Flattening Water Stones

[Muina]

Don't know if this is in the right section, sorry if it's not

I was just wondering how everyone flattens their water stones? Using a commercial flattening stone, dry wall screen, diamond stones etc...

I use a (known) flat piece of wood with a thin kitchen scourer to get rid of the glaze and this flattens the stone while it's at it but I would like to hear any better methods.

Thanks

Anthony

 

[Schtoo]

I use a diamond plate. Actually, confession time, I use one of 5 different diamond plates...

General flattening I use an Atoma #400. Honestly, about as good as it gets without spending too much money. I wish I didn't sell so many of the things so that recommendation might carry more weight. Flat, fast, easy to use and they last for a very long time. Not exactly 'cheap', but best bang for the buck/yen/quid...

I also have a DMT Duo-sharp in coarse/fine and it works, but it also clogs very rapidly and needs to be flushed often. I've taken to using this one with fine grit stones for touch up and generating some slurry since getting the slurry off the plate and onto the stone is easier than with the Atoma. That's not a good enough endorsement for the DMT though.

Throw in an iWood #300/1000 two sided steel plate. Clears slurry better than the DMT, works fast, lasts well, isn't expensive. It's a good plate, but given the option of the Atoma, I regret that the iWood can't match it.

I use a small iWood #400/1000 plate as a 'nagura' stone for conditioning and generating slurry in a localised fashion. Just a rub on the ends of a stone, a quick swipe over the full length and it's job is done. I also have an oooooold lap sharp ultra fine that I use for the same task.

I exclusively use ceramic stones now though, and they really do need something a little tougher/more aggressive than older style clay based stones like Kings.

Sounds like I'm being obsessive-compulsive about it, but in all seriousness, the Atoma gets used 99% of the time and it's a very quick couple of rubs, a flush and get to sharpening. Maybe 30 seconds worth of effort.

I used to use loose grit on a steel plate, and I've used flattening stones before as well. If you can swing for a decent diamond plate, it's not something that'll need replacing for a long time so long as you give it a modicum of care and attention.

(And they'll flatten out oil stones as well, if you've got them.)

Stu.

 

[Racers]

Hi,

Thick perspex and wet and dry stuck down with water.


Pete

 

[János]

Hello,

I seldom use waterstones... I flatten my stones on a piece of concrete paving stone (40cmx40cm), cheap and affordable, so to speak...

Bye,

János

 

[Evergreen]

I also flatten my waterstones on concrete paving slabs - the ones in my front garden path. It gets the waterstones flat very quickly and it cleans up the paving slabs a treat!

 

[Muina]

Are all paving stones as flat as you'd need for sharpening or do you have to kinda hunt around for the perfect one?

I've wanted to try wet and dry but just haven't got round to it, how fast does it flatten the stone and do you have to use different grits for different grade stones?

I'm guessing for value for money the paving stones would be the cheapest overall because I can imagine going through quite a lot of wet and dry, I've also heard of diamond stones clogging up so much that they're not practical to use anymore if you're not careful.

Thanks

Anthony

 

[matthewwh]

The best thing i have found is 100 micron film on MDF, used dry it is remarkably quick and gives as much flatness as is sensible on a waterstone and a sharp bang on the edge causes the majority of the debris to fall off and you are back to square one.

As a bonus you can use the film to get the tool to a standard where the waterstones are effective (i spent many frustrating hours with sore fingers learning the limitations and advantages of waterstones).

 

[Schtoo]

The best thing i have found is 100 micron film on MDF, used dry it is remarkably quick and gives as much flatness as is sensible on a waterstone and a sharp bang on the edge causes the majority of the debris to fall off and you are back to square one.

As a bonus you can use the film to get the tool to a standard where the waterstones are effective (i spent many frustrating hours with sore fingers learning the limitations and advantages of waterstones).

Uhh, are you doing the 'dry flatten' thing with King stones? You are aware that when they are wetted they swell a little, and need to be flattened while wet, right? Most stones do change a little when wet, and flattening dry, well it's kinda pointless. And semblance of flat is gone as soon as the stone gets wet. Kings are not too bad, Chosera are notorious for it.

(I was loathe to mention that to you Matthew, but it is how it is. We must get you off them King things...)

To the OP, some diamond plates do clog, but it's NEVER enough to render the plate useless. It can always be removed, and much easier done while the stuff is still wet. Loading can and will bring the proceedings to a halt. In my experience, DMT are the worst, followed by the 'diamond' pattern ones, then Atoma and finally the Shapton diamond plate (overpriced by about 200%). I use the Atoma because even when it's loaded up to a point where it should stop working, it still works and by that point, the stone is flat again. And they last a long time. I have thousands of flattenings on mine (most of them documented) and it still shows no signs of being worn. They're good.

