Kasumi Waterstones

Knife_Geek

Knife_Geek

Joined
Mar 11, 2007
Messages
866
I recently acquired a 240/1000 grit kasumi brand waterstone. I spent about 30 min with the sheepsfoot blade on my case med stockman in CV and I cannot achieve even paper slicing sharp. Now I am not hand sharpening impaired at work I used a DMT coarse diamond benchstone and got a hair scraping edge with no bur. Anyone have any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

thanks in advance
 
A DMT course hone is going to remove metal a LOT faster than a Japanese stone even though it is the same grit (will leave the same scratch pattern). If I had to make a guess without seeing your technique or the knife it would be that you have not done enough work getting the knife sharp on the lower grit because you are used to the cutting speed of the DMT.
 
possible.

When I started the knife was roughly scraping sharp and would slice paper easily. I spent about 20 min on the 240 stone and it progressively got less and less sharp :o even though I was using the same angle and technique that I was using the day before.
 
i would say you scratched up the blade. personally i would have skipped the course and gone straight for the fine side if you already had a good edge established. what you wanted to do at that point was polish the edge further.

i suggest walking away from the stone for a while, and don't think about it. sometimes you end up thinking about it too much and messing up because of it. i also suggest going back to the DMT and re-establishing that edge, then taking the knfie to the fine side of the water stone.
 
240 grit on a waterstone is a super-coarse grit. Depending on the brand and chemistry of the stone it should cut faster than anything DMT puts out. I'm not too surprised that it doesn't seem to be getting any sharper. It's more of a damage removal/reprofiling grit. The 1000 should get you a fine edge though.
 
ahhh good to know. I am deffo a waterstone noob:o I didnt know that a 240 grit would be seen as a damage removal/extreme rebeveling grit. I will spend more time with the 1K to see if I can manage something good with it.
 
Knife_Geek said:
ahhh good to know. I am deffo a waterstone noob:o I didnt know that a 240 grit would be seen as a damage removal/extreme rebeveling grit. I will spend more time with the 1K to see if I can manage something good with it.
Click to expand...


I have King brand 250,800,1000, and 5000 grit waterstones. You are wise to use the 250 as a re-grind/bevel stone only.

Your 1000 is a very fast stone to start the re-polish on a knife that is dull, that does not need to be thinned, or re-beveled.

Are you using a nagura stone to help start the slurry on top of your 1000 grit? It is a good way to start the slurry process, and helps keep the higher grit stones flat. (Never use on 250 grit)
http://www.traditionalwoodworker.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=nagura+stone

Here is a great web site with a tutorial on how to use waterstones, as well as some reviews and the history if you're interested.
http://zo-d.com/stuff/how-do-i/how-to-sharpen-with-japanese-waterstones.html

Make sure also that once the slurry process is started, you're not rinsing it off completely once the stone needs a little more water. Remember waterstones use the soft grit and removed metal from the blade to enhance the sharpening process.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top