Sharpening with water stone, need advise.

keninshiro

keninshiro

Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
2,259
Hi All,

It's the easy way out for me to post this age old question instead of searching the archives but i'm busy most of the time and if someone can direct me with a link, that'll be great.

I have a Bailey Bradshaw waki (high carbon steel) which i want to re-sharpen myself, i tried it with spyderco's 204 and it chip the entire cutting edge. After asking around, some folks says i need to resharpen it with authentic japanese water stone or so i've been told. Can any experts out there tell me if this is true? If so, what grid of water stone must i get and from where? The reason why i'm doing all this is because i can't sent my waki back to the maker everytime it needs sharpening....i have to do it myself one way or the other. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Eric.
 
Is not that you need an authentic japanese water stone, its all in the technique and what are you doing that is causing it to chip out on the sharpmaker? Also, what do you cut with it?
 
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GarageBoy said:
Is not that you need an authentic japanese water stone, its all in the technique and what are you doing that is causing it to chip out on the sharpmaker? Also, what do you cut with it?
Click to expand...


Hi GB,

I have numerous sharpening experiences and i can do it free hand no probs. I have no idea why it chiped in the first place because i did everything right sharpening the knife...the waki cost USD$980 so i did not cut anything with it for sure. Any thoughts on it?

E.
 
Something doesn't make sense here. There is no way a knife that price should be chipping out on a Sharpmaker. The negative about the Sharpmaker is that it comes with rods that are too fine and not course enough. Was the knife left to rust somewhere?
 
keninshiro said:
...what grid of water stone
Click to expand...

Unless you really damage the edge angle in use, a combination 1000/4000 + CrO loaded leather will keep the blade very sharp. These are available pretty much anywhere that sells honing supplies, Lee Valley for example.

DGG said:
There is no way a knife that price should be chipping out on a Sharpmaker.
Click to expand...

It isn't necessarily a reflection on the quality of the knife, it is is a common issue with some very hard japanese edged tools for example, they are better suited to the cutting action of waterstones, natural if possible than the harder bonded synthetics.

It could be a sign of a defective steel as well of course, I have seen this on various steels from time to time. The only way to hone them is to use a really wide and soft stone. The first thing I would suggest is to contact the maker and see if it is the expected behavior.

-Cliff
 
Yes, Cliff is right, it is really not that uncommon. There have been a few threads here that report the same and I have experienced the same with my Japanese kitchen knives. The combination of a very hard core with a very low angle does that. Usually you can get away with using the whites especially the flats but the grays will rip up your edge real good.

Anyways, the solution is indeed japanese waterstones. Since you tore up the edge already, you want at least a medium stone to repair the edge. The chips are, in my experience, very small so you don't need to do too much work. A 1000 grit like Cliff suggested should work fine. The typical stone would be a King stone (the most common). Personally, I prefer the Bester brand which is about twice as expensive but at this grit level the stones are still quite affordable. I enjoyed buying at www.hidatools.com, where I bought the gross of my stones. The Shapton stones should be mentioned as well. They are high end stone, high quality and pretty expensive, much more so than the Bester brand.

Once you have repaired the edge you need to finish it. The finishing stones are usually 5000+ grit and not cheap. Ideally, you would want a stone in between the 1000 and the finishing stone. Its all a matter of how much you are willing to spend. You will get already a very sharp edge with the combination Cliff suggested. Personally, however I prefer a much finer finishing stone than 4000 which is really on the low end (may japanese would not even consider that a finishing stone). It is very enjoyable to work with something at the 8000 grit level and you can get an incredibly sharp edge, but since the jump from 1000 to 8000 is pretty large it helps to have a stone in between. But you CAN go directly from 1000 to 8000. It depends all on how much work you have to do. Among the finishing stones there are many good ones to choose from. I have come to love my Naniwa Ebi 10000. The Shapton 8000, 12000 and 15000 have excellent reputations and so does the Kitayama 8000. Yazuha gave an excellent summary on this forum on the 28th of October (should help your search) on stones.

