Diamond Stones

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I need to purchase a couple of diamond stones as I have chisels and plane blades to sharpen. The plane blades need a fair bit of work as they are in old planes that I want to restore. As I'm new to this I am not going to spend a fortune and after reading about them on the forum, I have decided to get the Ultex plates. At the moment they are on offer at ITS so are pretty reasonable too.

Which plates would be best for me, combination such as coarse/fine medium/fine etc or say one each of coarse/medium/fine of the single ones? The mega pack looks good value too.

Obi Wan ccasion5:

 

[Tasky]

Which plates would be best for me, combination such as coarse/fine medium/fine etc or say one each of coarse/medium/fine of the single ones? The mega pack looks good value too.

I missed the sales, so ended up getting a combo 300/600 and a separate 1200, for use in a Sellers style sharpening bench hook holder thing.
I really wish I'd waited and gotten separate plates for each grit, now, as they're a pain to keep popping out and flipping over!!

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Thanks Tasky, that makes sense so I'll go for the separate ones then.

Do you think coarse, medium and fine should be enough? Can't see my skills have the need for extra fine #-o

OWK ccasion5:

 

[Bm101]

Personally my thoughts (for what they are worth with my inexperience etc) if you can afford the forty note outlay for the four single grits go for it. They got good reviews by Custard in comparison to his far more expensive ones. Not better obviously but good. Far more than you'd expect for the price difference.
I'd steer clear of the mega deal malarkey. If you need a jig the eclipse or veritas go recommended. I just recessed out a stone size hole from a bit of flat scrap. I stuck a bit of dowel in the back and drilled a hole In my bench. Dowel traps wood. Stone stays still. Swap stones as you sharpen through grades. The wood holder allows me to overrun strokes because I use a jig. Check the ultex are flat before you unwrap them. I remember some mentioning they got the odd bowed one. At the price it's understandable I'd say. Or consider atomas lol.
I haven't used my waterstones since I bought the ultex ones. I need to sell them really.... in fact ob. They are rubbish. What you want is some waterstones. By coincidence I may just have some lying about.... These are not the stones you're looking for... *waves hand a bit
Cheers Chris.

ED. Go for all 4 yep.

 

[Tasky]

Do you think coarse, medium and fine should be enough? Can't see my skills have the need for extra fine

I went for Coarse, Medium and Extra Fine, personally, which is then followed up with a 15,000 buffing compound on a leather strop.
Seems to work well so far...

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Thanks for your input BM101, and again from Tasky.

BM101, after much thought, consideration and deep soul searching , I'm sorry to say that I think I'll have to pass on the waterstones this time :lol:

Considering the price the diamond stones are at this time, I think I'll go for all four - I'll only only regret it later if I don't.

Obi Wan ccasion5:

 

[ED65]

Which plates would be best for me, combination such as coarse/fine medium/fine etc or say one each of coarse/medium/fine of the single ones? The mega pack looks good value too.

I was all set to say the mega pack is probably not a great deal when you break it down, but actually it's not bad IF you want the stone holder. One of these is very much not a must-have though.

Because different makers have completely different definitions for what coarse, medium, fine etc. actually mean I had to make sure to look at each page to see what grits Ultex assign to each name. Based on that I think you should get a coarse, medium and extra-fine. That will set you up perfectly well without getting anything middling and of questionable utility; the fine is 1000, which is just too close to the extra-fine at 1200 to be of any real use.

The coarse, medium and extra-fine give you 300, 600 and 1200, a very usable progression for honing.

I feel I should mention that the Ultex 'coarse' is not really coarse at all, even given how aggressive diamonds are. In practice 300# is very much a medium grit and if you want something proper for hogging off steel you could get an inexpensive diamond plate from one of the eBay sellers or from AliExpress (will set you back about 3-4 quid) in a very coarse grit, 150 at finest, although they make plates down to 80 grit and possibly 60.

The plane blades need a fair bit of work as they are in old planes that I want to restore.

Since this is what you want the diamond stuff for, just to mention two things in case it's needed. The first is the most important, relating to the flat of the irons: only a narrow strip just back of the cutting edge needs to be dead flat and finely worked. Just a couple of millimetres. All the steel behind this, even if it there are pits left it it, doesn't matter so there's no necessity to spend an hour or more working 2-5cm of steel until all evidence of the rust has been erased.

