Flatten your Stones... or not?

[stitchawl]

How often do you flatten your stones?
I lived in Japan for 15 years, and spent a good deal of time visiting the knife makers in Seki City and southern Osaka. I loved visiting the various makers, watching them work. I used to go to the Knife Festival in Seki City every year, spending a day or two just coveting everything I saw. But one thing that I noticed early on... very few of the masters had flat stones!
Most were using large, almost 'shoebox' sized stones for their finer work, and ALL were dished, beveled, uneven, etc., etc. They would sharpen on just one corner of a stone, or on an edge of a stone... Here is a photo that I took of a 'street sharpener' who used to visit house to house, with stones mounted on his motorbike. The housewives would bring down all their kitchen knives for him to sharpen. Look at his stone. This was quite 'normal' for what I saw all the time. They didn't waste money grinding down their stones. They 'used' them down.
So... How often do YOU flatten your stones?


Stitchawl

 

[David Martin]

Good point. Many here are OCD about many knife sharpening items. Still, in their country they used water stones which tend to wear more and they sharpened lots of everyday steel kitchen knives. So, 2 elements that dish stones. I've observed the same type traveling sharpening done in Mexico. Afiladores ride their bicycles thru the square chanting their song. With slurry all over and no strop. Removing the burr on the stone.
Those guys knew how to contend with those items and go on sharpening. No problem. I will level my coarse stone once every 3 years. And the fine side after double that amount of time (SiC). As the fine stones don't work down so quickly. Something like 10 years for a India.
Is it not telling that the opposite side of the pictured stone looks level (unused). Still, this sharpener prefers to use the dished side. DM

 

[stitchawl]

OCD indeed! LOL! There are folks here who flatten their stones after every use!
The stone this fellow is using looks like 95% of the stones I saw in use in Japan, even by the custom knife makers. I was surprised at the time, but grew accustomed to seeing it.


Stitchawl

 

[HeavyHanded]

I have one set that gets used mostly for woodworking tools - chisels and plane irons mostly. I have a couple of harder stones I've begun using for clippers and finishing shears.

I like these to stay reasonably flat or even slightly dome shaped, but my usual method is to put them away with a little swarf/mud still on the surface. Next time I take them out I'll give a few passes with a diamond plate to see where the low spots are and concentrate my work on the clean areas. While I seldom have to do any real flattening with the plates, I definitely work to keep them flat as I go.

If I had a dedicated stone or two for fast sharpening of kitchen knives I'd probably let them go a bit more, but nothing like the gentleman in the photo.

Is it not telling that the opposite side of the pictured stone looks level (unused). Still, this sharpener prefers to use the dished side. DM

He probably likes the flat side down as it stays in the stoner holder better that way .

 

[stitchawl]

I like these to stay reasonably flat or even slightly dome shaped,

Dome-shaped was very common among the custom knife makers, especially the sword makers. Their stones looked like loaves of bread!

Next time I take them out I'll give a few passes with a diamond plate to see where the low spots are and concentrate my work on the clean areas.

This, too, seemed to be their methodology.



Stitchawl



He probably likes the flat side down as it stays in the stoner holder better that way .[/QUOTE]

 

[Obsessed with Edges]

I don't like seeing raised edges along the long edge of the stone, when looking at the stone at eye level from one end, similar to looking for cupping in a piece of lumber. Using a straight-edge to check, by placing it across the stone's width, raised edges will reveal a gap under the straight-edge in the central portion of the stone. If I see that in a new stone (many come like this, looking like a dry sponge that's curled up at the corners), I do what I need to do to knock those raised edges down, so the stone is 'flat' (or slightly crowned) at least across it's width, if not perfectly flat lengthwise, which doesn't matter much to me anyway.

Raised edges on the stone focus a lot of pressure laterally against the edge of a blade, which creates heavy burring or edge-rolling/chipping issues as the blade is drawn over the edge of the stone; more so, if the blade is long enough to span the stone's width, which focuses pressure in two acute points along the blade's edge. I first noticed this years ago, in seeing such burring problems coming off a Spyderco ceramic hone, which had some cupping issues straight from the factory. So, it immediately became a pet peeve of mine, if I saw it in a new stone.

 

[maximus83]

I will level my coarse stone once every 3 years. And the fine side after double that amount of time (SiC). As the fine stones don't work down so quickly.