Personally, the most difficult I find to pick the intermediate stone. I have a nonpareille blue stone (about 3000) and it took a loooong time to get used to, because it is soo soft, but now that I have finally gotten used to it, I must admit that it is a nice stone combining an incredible cutting speed at this grit level with a very fine finish. I also would like to try the Shapton 5000 but haven't set the money aside for it yet.

Obviously, you can really get "into" these Japanese waterstones. If you simply want a quick and affordable solution, go with Cliffs suggestion. King makes a 1000/6000 combination stone and a 1200/8000 combination stone (check out www.bladegallery.com). Either would be a very affordable and sensible "starter" kit. Of those two I would recommend the 1200/8000 combination, simply because I am not too fond of the King 6000 and the King 8000 has a pretty solid reputation.

Good luck!
 
HoB, do you leave the edge as stoned, or do you use a polishing compound? The reason I have not looked seriously into the finer than 4000 stones is that 4000 + CrO gives a very high polish. Some times I use a natural chinese waterstone which is much softer (can scrape it with your thumbnail) instead of the 4000 waterstone. I would like to try a natural japanese waterstone to compare to the chinese one as I assume it is similar.

-Cliff
 
First and foremost, thank you Cliff and HoB for the excellent run-down on water stone. To be fair, i'll explain more on the waki for a better evaluation.

DGG~ at USD$980 a pop, no way i'll let it stain let alone rust so the answer is no, it's pristine in condition.

The waki is from Bailey Bradshaw, it's a wonderful waki at 15inch long with an AOL of 20inch. The blade is kept in shira-saya style sheath and has double peg instead of the traditional single peg. I think the blade is a 1095 but not entirely sure, need to check with Bailey.

My first hunch was that the waki's edge is harden to a very high RC much like what Cliff and HoB had concurred on hence the chipping of the edge when i tried sharpening it on the 204. I didn't want to bring this up in the first place without any expert's oppinion because i do not want to discredit Bailey's work as i'm sure he knows what he is doing while forging this blade. Now that i have a better understanding of what may have happened, the next step is to buy water stone and start working on it.

Second comes the technique of sharpening with a water stone; what are the procedures? How do i start? Please pardon my ignorance, since the name water stone suggest it's sharpen with water as an agent....how do you prevent the blade from rusting because sharpening at this level will require a long period of time and high-carbon steel is not at all merciful with water. I do have free-hand sharpening experiences but that is with diamond and synthetic stone so they are quite different from water stone techniques. Any more advise is much appreciated! Thanks!

Eric.
 
Guys,

After reading Yazuha's thread....i know it's going to sound crazy (and Bailey will KILL me for this on a USD$980 waki) but i like to attempt polishing the waki myself. Yes scratch it a little while sharpening on the 204 so i want to "touch" it up again. I undertsand i'm naive in suggesting so because the reason why sword polishers get paid so much per inch is the fact that is VERY difficult to do so...even more with hamon and such. So before i "destroy" and regret doing it myself....someone please knock this out of my head....Yes or no?:p

Eric.
 
Granted, it isn't a real Japanese blade, but probably a nice example of a modern blade, so I think it is too easy to screw up a $1000 blade. Personally, I wouldn't attempt it. If you really must try it, read through this http://members.aol.com/naginata/polish.html Supplies can be had here http://www.namikawa-ltd.co.jp/english/index.html and http://www.shadowofleaves.com/swordmakers_supplies.htm

Maybe contact some sword clubs or something and you might find someone who is learning how to polish swords that can maybe fix yours up for a reasonable fee, or someone who can teach you how.
 
Because the blade is a rather expensive one, I would recommend to let someone sharpen it who is an expert in sharpening Japanese style blades.

In this case, I would contact Mr Bradshaw to find out how much money and time he would need to resharpen the blade himself. He will know that blade better than anyone else.
 
Cliff Stamp said:
HoB, do you leave the edge as stoned, or do you use a polishing compound?

