Glass sharpening stone?

I

Irifuoco

Joined
Jan 30, 2008
Messages
4
Howdy all,

It seems that superfine grit ceramic stones are all the rage these days, but being a poor student, i can hardly afford to fork out the exorbitant amount of money necessary to purchase one of these. A thought came to me that if one was to take a piece of glass, get a very fine grit sandpaper and roughen it up a bit one coul then proceed to sharpen a knife on it. The question is, would this work. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Iri
 
You're describing the "Scary Sharp" method of sharpening. You go progressively from rough to fine sandpapers, just as you would with stones.

http://www.shavings.net/SCARY.HTM
http://woodworkstuff.net/scary.html

Edit: Hm I just re-read your post. Are you saying to rough up the glass with the sandpaper and use the glass as a stone? The glass is harder so you won't scratch it. The Scary Sharp method involves mounting the sandpaper to the glass (or ceramic tiles...something that is incredibly smooth/flat) and using the flat, hard sandpapered surface in place of a stone.
 
what kind of sharpening equipment are you working with now, and what would you consider ultra fine?
 
At the moment all i have is a fairly old two faced stone that belonged to my grandfather, and i would consider ultra fine as like a mirror polishing spec grit. As for glass not being scratched by sandpaper, i believe that aluminium oxide will scratch glass.
 
well, I don't know what kind of combo stone that is, but if it had a fine India side, that would be ~45 micron particle size. For polishing mirrors, that would take something about 40 times finer, which is a huge jump.
 
It is quite a big jump, but if one was to stage the jump with different grit sandpapers used to roughen the glass.... i don't know, was just a thought.
 
Yeah, several of use sharpen with sub-micron abrasive, I was just saying that if you were looking into something like the 'superfine' ceramics that it is a very large gap if you can't afford more go between steps.

If you already have the sheet of glass, I would recommend going to an automotive paint store and getting some wet/dry silicon carbide sandpaper to do the scary sharp system. The SiC is very hard, no need to scratch the glass, just wet the paper and it will stick to the plate and use it like a hone.

You could sharpen up to something like 2000 grit, and get some chromium oxide in what looks to be a green crayon in the grinding/sanding/buffing section of a hardware store. That's half a micron, and you can load it onto anything. I have some watercolor paper that I coated with it, and I strop blades with that on occasion.
 
Irifuoco said:
It seems that superfine grit ceramic stones are all the rage these days, but being a poor student, i can hardly afford to fork out the exorbitant amount of money necessary to purchase one of these.
Click to expand...

I bought one Spyderco ultra-fine ceramic rod for about 11 bucks. I use it instead of a strop and it gets all my knives hair whittling sharp.
 
You have a problem. It is one of size.

You shouldn't be looking for this:
w6fpkf5.jpg


You should, instead, be looking for this,
d3ckx8.jpg
,
or this
d4fka0.jpg
.

You might suddenly find that high-quality, consistant diamond stones are suddenly, quite a bit more affordable, hmm?

The sandpaper method, as linked above, is quite a bit more feasible than the glass method you are imagining, and can be on par with stones if done properly. Glass will simple not cut it - literally. If aluminum oxide can be described to cut slow at times, glass will cut LETHALLY slow. And if you try grinding S90V, you might as well die.
 
Irifuoco said:
Howdy all,

It seems that superfine grit ceramic stones are all the rage these days, but being a poor student, i can hardly afford to fork out the exorbitant amount of money necessary to purchase one of these. A thought came to me that if one was to take a piece of glass, get a very fine grit sandpaper and roughen it up a bit one coul then proceed to sharpen a knife on it. The question is, would this work. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Iri
Click to expand...

Well, it would probably be easier to buy ground glass to begin with and yes it would work in principle, but there is a reason, why good stones cost that much money, they work a whole lot better. They cut faster are more consistent, don't load offer more grits etc. In fact you would be better off sharpening on the bottom of a mug. One of the problems that you will run into is that glass is too soft to sharpen highly hardened steels and in particular the more modern types of steels. Glass is only marginally harder than fully hard steel. You are much better of using a ceramic type surface.

But if you are willing to step away from your idea and you are looking for an affordable setup, do what Nozh did: Buy some MDF board in the hardware store and cut to a handy size like 8x3 inches. Buy some diamond compound. Depending on grit size they will run you $10-15 for a syringe. Start with 1 micron grit which tends to be the cheapest and will work fine for a good finish. Spray on to the MDF boards just as they are and you have yourself a very nice sharpening setup. You will want to buy different grits in time, but one in the 5 micron range and one in the 1 micron range will be a good start for a fine edge.

Good luck.
 
Back in the early days of razor blades that dropped into a safety razor they used to sell crystal sharpeners for the things. I have seen them on Ebay now and then. Circa 1930 or so. So it is/has been done before. Sadly with the development of interstate highways trucking, resharpening the disposable Wilkerson blade became a thing of the past. [Of course the Bic Good News throw away really iced that cake.] You may also wish to look at plate aluminum. I have on occasion touched up dull blades with a piece of aluminum scrap.
 
as a poor college student, what is your outside budget?

my personal opinion is you should buy a good waterstone and start at a modest grit. i recommend an aoto. they are big, affordable and soft and allow learning easily.

in six months, buy a medium belgian blue coticule, and in a year buy a small champagne coticule. you might pick up a burnishing penknife arkansas stone as well, hard/translucent... first time you see one that's good. it will be glass smooth, or don't get it.

of course, you won't DO all this stuff, but that's ok, i told you honest.. :)
 
Wetdry paper works just splendidly. If you want to polish more than 2000 grit will allow (which is basically a dull mirror finish) go to a shoe repair shop and pick up a few scraps of leather. Then 'load' with Mothers metal polish. BAM you have a complete sharpening setup from x-coarse rebeveling needs all the way to a nice mirror finish.
 
Irifuoco said:
Howdy all,

It seems that superfine grit ceramic stones are all the rage these days, but being a poor student, i can hardly afford to fork out the exorbitant amount of money necessary to purchase one of these. A thought came to me that if one was to take a piece of glass, get a very fine grit sandpaper and roughen it up a bit one coul then proceed to sharpen a knife on it. The question is, would this work. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Iri
Click to expand...

Grits is grits, as they say. Don't worry about the composition of the abrasives. Worry about the grit size. Ceramic stones have the advantage of a long life but they cut slowly. Aluminum oxide, on the other hand, wears faster but cuts faster. In the end, the edge won't know what kind of abrasives you used. It will only respond to the accuracy with which you applied them.
 
i have a scalpel sharpener that has a glass wheel. one of these days i'm going to give it a try and see what kind of a job it will do to a knife i already have scarry sharp. from the looks of the face it should do a good job of polishing the edge.
 
Amish folks here said to get ultra fine sandpaper & plate glass (~6"x12"). Swipe the glass 2x at 90 degrees to each other (once long wise, once widthwise) & you'll have a perfect super-dooper fine hone. Since the glass is harder than the steel (according to the Amish) you'll never wear it out, also it's self cleaning.
 
bobby.t said:
You're describing the "Scary Sharp" method of sharpening. You go progressively from rough to fine sandpapers, just as you would with stones.

http://www.shavings.net/SCARY.HTM
http://woodworkstuff.net/scary.html

Edit: Hm I just re-read your post. Are you saying to rough up the glass with the sandpaper and use the glass as a stone? The glass is harder so you won't scratch it. The Scary Sharp method involves mounting the sandpaper to the glass (or ceramic tiles...something that is incredibly smooth/flat) and using the flat, hard sandpapered surface in place of a stone.
Click to expand...

oops, you already edited...my bad.
 
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