's hard to hone tools properly for beginners, imagine picking up an old straight razor and trying to reshape it and then hone it to a finish to the very tip from end to end on both sides - where you can't use much physical pressure).

Exactly.
@Jacob lives for this!
Waterstones produce a very fine edge because they are smoother ( less coarse ) and some of them are ridiculously fine. And now expensive.
Ive got waterstones, oil, lapping film ( very good ) diamond pastes, different strops, whetstone grinder.
I can get a usable edge with any of the above, but you cant get an edge good enough to shave your face with a coarse stone of any description.
My biggest sharpening triumph was reviving an ern ator ( circa 1918 ) with a shave ready edge. My first properly sharp edge from blunt. Imagine using a chisel that sharp

 

[Blackswanwood]

I wonder if Top Trumps have ever considered a set of sharpening cards

 

[baldkev]

Im just amazed, post count now over 400 and not one member has been banned

 

[Cooper]

Five years of woodwork at school and nobody taught us how to sharpen

Back in the 70s & 80s when my job was called Head of Woodwork. I demonstrated how to sharpen chisels and plane irons but I must admit the kids didn't practice and that would have been the best way for them to learn. They did practice setting the planes however. The reason was that I had a technician, who did the rounds of the workshops each morning putting a perfect edge on all the chisels. If I let the kids have a go, chances were the edges would have been blunt for the next class. I also suspect I would have had to deal with a lot of cut fingers.
As it was, I had 40 years in the workshops without any serious accidents, which was always my first priority. You wouldn't believe the forms I'd have had to fill in!!

 

[pe2dave]

As a boy in Junior school me and mates would sit in the playground and sharpen out penknives on paving slabs. We all had very sharp penknives! imagine that in school today!

Gutting fish on a trawler, the nearest 'stone' was a one inch hawser. Put an edge on a knife. If worse, the 'whiffling stick' was used (a steel).

 

[Jacob]

....... Imagine using a chisel that sharp

Yebbut imagine using a super sharp razor for woodwork!

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

We’ve all succumbed to being influenced by internet celebs, YouTubers, magazine personalities and worse, the vocal fanbois who worship those goomers. First symptom is continuing to speak of what the rabble put forth. Full infection is practicing it!

 

[D_W]

If garnet is so magical, then why not garnet sandpaper on glass? Or loose garnet?

https://www.barton.com/garnet-abrasives/
Garnet powder:

https://www.barton.com/garnet-powders/

not a huge fan of paper on glass - it doesn't lend itself to manipulation the same way as a stone surface.

However, I'd never looked to see what's in garnet paper, so I went and looked. Almandine - close to the mohs hardness of coticules, but slightly higher.

i'd guess that finding it in 5-10 micron size in a surface where it doesn't come loose is pretty difficult.

 

[D_W]

For a minute there when it was all shotguns i thought we'd lost the topic for good



Exactly.
@Jacob lives for this!
Waterstones produce a very fine edge because they are smoother ( less coarse ) and some of them are ridiculously fine. And now expensive.
Ive got waterstones, oil, lapping film ( very good ) diamond pastes, different strops, whetstone grinder.
I can get a usable edge with any of the above, but you cant get an edge good enough to shave your face with a coarse stone of any description.
My biggest sharpening triumph was reviving an ern ator ( circa 1918 ) with a shave ready edge. My first properly sharp edge from blunt. Imagine using a chisel that sharp

Imagine being able to use a chisel that *thin*. At 16-18 degrees....I didn't believe that it would be any different to hone a razor when starting, but it's definitely the case that preventing defects is a little harder in such a thin edge. But when the edge does give way just a little over time, the thin cross section still makes it so that it will catch a hair easily.

I could get caught going on at length about razors and how wonderful the straight razor is vs. anything now because of the ability to set an edge that will stay the same 200-300 shaves in a row, and about its ability to prevent razor burn because it can be set so that it will catch a hair, but not the skin behind the pore that the hair props up. Effectively severing the hair and then sliding over the skin.

But you can certainly make a razor sharp enough that it will cut both, and there's no real virtue to it.

I have to be careful, though, or I'll bore everyone even more and some guy will add that definition to "overhoning".

I have a picture of a razor that was used for almost a year.



Compared to the one freshly honed:



There's just not much difference between being to the linen two times and 40 except the scratches suggest that at some point, dirt or something got on the linen.

the scale of these pictures is 2 hundredths of an inch top to bottom.

What I gather from this is that you could hone a lifetime with a razor and use a couple of hundredths of an inch off of the edge and never have a bad shave.

compared to this - a disposable double edge razor blade will generally start denting on the first shave. They're softer. I get a chuckle out of the article format that comes out once every half decade or so: "scientists have determined what causes razors to dull, and it's not that they wear out".

You don't say.

I'd bet engineers and marketers at the razor companies figured this out a long time ago - that there's no great reward to making a razor blade a little harder - someone will break a few putting them in a razor, and the only ones who would ever think their razor got dull are the ones that allow dried soap to build up behind the edge.

This is an astra razor blade after something like two or three shaves:

Still shaves OK here but is on the way down hill fast, and within a week for me it's time to change the blade. I have actually honed these (double edge) blades - but the core of the steel is too soft to hold up without its coating. and the coating hides the dullness of the edge a little bit by allowing the blade to slide across skin.

...there, I just went on about razors a little bit...,nobody is going to remember anything I type here or in the overhone post, so I guess I'm just bored.

 

[D_W]

Yebbut imagine using a super sharp razor for woodwork!

Sharpen a chisel to 17 degrees, push it into something and let us know how it goes.

razors get a treatment from the linen that's a whole lot like the unicorn profile on chisels. without that treatment from the linen, the edge can deflect a little bit and things go poorly from there.

