Cheshirechappie
Established Member
Thinking about a low-cost way to sharpening, I priced up the Norton India IB8 8" x 2" x 1" combination oilstone - that's the one that's coarse on one side, and fine on t'other. I was amazed at the range in prices for one of these.
Cheapest was Classic Hand Tools at £23-47(inc. VAT) plus postage. Next was Rutland's at £25-95 (inc VAT I think) plus postage. Axminster had two options; the stone only at £32-32, or the stone plus a tin of honing oil at £31-94 (no, I don't understand why, either). Finally, there's an enterprising firm offering them through Amazon.co.uk at £72-90 a pop - though you may get free postage with that one.
If you were to invest in an Inigo Jones Dragon's Tongue Welsh slate stone at £6-95 plus postage, a bottle of baby oil at £2-25 for 500ml (Sainsbury's), and a bit of 'found' leather stuck to a piece of flat wood, and you'd have the basis of a low-cost sharpening system for just under £50 including postage. Running costs would be replacement baby oil now and again.
You could build on that by finding a cheap grinder, and by making wooden boxes for the stones. Add in a few sheets of wet-and-dry in (say) 80 grit, 400 grit, 800 grit and 2000 grit for gluing to shaped wooden sticks, and a home-made bevel angle gauge (mine's a piece of cardboard with angle notches cut into the sides) and a small engineer's square, and you could sharpen pretty well anything to a very acceptable standard for an outlay of not much more than £100, depending on the cost of the grinder. Adding an 'Eclipse' type jig and wooden runoff ends to the stone boxes wouldn't add much to the cost if you decided to go down the jig route.
If you were lucky, you may be able to trim costs a bit more by buying secondhand. Good, little-worn Norton combination stones can be found, and hand-crank grinders are 'out there' as well. I'd challenge anybody to better the qualities of the Dragon's Tongue for that price on the secondhand market, though!
Sharpening need not be an expensive game!
Cheapest was Classic Hand Tools at £23-47(inc. VAT) plus postage. Next was Rutland's at £25-95 (inc VAT I think) plus postage. Axminster had two options; the stone only at £32-32, or the stone plus a tin of honing oil at £31-94 (no, I don't understand why, either). Finally, there's an enterprising firm offering them through Amazon.co.uk at £72-90 a pop - though you may get free postage with that one.
If you were to invest in an Inigo Jones Dragon's Tongue Welsh slate stone at £6-95 plus postage, a bottle of baby oil at £2-25 for 500ml (Sainsbury's), and a bit of 'found' leather stuck to a piece of flat wood, and you'd have the basis of a low-cost sharpening system for just under £50 including postage. Running costs would be replacement baby oil now and again.
You could build on that by finding a cheap grinder, and by making wooden boxes for the stones. Add in a few sheets of wet-and-dry in (say) 80 grit, 400 grit, 800 grit and 2000 grit for gluing to shaped wooden sticks, and a home-made bevel angle gauge (mine's a piece of cardboard with angle notches cut into the sides) and a small engineer's square, and you could sharpen pretty well anything to a very acceptable standard for an outlay of not much more than £100, depending on the cost of the grinder. Adding an 'Eclipse' type jig and wooden runoff ends to the stone boxes wouldn't add much to the cost if you decided to go down the jig route.
If you were lucky, you may be able to trim costs a bit more by buying secondhand. Good, little-worn Norton combination stones can be found, and hand-crank grinders are 'out there' as well. I'd challenge anybody to better the qualities of the Dragon's Tongue for that price on the secondhand market, though!
Sharpening need not be an expensive game!
