Waterstones / oil / ceramic..

N

nutria_man

Joined
May 7, 2008
Messages
93
I have well over a dozen types of stones.. .. and seems I can never decide what is the best one for putting on an edge. They all seem to do the job well.

The set I use the most is actually the spydeco brown/ceramic sticks combo. For getting the absolute smootest edge on my dovetail chisels I use my water stone.. it seems to be the only one that can bring out the damascus lines.

Was curious what do you folks use to sharpen your knives..what type of stone and do you use some kind of liquid on them?
 
Only ONE dozen ! Grasshopper, you have a long way to go, still.

Just kidding, but stones can be about as bad as crack cocaine.....and cost about the same,too. I have ,many water stones, bench stones, and diamond "stones". I still look at the stones offered by Tokyo sellers offering a rare uchimagori stone. Usually I resist the temptation, but it is hard to not appreciate the attributes of a good natural stone.

All that aside, a hundred stones won't sharpen a knife by themselves. Learn to use the ones you have well before you get more. I usually recommend three stones to start with. A medium synthetic about 400-800, a fine synthetic about 2000, and a natural finishing stone around 4000-8000. This will take a edge to razor sharp, and only need two or three strops on a charged leather strop to be insanely sharp. If you are doing a lot of the material reduction with stones, a 220 synthetic is a good foundation stone.
Stacy
 
I have tried waterstones, india, Carborundum, ceramic, etc. For years I was a devotee of natural Arkansas stones. Gotta say those days are over. I still have my Arkansas, white, brown, and black-hard etc. I haven't put water on my waterstones in about 15 years because about 10 years ago I found DMT diamond "stones" I was sharpening knives for restaurants with them for about 6 years and could get a paper-thin vegtable edge on an extremely abused chef knife in about 10 minutes with the proper selection of DMT stones.
Howard Schacter (sorry if I butchered your name) sells fancy stones for the serious practitioners of the straight razor edge, he also sells DMT (I have bought several DMT items from him, good guy) He has some special grit he makes from belgian waterstones that I am experimenting with using to bring up subtle hardness differentials. (I haven't made true hamons to experiment with yet, but it has an interesting effect on cable damascus)

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After a little research and some practice, I must say my skills with a 1 x 30 belt sander have improved greatly. I still have a good selection of stones, because the sander just takes off metal too fast sometimes. I really like the way waterstones cut, but I dont like the way blades dig into some of them. I have a Norton Course/Fine India combo stone that worked well, until I tried to lap it. I lapped it on 50 grit sandpaper. I must have done something wrong, because I ended up polishing it, and the course side doesnt cut nearly as fast as it used to. Any tips here would be appreciated. That said, this is a good one stop knife sharpening solution. I can get a hair whittling edge off the Fine India side on some knives. Some just refuse. If you havent tried them, the lapping/honing films available on line and in woodworking stores will put an amazing edge on a knife. I bought a combo pack of 15 micron, 5 micron, and 0.3 micron grits for $5 and was amazed at the results and how much finer they were than the Spyderco fine Sharpmaker triangles. The 15 micron wore pretty quickly, but the finer ones last a while, since I only use them to add a micro-bevel when doing finish honing. Use these on a piece of plate glass for best results.

I tried DMT, and had trouble with it loosing diamonds and wearing out pretty quickly. I used the DMT stones dry. I use water on my waterstones, oil on my old Arkansas stones, and nothing on the Norton India stones, even though it supposedly came pre-oiled. The Nortons get a trip through the dishwasher every now and then. The films use water as well. No liquid on the Spyderco Sharpmaker triangles. I use some white buffing compound on the leather belt on the sander.
 
I have probably sharpened 500 blades on the DMTs (using water to lubricate and help lift the swarf from between the diamonds) and they still work great. I have worn a bit into the sides of the steel the diamonds are sintered onto with incidental contact with the plunge on some blades. If you are using the DMTs dry on softish steels (especially some stainlesses which are kind of gummy) you probably filled up between the diamonds with swarf. Initially you lose some of the diamond which is excess, and as such not fully sintered, the fully sintered diamonds, as long as you do not cut into the nickel/steel you will not lose diamonds enough to make the DMTs not work.

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I got one of the tapered rods for use on the Benchmade 710 recurve, and the first time I used it, I saw a little shower of particles, and that side stopped cutting. In DMT's defense, I have used other diamond rods and had no trouble at all, so maybe I just got a lemon. I had a course DMT that I used for reprofiling before the XC and XXC stones came out. I really used it a lot, with heavy pressure. I still have it, so maybe I should clean it off and try again. I've been using it for a lapping plate with sandpaper stuck to it.
 
i really don't like my DMT extra coarse stone- i used it three times and it seems like now it's no longer any coarser than a normal medium grit stone.
 
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