Whetstones vs Lap Wheels

[knife-kait]

Your thoughts about the title?

I'm willing to polish and or do some work with whetstones but on average to be working solely with whetstones is very labour intensive. Maybe I should just do diamond blocks to avoid contamination issues?

I have used grit based and diamond impregnated lap wheels for precision glass work. I assume they lend themselves ok to sharpening knives. I think the lap wheel being more effective than a vertically spinning wheel as the polishing compound stays on the surface more readily. (I'm thinking slow 30 to 90 RPM)

 

[jc57]

You can give it a try. I've seen some images from traditional Japanese knife makers where they use a big horizontal wheel for blade shaping, so I don't see why a lap wheel would be much different.

Once you get a knife sharp in the first place, unless you don't take care of them, they don't need that much sharpening. Just some light touching up on medium or fine grit stones, stropping, and good to go. Again, assuming you are talking kitchen knives here.