Thread: Frim the expert KISS

Be better if I could spell. "From the expert..."

note Tom is using a 1000 water stone plus a 3000/10,000 combination water stone and his company's honing guide -- all up around USD$300 plus postage

BUT I agree the setup is deceptively simple, especially his angle setting gauge -- I like it.

Thanks

10,000 grit is a hoax. A myth. Use a honing compound on a simple box card strop. CrOx is a nominal particle size of 0.5 micron, The oxides of FeOx, CuOx and AlOx, sold as honing compounds, are smaller to 0.25 micron. Anything else is silly, expensive and mythological.

RV I'm a fan of compound as well. Darn good results and it's just so cheap and quick. I like the fact we have so many flavours and prices of sharpening equipment (so nobody get left without an opinion) but if it's KISS you're after, compound it about as simple as it gets.

The carver/tool vendor, Rick Wiebe (Wood 'n Wildcraft) is in the village this weekend. Saturday was hiking stick carving, today is treen & fan birds. Did yesterday's class, learned a lot about technique and process. His strop is a piece of cotton denim cloth glued to a flat stick. He said that double-sided carpet tape would be just as good. Charged with an aluminum oxide paste that he sells (the carrier is water & vinegar!) Do believe that I will stop by this afternoon for the honing paste ($7). The rest of the strop is junk that's lying around my shop.

Part of the reason is that the CrOx/AlOx stick that Lee Valley sells feels very soft and waxy. Not certain that I need all the wax as it will soften any leather that it touches. Office filing cards or box card works well enough.

I can vouch for the denim cloth (in my case glued down on MDF) with honing compound - also works brilliantly to extend the life of cartridge razor blades by 2-3 times...

Tight? Who, me????

As I've said before, anyone honing beyond about 8000 grit needs to be shown a microscope image of what their beautiful, mirror-finish, perfect cutting edge looks like after about a minute of planing our local timbers....

The strop/honing compound is a great way to extend useful lifetime of a cutting edge between actual sharpenings on a stone (i.e. going back to 1000 grit to touch up the microbevel)

I think that the take away message is not to use 1,000,000 grit but that all you really need is a regular honing guide ($16 at Bunningds) and a fine medium and course stone. It all can be had pretty cheap, you don't really need 10,000, I bought a combi stone 1,000/6,000 quite cheap which is perfect for me.

John

If and when you get the bevel angle wrong, there won't be enough steel behind the edge to support it in service = simple as that. I can get away with fine bevels (12*) in really soft woods like western red cedar (Thuja plicata). You woodies in Oz have stuff like iron to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Actually, such pictures of edges do exist. Scanning electon microscope images of the results of all sorts of sharpening dogmata. Leonard Lee: The Complete Guide to Sharpening. Study pages 32 & 33 to decide what to do next. Nobody can tell me that their opinion trumps observation. It's really depressing! As you will recall, LL is the grand old man of Lee Valley.