On the bevel side, if you'll be doing a primary/secondary remember that the secondary is the only portion that needs to touch your finer grits. No matter how coarsely the primary is ground for the secondary you can go straight to 1000 or 1200 grit without any trouble at all. You wouldn't want to do this on some very hard modern steels but it's perfectly doable on almost any iron made from basic high-carbon steel.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Thanks ED65 for your input and advice.

I took the plunge just before I saw your post and purchased all four and as there was a decent offer on, it worked out at £48 inc delivery for all four, which I'm happy with.

Thanks also for the sharpening tips, they will come in useful soon enough - although I'm bound to ask again #-o

Obi Wan ccasion5:

 

[user22161]

Having read this thread I've bought 3 x Ultex and so far very happy.

What do people use as cutting fluid? At the moment I'm using 3 in 1 oil. Various Youtubers push anything from glass cleaner, Trend cutting fluid, WD40, to even engine oil.

 

[Tasky]

What do people use as cutting fluid? At the moment I'm using 3 in 1 oil. Various Youtubers push anything from glass cleaner, Trend cutting fluid, WD40, to even engine oil.

I picked up some cheap glass cleaner from B&Q. Minimal additives and guff.
As I understand it, you mainly just want something that will 'float' the swarf off the surface.

 

[custard]

What do people use as cutting fluid?

Few people use diamond stones in isolation as they don't go fine enough to polish (even the very few options out there that are nominally 6000 grit don't actually polish). So take ten paces back and think about your overall sharpening regime. Whatever fluid you use for your final polishing stage should be your first choice for your diamond stones, pretty much anything will work on diamond stones and it's just more efficient to use one single fluid throughout.

 

[ED65]

What do people use as cutting fluid?

Nothing usually. Used dry they can't really clog or glaze, not in the way stones do, so there's no real need to use a honing liquid. But one of the beauties of diamond plates is their flexibility in this regard, they can be used dry or with lubricants on the oily or watery spectrum as you prefer.

 

[user22161]

Thanks for the info folks, I'll try something thinner than 3 in 1.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Sometimes I use isopropyl - I use it on hard natural stones as well.

 

[Jamster21]

What do people use as cutting fluid?

Few people use diamond stones in isolation as they don't go fine enough to polish (even the very few options out there that are nominally 6000 grit don't actually polish). So take ten paces back and think about your overall sharpening regime. Whatever fluid you use for your final polishing stage should be your first choice for your diamond stones, pretty much anything will work on diamond stones and it's just more efficient to use one single fluid throughout.

Jumping on this as I use the same stones (600 - 1000 - 1200 usually, sometimes without the 1000) - what do I need to use after this to make a hand plane truely sharp? Note: I know I'm dropping the S-bomb but this is a genuine question! Do I need another step as I currently don't do anything else...

 

[ColeyS1]

I use tap water. Dry off the stone with a rag afterwards.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[custard]

I use the same stones (600 - 1000 - 1200 usually, sometimes without the 1000) - what do I need to use after this to make a hand plane truely sharp?

Without knowing what woods you work or what you make I can't really answer. For many situations a plane iron can be adequately sharp straight off a 1200 grit stone.

What I can say is that in all the arguments about sharpening there are some fundamentals that seem to get consistently overlooked. If you trained in a professional workshop they wouldn't spent much time fretting about bevel angles or this stone versus another, instead they'd just hammer home some simple rules.

Step one, raise a burr. And raise a burr across the full width of the tool. Check with your finger, from one side to another. If there's no burr then keep rubbing. If your fingers are tired or you're getting bored then tough, you must achieve a full width burr. It makes sense to raise that burr as expeditiously as possible without being completely daft about it, so personally I use a 600 grit stone, but something in the range 600 to 1000 is fine.

Now that edge probably won't be fine enough, at least on a bench plane, so it's on to step two.

