Honing lessons from Westonbirt

[Paul Chapman]

I think Jim was a bit upset with me when I said I couldn't give a list of the tips I picked up from Garrett Hack and John Lloyd at Westonbirt yesterday. Well, in addition to doing a bit of weeding (I hate weeding :evil: ) I've spent some time today in the workshop experimenting with strops, based on what Garrett does.

I use DMT diamond stones and go from the extra fine stone to a leather strop impregnated with Vaseline and jewellers rouge. While I always get a beautifully polished bevel and back, the level of sharpness is variable. Sometimes super-sharp, sometimes less so. I concluded some time ago that the leather strop is sufficiently compressable that it can just slightly round over the edge even if the blade is held perfectly flat.

What Garrett often does is to finish off his blades on a piece of wood (I think he uses Maple) impregnated with diamond paste. He showed me the piece of wood - nothing to write home about, in fact it looked a bit scruffy, but his blades were super-sharp.

I didn't have any diamond paste so I've been experimenting with Solvol Autosol and oil on a piece of quarter-sawn Mahogany planed dead flat. I used it on the blades in my Clifton Anniversary #4 and my old Record #4 fitted with a Clifton blade and cap iron.

The results have been quite impressive - certainly better than I've been getting with the leather strop. I tried them out on a nasty piece of oak where I was previously getting tear-out unless I used the scraper plane. Absolutely no tear-out and a silky smooth, polished finish.

Next on the agenda is to find who stocks oil-based diamond paste because, having seen Garrett's blades, I know I can get mine better.

Anyway, Jim, I hope that was helpful :wink:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[paulm]

Hmmm, interesting Paul :-k

Wonder if finishing on a spyderco ultra-fine ceramic stone or 8k or 10k waterstone would achieve the same effect ?

Could be worth trying next time you're over if you don't give it a go in the meantime.

Cheers, Paul

 

[Paul Chapman]

Dunno. Pete gets very good results with his Spyderco and an 8k or 10k waterstone would give good results I'm sure. I'm looking for something that's quick, easy, cheap and compatible with my diamond stones which I use with oil.

You can get the diamond paste in various grits, so I'd probably look to making three strops so that the jumps between the grits wasn't too great.

I'll keep in touch with my progress.......

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Harbo]

Rutlands used to sell a diamond paste sharpening kit consisting of various tubes of diamond paste and mdf boards.

I found the 3M film worked just as well and less messy.

Rod

 

[Doug B]

Interesting Paul, you`re just making me wish i`d gone to Westonbirt even more







Doug.

 

[Paul Chapman]

There's always next year, Doug........

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[jimi43]

Hi Paul

Yer darn right...I thought "right...be like that..."!!! :wink:

Nah...only joshing ya mate....actually I forgot about it after you said that it is a "show it" moment...as I know what you mean but your kindness at taking time to try to explain it is most welcome mate.

As you know, I do like a little "variety" in my sharpening experimentation and I have to admit...I do flit from method to method in search of the elusive "magic" moment!

You have whetted my appetite now...I shall have to try that one!

Cheers mate...

Jim

 

[bugbear]

I didn't have any diamond paste so I've been experimenting with Solvol Autosol and oil on a piece of quarter-sawn Mahogany planed dead flat. I used it on the blades in my Clifton Anniversary #4 and my old Record #4 fitted with a Clifton blade and cap iron.

The results have been quite impressive

The question (should one desire a controlled experiment) is where is the magic - the rigid substrate, the diamonds, or the user?

Given the nature of Solvol abrasive, I would expect the edge to be very good - the abrasive is actually rather soft and breaks down in use, thus getting finer.

And finer abrasives give more highly finished edges.

Do you think your issues with using leather were caused by a dubbed edge altering the cutting geometry?

BugBear

 

[HeathRobinson]

Hope I don't come across as a wise guy here still being a newbie and all but I took a few notes away from the talks too and Garrett's wooden strop is made of cherry and impregnated with a 1 micron diamond paste. He reckons it equates to about a 12000 grit.