That is a good guideline. I think at times I've been over-zealous in flattening my SiC stones, including both of my Nortons, a Baryonyx, and a couple of no-namers that I use for junk jobs. An analogy is that when I first got into shooting years ago, I was (like a lot of newer shooters I see) over-zealous about stripping my weapons down to the last pin and spring, and obsessively cleaning them. Kinda went off the charts OCD with my 1911's, for instance. Later, you realize that it's not necessary in most cases as a civilian shooter operating in a non-dusty envirionment, and overdoing it can actually be detrimental in that it can cause premature wear, and impact the tolerances of parts, reliability, and accuracy.

 

[David Martin]

A good analogy. I shoot Traps competitively and use Remington's 1100 Competition. Usually shooting 100 rounds a week and more at tournaments. I use to take it all apart the next day for cleaning. Now, I still clean it the next day but only drop the trigger assembly every other month. Like Heavy suggests, work off your stone ends to try and keep it level. DM

 

[cbwx34]

How often do you flatten your stones?
I lived in Japan for 15 years, and spent a good deal of time visiting the knife makers in Seki City and southern Osaka. I loved visiting the various makers, watching them work. I used to go to the Knife Festival in Seki City every year, spending a day or two just coveting everything I saw. But one thing that I noticed early on... very few of the masters had flat stones!
Most were using large, almost 'shoebox' sized stones for their finer work, and ALL were dished, beveled, uneven, etc., etc. They would sharpen on just one corner of a stone, or on an edge of a stone... Here is a photo that I took of a 'street sharpener' who used to visit house to house, with stones mounted on his motorbike. The housewives would bring down all their kitchen knives for him to sharpen. Look at his stone. This was quite 'normal' for what I saw all the time. They didn't waste money grinding down their stones. They 'used' them down.
So... How often do YOU flatten your stones?


Stitchawl

Computers can now read minds...

In reality, you've offered nothing in the way of proof, that this is better than a flat stone. Any comparison data? Maybe the person in the picture gets a knife 7/10 sharp on a dished stone, (which for most, is more than adequate), on a new flat stone it's 9/10. Professionals ("Masters" as you stated) who use equipment a lot are more adept at dealing with equipment that is less than perfect, for example, as you stated, using one part or area of the stone to sharpen on. There's a thread somewhere (I couldn't find it, maybe it was in the old Knifeforum), that showed that a dished stone will wear faster than one that is maintained flat, because the knife will start digging into the stone more, so you can't really claim that flattening a stone causes it to wear faster, without some kind of comparison. I could go on if you care to...

Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong... no idea... from your post anyway.

I used to see a lot of Ford Pintos on the street... so guess I could say that was a good car...

 

[Mo2]

I suggest most people should be flattening there stones. But its not like you can't figure out how to sharpen on a concave stone.

Also if you apex it will cut. So it's probably fine not to. I like to use a flat stone all the time. Generally like to use my edge pro and I keep the SiC stones flat due to it being a guided system.

And some cliff stamp

 

[stitchawl]

In reality, you've offered nothing in the way of proof, that this is better than a flat stone.
............SNIP FOR BREVITY ONLY.............
Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong... no idea... from your post anyway.

My post wasn't intended to prove or disprove anything.
Just asking a question and stating what I saw.
There was no 'right' or 'wrong.'
My post was to ask a question and to state what I saw so often in Japan. Which is all that I did.
That's all.
I'm afraid that you'll have to argue with someone else.


Stitchawl

 

[Lapedog]

My post wasn't intended to prove or disprove anything.
Just asking a question and stating what I saw.
There was no 'right' or 'wrong.'
My post was to ask a question and to state what I saw so often in Japan. Which is all that I did.
That's all.
I'm afraid that you'll have to argue with someone else.


Stitchawl

I didn’t get the impression you were trying to say one way is better than the other. Infact I think you were doing the exact opposite, saying that flat does not necessarily give better utility than an uneven stone.

I say if you can get them sharp with your stone then you must be doing something right. Definitely if you want to get super anal about getting the “ultimate edge” (you aren’t anyway freehanding) then you would need a flat stone. The question to me is can said person get a good edge with a given stone.

 

[jc57]

very few of the masters had flat stones!

