sharpening stone question

[Zahid Naqvi]

Ok, now that I have acquired a block plane and a set of chisels, the next obvious stage in neandethal evolution is learning sharpening. Even though I have an open offer to visit and make use of Dennis Peacock's workshop, I would still like to have a minimum set of sharpening stones in my garage workshop.

I wanted to ask your advice as to what would be a good set of stones to get within $50. I know the budget is miserly, but so is the expectation. I already have a hard Arkansas water stone, which I found out the hard way is fine grit (somewhere around 700-800) and probably not the best choice for major grinding such as flattening the back of a plane iron. I see several sets of three (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3658455752&category=7306) different grits of arkansas stones on ebay and similar, are these any good? I am thinking I need three different grits, is a diamond stone/file (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2376670918&category=20764) a good choice for first sharpening, specially since my hard Arkansas stone seems appropriate for final sharpening. Any and all advice is welcome, as well as sources to acquire any suggested items.

thanks
Zahid

[Don Kugelberg]

Dear Zahid,

Welcome to the slippery slope. You are exactly right about learning to sharpen, it is the most important woodworking skill you need. I am somewhat confused by your post as a hard Arkansas stone is an oil stone, not a waterstone and I would not consider a 700-800 grit stone to be a fine stone.

In any case, here are my recommendations. For flattening, I recommend a 120 grit drywall screen on sandpaper. This was one of the tips from this month's Popular Woodworking Magazine. It works great and its cheap. After flattening the back of your chisels, plane blade, and plane bottom you can move up the wet/dry sandpaper grits until you have reached 400 or 600 grit. The backs are now prepared. Moving to the fronts and the bevels, I prefer to hollow grind next using a bench grinder with aluminum oxide wheels but it sounds like you have no budget for that. Its okay, hollow grinding just saves time, its not absolutely necessary. I recommend you purchase the following stones from www.japanwoodworker.com 800, 1200, 3000, and 6000. The total for these stones with the discount is just over $75. I know this exceeds your budget. If you really need to stay at $50 then skip the 800 (use your oil stone) and the 3000. I just find that the jump from 1200 to the 6000 is a little large. This all may sound a little daunting but its easier to do than explain.

My last recommendation is to take Dennis up on his offer to help you. Hands on instruction in sharpening is invaluable!

[Doug Littlejohn]

You might want to consider the Norton waterstones. I go the set oc combo stones for christmas and they are great!!

They consist of a 220/1000 and a 4000/8000, for about $80 (I know, a little more but hey, things cost what they cost). I can go from back flattening, bevel angle making to mirror finsh pretty quickly.

Also, it you are new, I would get the Veritas sharpening jig. It holds up to 2 inch blades and is really easy to use and works!!

Have fun, it really is a very slippery slope.

[Zahid Naqvi]

Just wanted to give you guys a little run down of the progress I made over this weekend. Thanks for your advice Don, the drywall screen works like magic. I had a cheap $35 Buck bros. block pane from Home Depot, so I knew I would have to do some major work to bring it to a usable state. I got the lowest grit drywall screen they carried, 120. The best part about the screen is that it is perforated so the iron dust you scrub off the plane does not get in the way. The dust might be good to have when doing fine planing but for the first round of flattening the perforations came in pretty handy to keep the rubbing surface clean. Even then I had to spend about 5-6 hours of rubbing on the drywall screen, and I still have about a 1/16" area around the mouth which hasn't been scrubbed yet. But I was too tired and frustrated by then, so I got to working on the blade and the chip breaker. Used a combination of hand file and 220-400 grit sand paper for the chip breaker. For the Iron the 220 grit paper was a little too much, a few rubs and I could see that if I had to change the bevel angle I could probably get it accomplished on the 220 (may be the iron on the Buck bros. was too soft). Any way the combination of the two sand papers followed up by a final rub on the stone for the micro angle did a decent job. BTW now I am starting to think the sharpening stone in my posession is more like a 1000 or 1200, because I tried to true the back of the balde on the stone and the resulting surface started to look polished.
Don, I also looked at the Japanese woodworking site you mentioned, I think I and going to order a few stones from them.
I never really got to a stage where I could shave the hair of my arms with the iron or create two dimentional shavings, but I got close enough to realise where I needed to go, and more importantly the value of a fine tuned hand plane for quality results.
Thanks again for you advice guys.

Zahid