Doh...stone reconditioning

HeavyHanded

HeavyHanded

Joined
Jun 4, 2010
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6,642
Noticed the coarse side of the Zandstra/Foss, my favorite roughing stone, was not grinding very well. This at start of rehabilitating a half dozen German and Japanese chisels from my father in laws workshop.

Didn't feel like getting out the grit and lapping plate so I just sprinkled some 120grit SiC right on the stone and reset the backs of the chisels, some of which were in really bad shape.

Flattened the backs in record time, rinsed the stone and went over em a second time real quick to get a better finish. Stone is now back to 100% and I've never had such an easy time resetting chisel backs in my life.

Am going to keep a broad chisel or piece of hardened steel plate handy to do this in the future. As long as the stone doesn't need to be completely flattened this method is a lot faster and productive to boot.
 
It is amazing how much faster loose abrasives are on bigger surfaces compared to fixed abrasives.
 
Diemaker said:
It is amazing how much faster loose abrasives are on bigger surfaces compared to fixed abrasives.
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Have read some woodworkers going on about kanaban plates but never had used one. This approach exceeded all my expectations, and refreshed the stone at the same time.
 
David Martin said:
I recalled it was a big stone. That's a nice size. And SiC grit. DM
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And SiC. Is a good price for a stone that big even with shipping. And it works with oil OR water. Paired up with a Suehiro Rika G8, which is an 8k Silicon Carbide waterstone, those two stones can offer a full SiC progression.

I like the Zandstra stone so much I bought a second one, still in the box sitting on a shelf just in case anything should happen to my first one.
 
David Martin said:
I'll buy your old one, then you can start using your new one.? Is it one grit? DM
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If I did that I'd have to buy another one! :D

Pretty sure Nordic Skater has the best price, but they go on sale quite a bit. Is listed 150/320 but I'd say is closer to 120/400-600 ish. Depending on the write up they are listed as oil, water or dry stone. I tried it with oil and it worked fine, esp the coarse side. The fine side works better with water.
 
I'm confident that a handful of sharpeners here are good at determining what the grit is just by using the stone. It sounds like the Z/ Foss stone is near the same grit as Norton's JUM-3. So, the advantage would be the 1 inch more surface. A toss up.? DM
 
David Martin said:
I'm confident that a handful of sharpeners here are good at determining what the grit is just by using the stone. It sounds like the Z/ Foss stone is near the same grit as Norton's JUM-3. So, the advantage would be the 1 inch more surface. A toss up.? DM
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For the most part yes.

The only real advantages for me is that it works well with water and I've gone over to pretty much 100% of my finishing work done with waterstones. So I don't have to deal with possibility of oil contamination if I do my setup on this.

I'd also say the Z/Foss is more forgiving of higher pressure grinding on both sides, but definitely on "fine" side is less liable to make troublesome burrs.

The fine side more like most waterstone compositions in that you can lap it flat using a diamond lapping plate and it doesn't glaze the surface at all. The coarse side is heavily bonded to itself, and sheds very little abrasive on its own. This does lead to it needing periodic reconditioning esp if used with a lot of force, and it WILL glaze if lapped with a fixed abrasive. The upside is it has less tendency to scratch above the shoulder.

But yes, in use it fills the same role as a JUM-3.
 
Thanks, that's interesting as I use pressure with the coarse stone. Then lighten up on the fine. DM
 
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