King waterstone grit question

[Jay Maiers]

Is there a big difference between the 800 and 1000 and 1200 grit stones?

My current sharpening setup includes some 2" combo stones (200/1000 & 1000/6000), and a set of 2-5/8 stones at 1k, 4k, and 8k. Is the 1k stone good enough for the initial flattening of chisel and plane blades, or should I add an 800 to the collection? Thus far I've been using wet / dry sandpaper on a surfacing plate along with the 1k stone; decent results, but my experience is very limited.

[David Weaver]

Continue using the sandpaper (affixed with some sort of lubricant). I would use norton 3x and use it dry, though.

Use the 1000 sides of your stones and don't worry too much about the difference between 800 and 1000. Just make sure that you keep those kings flat when you're running the sandpaper scratches out, or you'll have to go back to them and redo your efforts once you find you don't get a good even polish on the back.

If you had a desire to add any stone at all coarser than what you're using, a beston 500 is probably the cheapest stone that's markedly faster than any 800/1000 stone and without being being too soft and muddy or on the other end of it, too hard and easy to glaze.

For most decent new tools, you should be able to go with the 1000 stone, use the sandpaper only if you need to (sometimes you get a dud, but there's no reason to dub new tools that don't need the sandpaper step).

[Terry Beadle]

The addition of a 700 ~ 800 grit stone would be beneficial. Your 2 inch 200 stone can do the really rough stuff but the 700 ~ 800 grit stone is a great starting point for initial flattening of chisels and plane blades. Really out of flat blades can be worked with 60 ~ 100 grit wet/dry on granite for faster metal removal. However, some times when using sand paper it hard to tell just how well you are getting to flat. So it's good to go to the 800 stone to see how flat you are really getting with the sand paper. Even a quick bit of work on a 4000 stone will give you a better idea of what areas need more roughing out. You can do the same thing if you are using your 200 grit stone. Flip it over and take some strokes on the 1000 side until you are confident you have removed the worst areas and just need to continue to the 800 stone and on up the grits.

[George Beck]

The beston 500 stone is a good stone to have around, as is the naniwa Corsera 400. Both remove metal quickly but don't leave such deep scratches (like 120 or 80 grit sanding paper) that it takes forever to remove the scratches. I agree with Terry, start with your medium finish stone 4000 or so. This shows where metal meeds to be removed. At this point, all you want to do is remove metal. So go to the 500 stone(make sure it is flat). Once you have an even scratch pattern go to the 1000 and so on. I usually use a 5000 grit stone just to check at each level to make sure I am flat. Once you have flat it becomes a scratch removing process.

[Jay Maiers]

Thanks guys. Good food for thought.