Thread: Waterstone Slips?

I've been slowly but surely making my way into the realm of profiled, bladed tools. Think carving tools and moulding planes.

I've recently (last six months) purchased a fine India slipstone, and a couple of different hard, white Arkansas slipstones for cleaning up and polishing the inside of flutes and concave (hollow) blades.

I'm pretty happy with the results, but I am definitely, without any doubt, not getting the same level of polish from the oilstones as I get from the waterstones. For example, on an out-cannel gouge I recently cleaned up, the bevel is like a mirror. Literally. No scratches, even under a hand lens. The flute, on the other hand, is somewhat polished, but under the hand lens it's obvious that it's inferior to the bevel.

Today, someone looked at it and asked me why I didn't just use ceramic, waterstone slips to polish the inside of the bevel. He was under the impression that they were like flat waterstones when compared to oilstones: Fundamentally better in the eyes of many.

I, on the other hand, have always felt like a profiled waterstone would very much be a consumable item. You catch it on the blade once and it's done for, or it slowly deforms from its profile. Basically, based on my experience with flat waterstones, I've always been under the impression that a waterstone slip simply would not work very well.

So, as per the norm, I'm interested to hear if anyone has had much experience with profiled waterstones. Do they last? How do they polish compared to Arkansas stones? What do you do if you nick them (this seems like an inevitability)?

Or otherwise just any feedback from anyone with more experience honing and polishing profiled blades than I have.

Many thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Luke