This is the modern forum honing thing - to fail to understand what's happening at the edge from the linen, skip it, sharpen finer and finer, and then just sharpen all the time.

what I showed in pictures above - get one good linen and one fine hone - use the hone once a year, the linen once a week....it's too boring for people, I guess. To have a razor that is identical every single day and controllable for sharpness is pretty good, thought. Takes about 3 minutes to shave plus a little less than a minute on the leather, and 30 seconds of linen one day a week.

This goes back to the scope.....it's a whole lot easier to know what you're getting at an edge, when it's a quality problem with the razor (which isn't uncommon - there's not much room for error in steel and heat treatment, unlike tools), and when you didn't do the job.

Sort of like it would be smart for most people to use a $20 hand scope early on and find out what they're doing at the actual edge and then compare actual finish fineness with use, as well as find out what they're doing setting an edge up to stop damage from occurring. a long-time hand tool user years ago (like 150+) would've done these things learned over a very long time, but they can be gotten past quickly. they can't be seen with a loupe, though, and skipping doing this is false economy. Either the $20 part of the hour of time that it may take to look at a couple of dozen edges over an entire career or lifetime hobby.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Gutting fish on a trawler, the nearest 'stone' was a one inch hawser. Put an edge on a knife. If worse, the 'whiffling stick' was used (a steel).

Probably why Opinel was the brand of choice for fishermen I knew. So soft you could sharpen them on anything harder than cheddar.

 

[baldkev]

Yebbut imagine using a super sharp razor for woodwork!

Give it a try Jacob..... but clearly my point was that you can get a VERY sharp edge quite quickly if you want..... its just progress. In the late 1800s they probably just used slate ( maybe 10 to 12k grit from uk slate, 18kish from a thungarian ) now diamond pastes do easily 80k grit. For very fine work or paring, the sharper the chisels edge, the better, no?

 

[thetyreman]

Sharpen a chisel to 17 degrees, push it into something and let us know how it goes.

works well for pairing especially pine and endgrain.

 

[Adam W.]

Give it a try Jacob..... but clearly my point was that you can get a VERY sharp edge quite quickly if you want..... its just progress. In the late 1800s they probably just used slate ( maybe 10 to 12k grit from uk slate, 18kish from a thungarian ) now diamond pastes do easily 80k grit. For very fine work or paring, the sharper the chisels edge, the better, no?

I use slate, it works just fine.

 

[baldkev]

I use slate, it works just fine.

It definitely works and has done for probably hundreds of years.....

But that wasnt the point. The point was that if you want sharper, you can get it without much extra effort or expense.
These sharpening discussions are always the same because the 2 camps dont recognise each others position. On the one hand, sharpening is simple and can be done with any hone, be it carborundum, wetstone or even aluminium oxide. And whatever works for that person works.... so they aren't interested in changing.

On the other hand, people use newer kit, like lapping film, to achieve a sharper edge and so they put their points forward and the 2 sides clash.

If each simply stated how they do it and left it at that, we wouldnt have 17 pages of discussion on sharpening. Whoever reads it can choose their poison, but unfortunately it usually ends up with mud slinging and back biting.

The grown up thing to do would be acknowledge each others views are move on.
Edit to say, a couple of years back i read d_w's writing on the unicorn method and he starts by saying this isnt for everyone and that his research is aimied at giving a longer edge life etc, so it was actually a balanced piece of writing. ( or something on those lines )

But back to the arguing, maybe jacob can run us through sharpening his flint axe in the dark ages
Love you jacob

 

[Jacob]

.....

I could get caught going on at length.........

No, really?

Probably why Opinel was the brand of choice for fishermen I knew. So soft you could sharpen them on anything harder than cheddar.

Is there a problem with having them easy to sharpen?
I've always had Opinels but I never knew they were "soft" in some mysterious way!
They certainly work really well as a pocket knife. Would they work better if they were difficult to sharpen?

 

[baldkev]

Maybe this thread should be locked and stickied to every forum subsection.... that way it'll act as a deterrant to further sharpening discussion if nothing else it'll take a day or two to read it all
Bingy man certainly got his moneys worth out of this one!!

 

[Adam W.]

@baldkev I'm happy with it and I can carve construction grade spruce just fine with a slate finish. Why would I want to try for sharper if what I've got works well?

I can't see the point of wasting all this time, effort and money, when the object is to chop wood with a fine finish and sharpen as quickly as possible to achieve an edge that lasts.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I've had a few Opinels. Easy to sharpen, you haven't an opinel of keeping them sharp. Good for their intended use, they can be sharpened on just about anything.

 

[baldkev]

@baldkev I'm happy with it and I can carve construction grade spruce just fine with a slate finish. Why would I want to try for sharper if what I've got works well?

I can't see the point of wasting all this time, effort and money, when the object is to chop wood with a fine finish and sharpen as quickly as possible to achieve an edge that lasts.

Exactly. Camp 1, which is fine.
D_w's point is that his edge can last longer. As for money, lapping film is cheap. Time? Not really much extra, maybe 20 seconds with a buffing wheel.... Davids point to his lower angle was that you only regrind to the angle once, then its set and youd do as normal, but at the new lower angle and if you have a buffing wheel, great.

Before anyone gets all hot and bothered about my posts, I've read d_w's stuff and I havent changed my angle. I do use the buffing wheel now and its great. At some point I'll do a 25° bevel and see what happens, but the likelihood is i wont even notice, because im a site chippy, so edge life doesnt matter as much as if you were predominantly a hand tool user ( which again, d_w has made clear )