Diamond paste and Japanese chisels

[Bruce Mack]

When I became aware of the excellence of some Japanese chisels I remember these were linked with waterstone sharpening. I was dutiful but untalented at this. Now, I like oil-based diamond paste and use it on my western chisels and plane irons. I'm making a wood model of the treasury building at Petra and needing a certain chisel width, I grabbed one of my Japanese chisels. It needed sharpening, so with some trepidation I used my usual 2000 - 14,000 grit - chromium oxide strop sequence and was happy to achieve a nice shine on the white steel with really good sharpness. I think I would have been exiled for this in the days when hand tools were resurgent in a much needed revolt against Black and Decker Workmate/jigsaw woodworking, but I wonder if what I did was so bad?

[David Wong]

I have not used diamond paste before, but a possible downside might be that some of the diamond abrasives embed themselves in the soft iron layer of the chisel. A possible source of contamination for unintended grit on your sharpening substrate.

[ken hatch]

Bruce,

I expect you lost the definition between the hard steel and the soft iron, that's no biggie if it doesn't bother you. I do not like diamonds for polishing because of the type and pattern of scratches diamonds leave again no biggie for most folks.

ken

[Jim Matthews]

It's just a SWAG *but* I think steel formulations evolved in tandem with available sharpening media.

Japanese steel tools have worked with Waterstones for hundreds if years - hard to improve on that.