Specialized oilstone jackpot

[thombrogan]

I've seen better prices on some of their offerings, but I've never seen a more exhaustive set of specialized oilstone tools than at Congress Tools. They've got round-tapered stones in silicon carbide and alumnum oxide in grits from 60 to 1200 that look like they'd greatly speed up the reprofiling of recurved edges without spending hours on a Sharpmaker or eating up the 120x stone on an EdgePro (don't know it for sure yet).

They've also got a large selection of felt wheels for Dremel-style rotary tools and benchgrinders. That's one I with which I do have experience: A felt wheel loaded with CrO/AO buffing compound on a Dremel will resharpen serrations with minimal wear to the points and you can use them to knock burr off of a coarse edge to replicate the toothy/polished edge of factory-fresh knives.

Thought I'd share the link. If I get the nerve to order some SiC round stones for reprofiling curvy blades, I'll report how it works.

 

[yuzuha]

Boride and Gesswein also make tool-room/polishing stones. I have several of the Congress stones in the 1/4"x1/2"x6" size. The ruby stones cut really fast, but also wear... good for hogging metal. The flex-cut leave a nice smooth finish as do the super-fine (these wear faster than the flex-cut). The Y2k stones are decent all-round hard stones and the YL oil stones can be used dry. Haven't made up my mind about the res-cut, and haven't tried the moldmaster, LA or r-max

 

[thombrogan]

Thanks for the review, Yuhuza! From mentions in one of your older posts, I ordered a Naniwa Golden Lobster 80x waterstone for heavy stock removal.

 

[yuzuha]

You're welcome. I was sort of toying with the idea of using the polishing stones for a DIY lanskey or sharpmaker, but wound up more using them free handed for deburring or reshaping small wookcarving blades. Ah, well the golden lobster will dissintigrate on you pretty quickly but it is harder to find a coarser stone, and they are pretty cheap as waterstones go. Probably work pretty good for reshaping finer waterstones (I use it for chamfering the edges of some of my other stones to keep them from chipping on the edge, or when I just can't find anything else coarse enough), but aren't really big enough to use as a flattener.

My favorite coarse stone is now the arato kimi あらと君 (the big pink 220 grit brick). It is aluminum oxide and doesn't dissintigrate quite as fast as the silicon carbide stones but still cuts reasonably quickly and is just huge (be a long time before I wear that one out! ^-^).