I got the impression that cherry was chosen because it is close grained. I'm sure maple would be fine as it's also fairly close grained. Unsure about mahogany though. A close grain might make a difference as less diamond paste would get wasted in the valleys of the grain. One might even want to take this a step further and bring the piece of wood that is destined to become your diamond paste strop to a mirror finish, like Garrett demonstrated, before impregnating it with the paste.

Further to this, if the only advantage of the wooden strop is it being less compressible than a leather strop then surely we ought to skip out the wooden strop and go straight to a glass strop? Another thought is that a lot of people use diamond paste on MDF boards. MDF has a fairly smooth surface, very much like a close grained natural wood. So perhaps the only reason Garrett uses cherry as his strop board is that it was the nearest bit of scrap to hand when he first made it.

My rambling ponderings aside if you would like to see Garrett hone a chisel then FWW has a video up at this link. You'll notice he uses oil stones between the diamond and water stone but in his books he says this is just because he started on oil stones and they are what he is used to. If you can't watch the video then the process goes like this:

• Medium to fine DMT diamond stone (red dot) with oil. Bring up a burr on this stone but don't do the back. Leave the burr on the edge otherwise you'll undo all the polishing you've previously supposed to have done to the back of the chisel.
  
• Medium india oil stone - around 1000 grit - somewhat glazed. Don't do the back on this stone either. Just do the edge.
  
• Hard arkensaw surgical black oil stone - around 5000 grit. You could take wire edge off the back with this one if you wanted to.
  
• Norton 8000 grit waterstone (yellow). For general work (like cutting mortices etc) you might want to stop after this stone. Definitely do the back to take off the wire edge on this stone.
  
• 1 micron diamond on a piece of cherry. Garrett thinks this equates to about 12000 grit. Use this for fine work. Use just like a stone. Do the back and the edge.

Apologies for all the edits. Had some trouble getting the list to display correctly.

 

[Paul Chapman]

I didn't have any diamond paste so I've been experimenting with Solvol Autosol and oil on a piece of quarter-sawn Mahogany planed dead flat. I used it on the blades in my Clifton Anniversary #4 and my old Record #4 fitted with a Clifton blade and cap iron.

The results have been quite impressive

The question (should one desire a controlled experiment) is where is the magic - the rigid substrate, the diamonds, or the user?

Given the nature of Solvol abrasive, I would expect the edge to be very good - the abrasive is actually rather soft and breaks down in use, thus getting finer.

And finer abrasives give more highly finished edges.

Do you think your issues with using leather were caused by a dubbed edge altering the cutting geometry?

BugBear

Hi BugBear,

For some time now I've been concerned about the consistency of my honing. Sometimes the results have been very good, other times not quite so good and I'd concluded that the likely problem was with the leather strop sometimes rounding over the edge and other times not.

However, when I saw Garrett's blades I had one of those lightbulb moments. Even my very good results were not as good as his. Trying to categorise it, I sometimes get sharp and sometimes get very sharp but Garrett gets super sharp :shock:

As they say, you need to actually see what sharp is in order the know what you are after and at Westonbirt I saw what sharp really is.

I've concluded from this that maybe I'm always getting a little rounding over of the edge, it's just that sometimes it's worse than others. Certainly the results I was getting yesterday were leading me to conclude that my assumptions are probably right.

I have this big lump of oak where one patch tears out easily. So far I've only been able to plane out the tear-out with my scraper planes and I was going to experiment with back bevels. However, chatting to Garrett about the problem, he was rather dismissive about back bevels. He doesn't rule them out but was more inclined to the view that the problem is often with the sharpness of the blade - which is where you come back to the question of how sharp is sharp? Yesterday, I was able to get rid of the tear-out with my Autosol-honed #4s.

I need to do some more work on this. You might be right about the Solvol Autosol - it might be good enough. Certainly yesterday's results were very encouraging

I don't do things as scientifically as you but I think I'm getting there

Thanks for your interest.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[woodbloke]

What Garrett often does is to finish off his blades on a piece of wood (I think he uses Maple) impregnated with diamond paste. He showed me the piece of wood - nothing to write home about, in fact it looked a bit scruffy, but his blades were super-sharp.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

You'd get a similar result using the finest 3M 1micron (around 8000g) and .3micron (around 24,000g :shock: ) papers on float glass that Matthew sells.
One of the reasons that I changed from Paul's system (DMT stones and a leather strop) to the 3M papers last year. I now use the whole range from the very coarsest to the very finest (as appropriate) for honing blades. The system is very effective for the super hard (RC68) Japanese chisels I now use and ordinary 01 steel (and A2) presents no problems - Rob

 

[Paul Chapman]

My rambling ponderings aside if you would like to see Garrett hone a chisel then FWW has a video up at this link.