I've not yet a concrete paver flat enough, and half the stones I have will eat concrete paver blocks, concrete building blocks, concrete footpath, asphalt, bricks, sanding belts and sand paper. Actually, I should say the stones will flatten concrete nicely. The stone, not so much.

I keep forgetting that most of the folks here associate 'waterstone' with King stones and similar soft, older style stones. It's a problem to switch terminology depending on geography, and I'll try to keep it in mind from now on.

The problem is comparing a standard King stone to something ceramic, it's not really comparable in the usual sense. Kind of like comparing the Wright flyer to Concorde. They both fly, and that's where the similarities end.

Hope that helps, and I wish you luck.

Stu.

(Who's used every flattening method known to man, and wish I'd just used a diamond plate or loose grit on glass/steel from the get go. Would have saved me hours of frustration. I like to save others the trouble of trial and error if I can.)

 

[Muina]

I am indeed using the king stones, and considering up until I got one I'd just been using a coarse oil stone I find it absolutely incredible!

The method I use with the scourer does work, but every time I use it I can't help but think "this isn't right, it's going to end up in tears" so I want to try using a method that won't make me cringe.

Thanks

Anthony

 

[János]

Hello,

Mechanically compacted concrete paving stones are remarkably flat. Flattening a bench stone on a paving stone will flatten both of them even further. Concrete is made from the same abrasive materials as the bench stones themselves, so the paving stones are effective on almost every kind of sharpening stones. (diamond plates are not stones in any sense, as you can not call a piece of steel electroplated with crystalline carbon a "stone").

The world is not more than the permanent reappearance of the same old things... Men, who were eager to evangelize about the merits of SOFT JAPANESE WATERSTONES, now switched to newer gods; hard vitrified stones, and ceramic stones, and diamond coated steel plates. Perhaps they have been tempted by the kami of Japanese quarries. :wink: But now the eyes of theirs are open to the TRUTH...

The main problem is the abundance of self-appointed procators of woodworking mythology... Abrasive technology have not changed much since the XIXth century invention of manmade grinding stones. And in the context of woodworking there has been no relevant advancement since the development of reliable sanding paper....

Selecting a sharpening method and/or medium is (and always was) a compromise, but on the level of hand woodworking there is no real difference between the suitability and merits of the options available. Select the cheapest one which works for you... And on the money saved, buy some nice wood :wink:

Have a nice day,

János

 

[Schtoo]

Anthony,

Does the scouring pad get the stone flat? If yes, and you can flatten with it while the stone is still wet and ready to use, there's no truly wrong answer if it works.

My standard answer to folks who want to get their stone flat on the cheap is to find some #80-200 abrasive grit and a piece of glass. Wet down the glass, apply some grit and flatten away. Can be used with the stone still wet, is fast and effective.

Also approved by all sharpening stone manufacturers here in Japan.

Good luck with it,

Stu.

 

[Muina]

The pad does get the stone flat, but leaves behind little bits of green nylon which can be pretty tricky to get off without flushing it for a minute. Also it doesn't do the best job of removing the glaze unless it's a brand new pad.

I would like to try the glass and wet 'n' dry method actually, mainly because I could use the same stuff for lapping my planes and it'd save space for the brasso-on-glass-super-sharp sharpening method too.

I guess as a rookie (like almost every other before and after me) I've been blinded by the "Buy our product, it's better than anything else" attitude, I'm only just starting to realise that, more often than not, something you make yourself/improvise will actually be better and much cheaper!

After all, this is probably how most of the products were started in the first place anyway.

Thanks

Anthony

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Uhh, are you doing the 'dry flatten' thing with King stones? You are aware that when they are wetted they swell a little, and need to be flattened while wet, right? Most stones do change a little when wet, and flattening dry, well it's kinda pointless. And semblance of flat is gone as soon as the stone gets wet.

Hi Stu

Thank you for saying so! For years, when I used King stones, I would recommend that they only be flattened when wet... that the surface was different when dry - and they were used wet and not dry. I have read recommendations in magazines to leave the stones to dry so that they may be flattened, to do so once a week, and on that day do all the sharpening! Does this person reckon that their stones only need to be flattened once per week (!), or that one only sharpens blades once per week (!!)?

Even with my Shaptons I only ever flatten them before they are used, leaving them alone at the end of the day, gunge and all.

There are issues here: how often does one flatten a stone ... or how flat does a stone need to be?

