oilstone id

[adrspach]

For collectors anything such as removing and reglueing label is not right. Where it is not at all right is when labels are being reglued on different stone from where the label came from.
D_W can you show close ups of sides of your Deep Rock. It is unusual to have coarse stone of this grade.

 

[D_W]

For collectors anything such as removing and reglueing label is not right. Where it is not at all right is when labels are being reglued on different stone from where the label came from.
D_W can you show close ups of sides of your Deep Rock. It is unusual to have coarse stone of this grade.

I sold it, because it was relatively coarse (even for a coticule, which can be a little coarse and still finish a razor). I don't think the deep rock coticules were as consistent as the ones that were labeled "old rock". It was a beautiful stone, though, and had more value to a collector than a user since it was a natural combo.

The surface when wet was like a tiger stripe pattern, and the blue side was really vivid. It's a shame that it wasn't a better stone.

 

[nabs]

Out of interest how long did it take you to raise a burr compared with your previous sharpening medium? Just to help put its performance into context. I’d describe my Washita as being a bit faster than a medium India and a bit finer than a fine India (if that makes sense). They are very good as the first stone in a two stone sharpening set up IMHO.

I needed to add a small camber on a previously straight blade earlier today, so as a not-very-scientific test I did the left side of the camber on the washita and the right on my battered old coarse diamond stone. The diamond stone was approx twice as fast, but the oilstone was more than adequate and I would use it for grinding a nick out of an iron etc if it was to hand.

What it is turning out to be very handy for is touching up irons - I did try a smoother having only used the washita and it cut hair (and wood!) but I found the burr a bit of a pain to get off (In the end I resorted to the palm of my hand). Using a strop on subsequent sharpenings improved sharpness and got rid of any remnants of the burr.

Overall I am very impressed - I don't see myself using my slate any more but I will probably use the coarse diamond stone when I am in a hurry.

These tests all on a laminated Record irons, btw.
toodles

 

[memzey]

Good job. Not many natural stones (if any) will work as fast as a coarse diamond so no surprise there. I wouldn’t normally finish on a washita myself and typically use a finer stone followed by a quick strop but having said that, there’s nothing really wrong with the finish off a washita, as long as you get the wire edge off properly IME.

 

[bugbear]

I have a (labelled) Pike Washita. It's not magic, but it's a near ideal intermediate grit between a Norton India Fine and an Arkansas.

I think of it as sharpening the American way

BugBear

 

[custard]

I needed to add a small camber on a previously straight blade

Maybe it's distortion in the photo Nabs, but that looks like quite a big, jack plane sort of camber.

 

[nabs]

I am not sure how to measure it but it is what I thought(!) was a small camber. I used it in a jack plane to remove the large tapers on the underside of my side table which needed a lot of wood to be removed.

I do have another iron with even more camber which I used on my workbench, but it was tearing the elm so I tried this. I am still getting the hang of cambers so I will put up a pic of them both to get opinions on whether I am going a bit OTT .

 

[nabs]

this is what I ended up with (Left-to-right: what I used on my pine workbench, for my elm side table , general smoothing and flattening). for flattening the bits of the side table I'm making I found my no 7 plane was a big a bit bulky for the small parts so I ended up copying what Richard Maquire does and just swapped the irons in a number 5 as needed (this was surprisingly convenient!). I have got too many planes

 

[custard]

Cambers are a personal thing so I don't want to be prescriptive, if it works for you then it's right!

I know there's endless discussions about sharpening on this forum, and I don't want to start another. But the thing about sharpening discussions I find odd is that there's rarely any mention of forming, preserving, or amending a camber. And yet that's something that's uppermost in my mind when I'm sharpening a plane iron. To me sharpening is actually two separate jobs that happen to be performed at the same time, getting a sharp edge and getting the right camber. It's actually the camber that's the most important and the trickiest.

Take edge jointing, as a furniture maker you're doing it all the time, and success or failure is in large part determined by the camber on your iron, too much or too little and the task of bringing the edge to precisely 90 degrees with the face becomes a frustrating struggle. When the camber is in the sweet spot it's a job that takes no more than a minute or two. Or when finishing from the plane, you want that elusive edge shape that delivers a wide, thin shaving but that feathers out to nothing at the edges without taking too much away from the shaving width. Consequently I rarely sharpen without consciously thinking how I want to tweak a camber, and if it's just where I want it then I'll work quite hard at preserving it. When grinding I aim to get within one mill of the edge, but never actually remove the camber (incidentally, grinding like this makes bluing the edge a non issue, unless you're really ham fisted there's only ever a risk of bluing once you're grinding out the very cutting edge).

One final thing, low angle bench planes are great tools, but their biggest shortcoming IMO is the difficulty of making fine adjustments to camber shape. It's not impossible, but the geometry of low angle bench planes makes it more and trickier work.

 

[nabs]

absent someone to show you, the information is out there if you hunt for it (although I admit I have probably read/watched more about sharpening than is healthy for your average normal person!)

it is gratifyingly easy to learn the basics by trying it though - using a cambered iron to remove lots of material for the first time was a revelation - but I am finding the subtleties are trickier (e.g the point you made about jointing) . I think I am gradually getting the knack, though, which seems to be to put some degree of camber (from very slight to big) on all your bench irons.

 

[D_W]

Just keep at it with the washita and the bare leather. You'll be surprised how the edge just gets better and better as you develop more touch and perfect method.

In terms of the wire edge, a few alternating light strokes will thin it a lot and the resulting edge will be better than it is if the full on wire edge is ripped off on the leather.