With a fractionally higher bevel angle you can quickly go straight from this to a polished edge. What's important about the polished edge isn't that it's polished, it's that the polish shows you that you've done the job properly right across the cutting edge. A 3,000 grit stone would probably be perfectly adequate in sharpness terms. But a 3,000 grit stone won't raise a polish, so you'd never be completely sure you hadn't missed a bit. A 6,000 or 8,000 grit abrasive will raise a polish, and when you can see that polish all the way across you know the job's nearly done. But once that polish appears then immediately stop rubbing, the tool won't get any sharper once there's a hair's width polished edge, but you will make more work for yourself when you next come to sharpen by keeping on polishing. The wider that band of polished surface the more effort it'll be next time to raise a burr.

Step three, back off the iron to knock of the wire edge.

Step four, if you've got access to a power grinder make life easy on yourself by regularly grinding back at 25 degrees to within a mill of the cutting edge. As long as you stay a mill away from the edge then there's no risk of bluing the tool, and you'll preserve the camber that you've worked hard to perfect. Personally as soon as it takes more than ten strokes to raise a burr I head to the grinder.

So, how to get a polish?

You could use a 6,000 or 8,000 grit water stone. Personally I find them a bit of a faff with all the soaking and flattening, but lots of people like them.

You could use a very fine oil stone. Personally I find they're a bit slow to cut, but again lots of people like them.

You could use a strop. Personally I find strop's are a bit too much like hard work as it takes quite a few strokes to raise a polish, and I'd probably have to work finer than 600 grit before transferring to the strop, but lots of people swear by them and that's fine.

You could use a fine abrasive paper on a glass plate. That's basically what I use, self adhesive scary sharp paper on a granite block. Some people have issues with the paper tearing, but I don't seem to suffer from that problem.

And really that's all there is to it. Raise a burr. Raise a polish. Remove the wire edge. Get back to work.

It's simple, but I'm regularly surprised when I see hobbyists sharpen at how many cock it up, in particular by failing to raise a burr.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

That's a handy explanation Custard. When you say you use a fine abrasive paper, how fine do you go?

OWK ccasion5:

 

[ED65]

Jumping on this as I use the same stones (600 - 1000 - 1200 usually, sometimes without the 1000) - what do I need to use after this to make a hand plane truely sharp? Note: I know I'm dropping the S-bomb but this is a genuine question! Do I need another step as I currently don't do anything else...

Most people honestly don't need to use anything further for a plane iron. Just a couple of generations ago many workmen would use their tools straight from a fine India, and that's something like 340 grit/P400. Paul Sellers in one of his videos talks about testing planes with the iron honed only to 250 grit and he didn't notice much difference in the effort needed to push the plane compared to his normal honing routine!

You could add a finer stone like a slate into your routine, but stropping is a standard way to refine an edge and make it more keen, and it adds very little extra time to the honing routine so it's well worth doing even if it's not strictly necessary. And stropping is really useful for ongoing edge maintenance, if you do it little and often you can hold of conventional honing for weeks.

The strop doesn't have to be 'loaded' (coated with honing compound or metal polish) to work well depending on what it's made from. The best strops to be used dry are made from thick, hard leathers, horse butt being one of the traditional favourites, but if using a compound the surface can just be a tough cloth like denim. My main strop is faced with denim and it's over three years old now, seems just as good now as the week I made it so I don't know how long it'll take to wear one out.

You don't even need a facing, some people strop directly on the surface of MDF and hardwood strops, but I think this is less forgiving and you need really good technique for them to work well.

 

[custard]

That's a handy explanation Custard. When you say you use a fine abrasive paper, how fine do you go?

I'm not sure off-hand. This is my sharpening station, grinder/linisher on the left, diamond stones on the right, granite block in the middle with pale pink and pale green scary sharp paper. I don't know what grit they are and within reason I don't think it matters that much.

Incidentally, this is what a Lie Nielsen iron looks like after ten or twelve strokes on a 600 grit stone,

In my workshop that means it's ready for grinding. On a thinner Record or Stanley iron, 25-30 strokes and you've gone the full thickness of the iron. You might argue that's reasonable and therefore there's no need to ever grind. That's fair enough, although if you have a grinder just sat there then why not use it? Better a few seconds on the grinder than additional strokes on the stone.