Thread: Flattening a stone

Your stone may have filled up with its own shavings, get a toothbrush and some kero and give it a scrub. I rub our stone against another stone periodically to keep them both flat. But I am no expert

Might be using too fine grits, you only need to use coarse-ish paper to get stone flat.

Originally Posted by Bob38S

G'day all,

Having spent many hours trying to flatten a silicon carbide sharpening oil stone I'm almost there.

I have rubbed the stone on a besser block to get it roughly right, then on various grits of wet and dry on glass, I almost have it flat, however now I have another problem - the flattened areas appear to be glazed and much smoother than the edges which is what the flat surface is also supposed to be.

How do you flatten your oil stones?

After flattening, how do you dress them to return to the original grit?

Am I wasting my time and should just dump the stone? - which I'm a little reluctant to do.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Bob

I use a large concrete paver and garnet grit ,I get the garnet grit from a guy who does grit blasting.He has lots of it laying around his grit blasting shed.I just shovel up the used stuff as its usually finer than when new.
Basically I make a slurry with garnet and water and rub the stone in a figure of eight pattern ,turning the stone end to end periodically .It dosn't take long to flatten a stone.
I don't have a problem with the stone getting glazed at all.

I have used sieved ,washed river sand before I "discovered" the garnet.Just sieve it through a fine kitchen sieve or fly wire screen.


Kev

Thanks for the replies - I'll persist and will try to get some garnet grit - failing that I'll try the sand.

Regards,
Bob

Hello
My .02. I use a bit of 90 grit silicon carbide powder. I put a bit of
kerosene on the stone and then sprinkle a few pinches of silicon
carbide on the stones. I have several stones so I flatten them in pairs.
I rub one on top of the other. I use a stroke that roughly goes 1/3 to 1/2 off the bottom stone.
The top stone will become convex and the bottom will go concave.
reverse the stones to reverse the effect.

If you have your stones are of un equal length you can still do this to a
point.

This works well with aluminum oxide stones as well as novaculite.

You can use this technique to hollow the back of your chisels and
planes (small stone relative to chisel size)

Hope this helps

Al

I use a piece of plasterer's sanding mesh on a flat melamine surface. Use lots of water with it.

I managed to get my oil stone flat again by using wet & dry paper lubricated with turps and using the table top of my bench saw as the flat surface. I started with 80 grit and moved through to 220 grit at the finish. I bought the stone in 1956 as part of my first tool kit at the beginning of my apprenticeship and it looks as though it will last a good deal longer than me!!

Rhys H.

The last time I looked, one of these stones was about $10 at Bunnings.

How much did you say you have spent in labour, time and materials so far?

Regards fom Perth

Derek

Derek,
Your point is taken however there is an abundance of wet stones available but I have seen fewer good quality oil stones although as to price I do not know. I was interested to see a survey on useage of sharpening stones recently and while most people used wet stones only 8% used oil stones which I found surprising.

Rhys H