Firstly, in reply to the OP, I use Shapton ceramc waterstones (1000/5000/12-15000), and these are flattened on a Shapton diamond plate (275 grit). Is the Shapton DP overkill? Probably, but I picked it up new and relatively cheaply at an estate sale. Prior to this I used a DMT Extra Coarse duostone (275 grit), and that worked very well. The DMT is now used to flatten blades.

When I used King stones I was satisfied with plasterboard/drywall mesh (220 grit). These are soft stones and may need to be flattened after - sometimes during - every blade.

How often do I flatten? It depends: if I use a honing guide, then the stones need to be very flat. If I am lapping the backs of a blade, then the stones need to be very very flat. However, if I am freehanding a blade, then the stones need to be reasonably flat, but it is not critical. The difference between a honing guide and freehand is that the effective length of the sharpening area changes. The smaller flat needed when freehanding means that the stone can still be effective with a curvature.

Janos, there is nothing wrong - or right - about using a paving stone. I might argue the same for a laser system (I'm sure someone will invent it, and some will thenm want it ). What ever floats your boat. There is nothing right or wrong about whatever works for anyone. I went for a diamond stone because it makes my life easier. The cost was not a big consideration at the time.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Schtoo]

I guess as a rookie (like almost every other before and after me) I've been blinded by the "Buy our product, it's better than anything else" attitude, I'm only just starting to realise that, more often than not, something you make yourself/improvise will actually be better and much cheaper!

Thanks

Anthony

Hi Anthony,

I can understand that, it's difficult to wade through everything, especially when you're still accumulating information about something. It's good to be cautious about what you spend your hard earned money on, and even better to seek advise from those who have no vested interest, but they should also be honest and knowledgeable too.

It is difficult to wade through all the sales pitches too. Which is why I don't make them in the conventional sense. If I know something will work, I'll say it but never pressure anyone into buying it if it's something I sell, or even if it isn't.

From my side of the counter, it's always frustrating following up after someone has gotten something that hasn't lived up to expectations, and is looking for something better. It's nice to be able to provide "exactly what's required" on occasion, but I often wish I'd been able to provide that from the very start.


Derek, I know. Not saying it to try and sell something, only because that's how it is. Some here fail to realise that though... :roll:

Kind of hard to use the completely wrong thing for the job (a concrete block) when the right thing (loose grit on a flat surface) is so cheap and easy to find, and you're only trading practicality for money. Why on earth anyone might decide that flattening a valuable 'glorified brick' on an actual brick escapes me. It's not like a piece of scrap glass and a smattering of sandblasting grit will cost more than a dollar anywhere on the planet.

If any of you are that hard up, you find a piece of glass and send me your address. I'll send some loose grit to use with it for free. I can't do much more than that...

Stu. Who's growing weary of sharpening threads. They always end up a mess...

 

[SeanG]

Hi Anthony,

I was taught to use waterstones by David Charlesworth, his method is to flatten often - after every operation. The flattening is done using wet & dry (240 from memory) wetted down onto a known flat surface (float glass in this case) . The surface of the stone is marked with pencil first, this will be removed by the fllatening process - no more pencil = job done.

this is my sharpening setup

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/PlCHR4HlKKWqDEGytTZ8Ew?feat=directlink
Sean

 

[Muina]

I always love to hear other peoples' methods of doing anything, it makes it easier to perfect my method. I think about it like this: Try one method a million times you've got the expertise of one person, try a million methods once and you've got the expertise of a million people.

I flatten my stones after every single sharpening, that way all the gunk gets removed almost instantly and I can use it straight away next time. I can't really imagine why you'd wait till the end of the week to flatten your stones, your tools would develop curved edges over the week and by the beginning of the next week you'd end up having to regrind them to get them all flat again. You take care of your tools in other ways by storing them correctly and protecting the edges etc. but why not take the same care of your stones? The only thing I don't really take that much care of is my strop, that's because it's so cheap and has the least destructive effect on your blades, but I still try and make sure it's not damaged.

It can get frustrating for anyone when a salesman tells you "This is the best product I've ever tried" when you know for a fact they've never used it in their life. Like TV salespeople saying "It's really good, I've got this one at home" - How big is their house if they've got all this stuff! I want their job if they can afford everything in the shop! I was looking to buy a table saw a couple of years ago and we found a flip over saw in B&Q, the salesman was in the middle of telling us how good it was and that he uses his all the time when he got stuck and had to go ask his supervisor to show him how to flip it to the table saw!

So that's kind of the same thing with the original topic, as long as you aren't hounded by salespeople trying to tell you which product is best you get a much better picture from trustworthy people telling you their own ways of doing it without spending a ton of money. Although there will be some products on the market which really are the bee's knees.