They didn't waste money grinding down their stones

OCD indeed! LOL! There are folks here who flatten their stones after every use!

Pretty sure this is an implication that people who flatten their stones often are wasting money, aren't masters, and have obsessive compulsive disorder. It may not have been intended to be judgmental or ridiculing, but it comes across that way.

So... How often do YOU flatten your stones?

I think I may have flattened my water stones 3 or 4 times in the past 2 years. I have flattened my Arkansas stones once. I have never flattened my SiC or AlOx oil stones.

 

[stitchawl]

Pretty sure this is an implication that people who flatten their stones often are wasting money, aren't masters, and have obsessive compulsive disorder. It may not have been intended to be judgmental or ridiculing, but it comes across that way.

Isn't it strange that it didn't come across that way to Lapedog in the post before yours?
The author, Anais Nin, is famous for the quote; "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."
Please feel free to see it any way you'd like.


Stitchawl

 

[HeavyHanded]

I think the bottom line is just to move around on the stone, whatever stone it is.

If all you do is change the angle path across the stone from time to time and what stretch of the blade is contacting a specific spot on the stone you'll eliminate virtually all of all the issues that arise. Cliff claiming 2 - 4° per side (or more) means you're hitting the same dished spot with the same curved edge every pass. Don't do it. When I finish sharpening a few chisels my stone is as flat or more flat than when I started.

When I was a real stickler for this my stones would all have a slight dome - when hit with the flattening plate the center would clean up first. Now the clean up pattern is a bit more random but also the imperfections are tight, if you're moving around they have zero effect. After many uses it is still only takes a handful of passes with a diamond plate to truly flatten them, and again, if the imperfections are random and so are your movements = zero negative effect.

Not that I have a major aversion to using a flattening plate, or fear of losing some value from my stone - its just good practice. Only on smaller waterstones will I make a point of flattening often as there just isn't enough surface area to spread the wear evenly. But again, I pretty much never use my smaller waterstones...

This is one of the main reasons I don't use a stone holder that is in a fixed orientation. I move the stone around as I work, even if its a diamond plate I move it to even out the wear. Working with wet/dry, move it around. Any stone - it distributes the swarf and stone residue and allows more work to be done on a clean bit of the stone before needing to rinse or otherwise clear the surface.

 

[cbwx34]

My post wasn't intended to prove or disprove anything.
Just asking a question and stating what I saw.
There was no 'right' or 'wrong.'
My post was to ask a question and to state what I saw so often in Japan. Which is all that I did.
That's all.
I'm afraid that you'll have to argue with someone else.


Stitchawl

So, making statements like...

They didn't waste money grinding down their stones. They 'used' them down.

... is not an indication of what you think? Puleeez... spare me.

But thanks for clarifying you have no actual facts to support your position... 'er "non-position" now I guess. Glad you cleared that up!

The author, Anais Nin, is famous for the quote; "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."
Stitchawl

Maybe you should read what you write!

 

[stitchawl]

So, making statements like...



... is not an indication of what you think? Puleeez... spare me.

But thanks for clarifying you have no actual facts to support your position... 'er "non-position" now I guess. Glad you cleared that up!



Maybe you should read what you write!

Do you feel better now?



Stitchawl

 

[stitchawl]

I think the bottom line is just to move around on the stone, whatever stone it is.

That appears to be what I was seeing being done in Japan. Especially with the larger bladed knives and swords. As I said before, the stones resembled loaves of bread, domed and curved as if made by a drunk baker, often with an uneven rise. I guess it boils down to that if one has sufficient skill, it really doesn't matter.


Stitchawl

 

[cbwx34]

Do you feel better now?
Stitchawl

Always happy to help clarify your posts.

 

[Novaculite]

Love that photo, particularly the concentration seen in the man's face, which is possibly the solution to the problem, should there be one. I have seen photographs of Chinese cooks using massive and much more pronounced concave stones -- the things looked like saddles -- and I would assume that these gentlemen ended up with sharp knives too. I always try to keep my stones flat, particularly my finer stones, but I do have a few very old Carborundum stones that are nowhere near flat and the results I get with them are just fine. I move the blade around them a lot, use this corner and then another, then the middle. If I concentrate on what I'm doing, I can maintain an angle on lots of surfaces and get no complaints from anyone about a lack of sharpness.