-Cliff
Click to expand...

This has changed a little bit lately. I have found that the more experience and practice I get with the fine stones I can make less and less of a difference with the strop afterwards. Last Thursday I got to sharpen a microtome blade (it is an old microtome that we bought on ebay to shave ice and the blades are simple stainless steel reuseable blades. From the way it behaved I would guess it is made from one of the 440 steels) and noticed that the strop that I used "just to be sure" actually left some very fine scratches on the mirror finish the stone had produced.

I really like the strop though, to remove all last traces of the burr because the soft leather "wraps" just a tiny bit around the edge if you will. I usually don't do more than maybe 6-10 strokes per side on the strop though and I use pretty light strokes.

However, it seems I might eventually get rid of the strop as final step when and if I get good enough, that it makes no difference anymore. Also I use only a trailing (stropping) motion on my fine stones.

Sharpness wise, I really don't know how much more you can improve on a 4000/strop combination. Not much I suppose, but hopefully a little bit. (Right now I am in the hopefully last half year of my Ph.D. so I am a bit busy, but when I find time, I will take your sharpening challenge and we can both see how good I can get). I would guess that the 0.5 micron grit of the standart CrO compound is too fine and not aggressive enough to completely polish out the scratch pattern of the 4000 grit stone. So it will polish the "teeth" left of the 4000 grit but not make the teeth significantly finer. So I would expect a 10000 and then stropped edge to have a slighly different quality: Even more polished. If that really translates to a sharper edge is very hard to say, I mean we are already talking well above shaving sharp anyways. I would imagine that other parameters such as angle and edge thickness will overshadow the difference in polish.

When I sharpened the microtome blade I wanted the most polished edge absolutely possible because we can pick up the striation pattern that the blade leaves on the ice surface with our laser and if the striation patter is fine enough it will aneal out of the ice in minutes and will leave a pretty much perfect surface finish but that is not really a "cutting" or sharpness issue if you understand what I mean?
 
On one hand, I would agree with the others. It will take years to get as good as a professional in sword polishing. But on the other hand I can understand that you would want to try yourself. I guess the greatest caution you would have to take is not to work too hard and too long with a coarse stone (the 1000 grit should be fine enought that you shouldn't have to worry too much) so that you do not change the blade profile. Playing around with the blade profile on a knife is fun, but the blade profile on a sword is a delicate balance if I understand correctly. Scatches are comparatively insignificant and a professional will be able to polish them out in no time if you screw up. If you simply go for cutting performance and sharpness you can get as I said very far the cheap route, but if you go for a looker you really need some VERY fine and soft stones.

As to technique: Here is some information http://www.ksky.ne.jp./~sumie99/togi,process.html

But for general freehand sharpening I strongly recommend the Murray Carter DVD which you can obtain directly from Murray Carter or from Kellam Knives. It is a bit slow going (Murray Carter will never make it to TV or big screen fame, that's for sure :D) but you get to watch a real master at sharpening and you can pick up a lot of hints just by watching him going through the motions....and it is pretty cool seeing him sharpen on a concrete block and a piece of cartboard :cool:.

Btw. there are a couple of places here in the US where you can have you sword sharpened if all goes wrong.

Good luck.
 
In your first post you mentioned not wanting to have to send it away each time it needs to be sharpened, this implies that it is a user, if so then polishing the blade, especially professionally seems to be a waste. Steels will scratch readily in use, especially if differentially hardened which leaves part of the blade fairly soft.

-Cliff
 
Hi All,

My mistake for not making my intentions clear. Yes, Cliff has pointed out that i can't sent the waki back each time it needs sharpening. I live in Malaysia and work in Shanghai to complicate matters so yes, i do need to know how to DIY on the waki. Although it cost USD$980, it's not your super collector grade waki that easily goes up to at least USD$3000-$7000 a pop... to a certian extent, it's a user class...an expensive user class one might say.

OK, First stop. Murray carter DVD and some water stones. Thanks all! :D

Eric.
 
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