Hi Simon,

How are you? Haven't seen you for ages.

Thanks for that link. Good, init

I don't think I'd use MDF or glass as a substrate. MDF isn't very smooth compared with a piece of planed, close-grain wood. In fact I've read of some experiments with it that have really put me off because of the abrasiveness of the various glues and stuff that are in it. And with glass, I think the honing compound would just slide about - I think you need something like a piece of wood so it will sink in.

However, the best way is always to try things out and see what happens - that's what I'm doing.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Paul Chapman]

You'd get a similar result using the finest 3M 1micron (around 8000g) and .3micron (around 24,000g :shock: ) papers on float glass that Matthew sells.

Hi Rob,

I've been very tempted to try out those films as I'm sure the results would be excellent (as you've found). The only thing that puts me off is the on-going cost - us old pensioners have to be careful with our money :wink:

I think a dab of Autosol or diamond paste would get to the same end at far less cost.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[HeathRobinson]

Ello Paul Seems woodworking for me is a bit of a Winter activity.

With regard to trying things out, it could be interesting to put the results (both the honed edge and the resulting planed wood) under a microscope :lol: Yes this is a tad crazy perhaps, but ... According to the junk mail I received Lidl will be selling a metal bodied microscope with 'barlow' lenses that goes to 1280x magnification for £39.99. From the picture it appears to attach to a computer (though no promises in that department). It could be quite interesting to see much more clearly what the results of our efforts are and give us confidence that we're not just feeling around in the dark.

There is this website of another woodworker who's done this but I've never tried it myself.

 

[Paul Chapman]

There is this website of another woodworker who's done this but I've never tried it myself.

Yes, I've seen that before. All a bit too academic for me. I think the real test is what happens when you plane a piece of wood when you're making stuff - do you get the results you want or don't you.........

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[HeathRobinson]

OK, please let us know how your experimenting goes because, for the same reasons as you, I'd like to try it out. Lapping film seems like it would be very expensive in the long run.

 

[woodbloke]

You'd get a similar result using the finest 3M 1micron (around 8000g) and .3micron (around 24,000g :shock: ) papers on float glass that Matthew sells.

Hi Rob,

I've been very tempted to try out those films as I'm sure the results would be excellent (as you've found). The only thing that puts me off is the on-going cost - us old pensioners have to be careful with our money :wink:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

Paul, the 'ongoing' cost is a bit of a fallacy in point of fact. I put new sheets on my glass two weeks before the Bash on the the 24th July last month...and they're still fine to use. Yes they do wear gradually, but they can still be used (The bigger and more annoying issue is that they tear, but even so, they can still be used)
One sheet of 30micron is lets say £2.00. It is then cut into four strips 70mm wide and each strip with fairly heavy use will last at least a couple of months (turning the glass plate round and using the other end) so one complete sheet is going to last the best part of a year. So a set of three (30, 10 and 1 micron) is going to cost you roughly £6 for the year! (more of course if you use a greater selection of papers as I do)

Does Mike Hudson know you're a pensioner? :wink: :lol: :lol: - Rob

 

[Paul Chapman]

Does Mike Hudson know you're a pensioner? :wink: :lol: :lol:

He'll probably enjoy his retirement because he's got most of my money :shock: :shock:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[bugbear]

When people are quoting grit sizes in this thread, I'm not sure what scale they're using.

Here's a cross reference that may reduce some of the ambiguity in future.

http://sharpeningmadeeasy.com/grits.htm

BugBear

 

[woodbloke]

When I spoke to Matthew at the Bash about this, he confirmed to me that .3micron was around 24,000g. His wife Adrienne had done a little investigative work on the subject and published her findings on the WH blog. .3micron paper is so fine that it's impossible to feel the abrasive on the surface - Rob