Anthony (I think that's the longest post I've ever done Sorry if I went off on one!)

 

[matthewwh]

The reason I like King stones is precisely because they are soft, or more accurately graduated from soft to hard - the clay used for the coarse ones being softer than the fine ones. The Charlesworth method exploits the way that the stones wear away in order to first promote minute concavity in the back of the blade, then use that concavity to ensure that the underside of the cutting edge can be reliably polished with minimal effort on a freshly flattened stone.

Dry flattening is significantly faster and less messy for producing the initial surface - which I am going to deliberately take out of flat anyway, hence I'm not going to worry about minute disparities of absorption rates across the surface etc. For flattening between stages one and two the stone will always be wet anyway so there is no choice, but the surface of a soft stone moves as you use it seems rational to me that 'once the pencil marks are all gone' is about as flat as it is relevant to consider.

I did have a go with one of David C's Shapton (iirc) ceramic stones a while back and was left with more questions than answers. Yes it was flat and hard and cut quickly, but it glazed almost on the first stroke! I spent more time cleaning the surface than I did sharpening. If it's hard and stays flat you can't exploit the wear patterns as described above and if you want something hard and flat why not use something properly hard and flat like a diamond stone? I'm happy to retain an open mind about them and would welcome any edification / explanation anyone can offer.

For the vast majority of my own sharpening I now use PSA backed lapping film on glass, working through a broad selection of grades is arguably a more significant factor than which type of abrasive is used. The film is cheap enough that you can have all of the grades for less than the price of one stone. I prefer this to loose grit because it stays put and doesn't abrade the substrate, but each to their own.

I do still get the stones out occasionally just because I enjoy using them, but it's a bit of a guilty pleasure. There is something rather nice about the ritual of using them - in a kind of tea ceremony way.

On the salesman front, I'd like to hope that the contributors on here from both sides of the counter typically provide a rather more informed and considered discourse than just 'buy this - it's good'. For example, if Stu wasn't confident that his stones could live up to the hype, I'm sure he wouldn't be extolling their virtues in a public forum - hence the open mind.

 

[Muina]

I'm the same, I do love using the stones even though I know there are cheaper and ultimately easier ways of doing the same job. I think it's the fact that it's the only real thing that's been used in basically the same way for hundreds, if not thousands of years and only now are we really starting to use other ways.

Actually I did have a thought on this, I've heard about a method rubbing two stones together until they're flat. Would this be a good idea? It'd be the same kind of thing as rubbing it on a paving block wouldn't it?

Anthony

 

[SeanG]

Rubbing two waterstones together is done to prepare the surface just prior to use - but both stones will already be flat - the rubbing together isn't to flatten them.

Rubbing two erodable surfaces together will only ensure they end up as mirrors of each others shapes, not flat. To make sure things are flat you need three of them - http://home.comcast.net/~jaswensen/mach ... _edge.html

The paving block thing probably works because the slab is harder than the sharpening stone, sort of like a lapping plate. If you use the same slab often enough I reckon it won't stay flat for long. Not that I've tried it mind.............

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

The reason I like King stones is precisely because they are soft, or more accurately graduated from soft to hard - the clay used for the coarse ones being softer than the fine ones. The Charlesworth method exploits the way that the stones wear away in order to first promote minute concavity in the back of the blade, then use that concavity to ensure that the underside of the cutting edge can be reliably polished with minimal effort on a freshly flattened stone.

...I did have a go with one of David C's Shapton (iirc) ceramic stones a while back and was left with more questions than answers. Yes it was flat and hard and cut quickly, but it glazed almost on the first stroke! I spent more time cleaning the surface than I did sharpening. If it's hard and stays flat you can't exploit the wear patterns as described above and if you want something hard and flat why not use something properly hard and flat like a diamond stone? I'm happy to retain an open mind about them and would welcome any edification / explanation anyone can offer.

.....

Hi Matthew

Clearly David finds an advantage in continuing to use King stones, as they are a technology that has been superceded for at least a decade. They were at the forefront of manufactured waterstones for decades, but now they cut more slowly, go out of flat more quickly, and are effective on fewer steel types than more modern waterstones. David is a thoughtful and analytical person, and he would use Kings for a good reason. However I wonder if this is because they are cheap and he believes more easily afforded by his students? David .... ?

I also experienced Pro Shaptons glazing over quickly, or creating stiction, when I first began using them. There is a simple solution - just add a little liquid soap to the water you spritz over them prior to use. Not only does this keep them clean, but it keeps your hands clean as well.

Regards from Perth

Derek