Waterstone questions - noob seeks help!

[John B Mooney]

Wow! Many thanks to all for an incredibly generous response. Much to think about, and much to practice (guess I'll have to pick a cheap chisel and a junk plane iron to practice working freehand). Now all I have to do is avoid drawing blood (again! )

Thanks again to all, and I'll report back when I actually get a decent edge on something.

- John

[Jim Neeley]

#1 +1 on what's been said. I flatten before sharpening and again during if doing something like flattening a back. To add my own experience in determining how often i need to do it I take a pencil and scribble on the surface before flattening and then only flatten until the scribble is gone.

By looking at the scribbles after a flattening stroke or two I can tell how fast it's going out of flat and, by how long it takes to re-flatten determine whether I'd waited too long. With time I've gotten a good feel for my specific stones and they vary, at least by grit. I don't have the quantity of stones to discuss variances between like stones, or even brands.

I use the above on my Shaptons; I upgraded from a set of Nortons because they seemed to cup like warm butter and I grew tired of fighting it. Others have great success; YMMV!

Jim

P.S. Free advice, and worth every dollar you paid!

[Chris Griggs]

Don't get too hung up on learning freehand. Its definitely worth learning, I'm glad I learned to do it, and its my preferred way to hone - but there's nothing wrong with using a guide. There are some very accomplished woodworkers who use a guide. Learn to get a good edge using your guide on your nortons foremost. This will teach you what sharp and sharper is. Once you feel confident that you know what sharp is than you can start working on getting that result freehand. I'm certainly not trying to discourage from learning this skill. Its a fantastic skill to have, and I would recommend that every woodworker try to develop at some point. And if you are inclined, then by all mean s start working on it now - just don't feel like its a prerequisite of being a good woodworker. If your edge is sharp, the wood doesn't care whether or not you use a guide.

[Jim Koepke]

John,

Welcome to the wide world of sharpening opinions.

I wrote a long answer to this and clicked on the wrong thing and lost it all.

So to get to moving forward, the instructions you lost are on line if it is the Veritas MK II honing guide. It is in with the price information there are links to click for the information.

I seldom let my blades get dull enough to need more than a quick honing on a 4000 or 8000 stone.

A quick spritz of water between grits will help to prevent contamination.

jtk

[daniel lane]

John,

Welcome to the club! I used "scary sharp" and switched to waterstones about 4 months ago. I posted a 'coming out' back in January that may or may not be of any help to you. As I've used the system I purchased, I find that by a stroke of luck follow Stu's advice here and flatten lightly but frequently. If I'm doing the back of something, I might even flatten during the process, otherwise I flatten between every 1-2 blades. [Before folks freak out, I'm flattening and sharpening a lot of blades for the first time since they came to me (used or new), so there is a lot of effort to re-establish a flat bevel and then add a secondary bevel.] Best of luck to you, and listen to these guys - they know what they are talking about!

Also:

...and at the time I looked it up, that one was $61.25 shipped on amazon.

It's already gone up in price! It's now $61.26. [Maybe that's the "Prime" price...]

It is also why I love sharpening discussions! Let move to pins first or tails first, shall we? Another Duck season- wabbit season debate.

Less filling!



daniel

[Trevor Walsh]

I have the Norton combination stones too and really like them, pitching the "flattening" or crowning stone as I'd like to call it was the first step to better edges. I flatten after each use with loose 120 grit on thick glass, or granite. With the combination stones contamination is part of the process, slurry drips over the edge and sucks under the stone holder...I rinse my stones in a tub or under running water before switching and also wipe down the wheel of my honing guide if I'm using one. You learn not to, skewed plane blades are tricky to freehand and I'm not good at those yet. I use one stone holder for the coarse pair and one that I made for the fine pair. I'd like to make another for the coarse so I have something pretty to look at while I sharpen.

[John B Mooney]

Thanks again to all for the advice. I've been following a good deal of it, and it's producing results (not to mention providing some peace of mind).

I now have a follow-up question. I seem to be really good at carving small bits of skin off my fingertips (specifically, the tips of the first two fingers on my right hand, just below the edge of the nail on the side furthest away from my thumb). I guess it's a measure of sharpening success that I can do this without realizing I've done it, until the stone starts to get blood on it (we're talking about small amounts of blood here, not horror movie blood).

Does anyone else have this problem? I'm probably bearing down too hard on the chisel end with my fingertips, and I'll try to stop that, but I've also been considering the semi-disposable nitrile-coated thin cloth cloves that one can buy by the 10-pack at the borg. Does that sound like a good idea to you? Does anyone else have any good strategies for not shaving your fingertips off? (These cuts are small, but they're like paper cuts - they hurt all out of proportion to their size!)

Thanks in advance for any thoughts,

- John

[David Weaver]

It's unlikely that you're carving skin off. It's very likely that you're actually stoning it off. If you ever have a session of back flattening with an aggressive stone or a diamond hone, you may end up doing it, to. The cool water on the stone keeps you from feeling that you're wearing the skin off, and you don't figure it out until you've worn enough off to bleed.

Concentrate on keeping your fingers away from stone contact while you're sharpening (even just a little, you can still keep then close to the edge), at least on the 1k and below grit stones.

[Jim Koepke]

+1 on what David posted.

It is possible that you are pinching the blade against the stone with the edge of the blade to cause the cutting. The remedy is the same, move your fingers a little further up the blade.

When free handing my blades it helps to start slow to make sure my grip and angle are working together before going faster.

jtk

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I didn't see any mention of what you're sharpening, but I've got a couple of chisels where the sides are acute enough to cut me, even if they don't cut wood. My narex mortise chisels, for instance, will cut my if I hold the back edges and slide vertically, and I've got one bevelled edge chisel that does the same down by the tip. I ended up slightly rounding the edge on the bevel edge chisel, and the mortise chisels I slightly dulled higher up where I'm apt to hold it - I like it being sharper down by the bottom, as it scrapes the sides of the mortise a bit when I rock the chisel in the mortise.

I doubt this is your issue, but I thought it worth mentioning.

[Wayne Jolly]

Just to add my experience with waterstones, I have recently acquired my first waterstones too. I started trying to use them and shortly found I was getting blood on my stones too. I took a look at what was happening and found that with flattening my stones and polishing the backs of chisels and plane irons, etc. that everything was getting sharp. The edges of the chisels and plane irons were getting almost as sharp as the cutting edges, but what was causing my blood-letting was just that the edges of the stones were also getting sharp. I just took my diamond stone and ran a couple of passes around the very edges of the stones to knock off the sharp edges and now my stones are blood-free.

Wayne