Thread: How can a waterstone be flatterned with water any faster ?

Originally Posted by Schtoo

Jake, I gotta side with Derek here.

On my big king #1200, rubbbing it with #60 ally-ox and SiC paper took forever to get a 1/8" dish out. To a point, it never got there. I even polished up 3 besser blocks trying to get that POS flat.

Grit on the steel did it in under a minute.


For flat stuff, using 3 pieces is THE way to get absolute flatness. No BS, no measuring and it will be flat.

1 -2, 2-3, 3-1. When they all rub together over their whole surface, they are all flat. The reason your ruler is flat and straight (is it?) is because someone used three bits of something and made them all match each other. Then used them to check your ruler, I hope.

(Don't forget, I built a lathe. Even with all the lathe's shortcomings, the main ways are flat and straight to a level that surprises me.)

Thats ok. I don't know exactly what your siding with. Are we still talking about the speed of flatterning stones ? Cause if we are I've got pictures a plenty up there showing how quick the process is to flattern stones dry. That stone wasn't even properly dry.

Are you brushing the dust away as you go ? Did you lap it dry ? ...I don't know....but you must be doing something different, cause I'm not making this up. It confuses me that you don't see how easily the stuff must come off......like chalk off a blackboard when its dry.......can you see how much of the #### is left on the grit after each pass ?(in those pictures of mine)

I understand that straightening process......if your happy with it, I think thats great.

Simplicitys better for me......find it so much easier to off the rulers, the pencils the water and lap a stone dry on a grit that is known to be dead flat.

Do you want me to put a 1/8" dish in a stone and show how quickly it laps out ?... Craigs right. I won't let this go........but jesssus ! ..for good reason.

Jake,
I asked how you check for flatness (of your stone), and you said ..

By looking at it ..... if you make straight passes on grit dry....you can see the dishes in the stone lap away(unlike when its wet)......On a completely dry stone the contrast is very clear..........for a long time, in my paranoid way, I'd check that my lapped stone was indeed flat after seeing the vally dissappear with a ruler.......but it always is ! I don't need to bother anymore (which is great...less stuffing about).

I would be most concerned with this method. The fact that your dish disappears is no assurance that the whole surface is flat. It is impossible to determine flatness just by looking, or even using a straightedge. A depression of .001" is the equivalent of a fine shaving. You may get it flat, but you have no way of checking this with your method.

Try scribbling a few evenly-spaced lines on the stone's ace with a pencil. This helps guage what is what. It takes a few seconds to do.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hi Derek..... all set for the weekend ?

yeah....I said this in that quote

for a long time, in my paranoid way, I'd check that my lapped stone was indeed flat after seeing the vally dissappear with a ruler.......but it always is ! I don't need to bother anymore (which is great...less stuffing about).

Thats right....It always is ! .....I don't need to anymore. .....I've checked with rulers, I've checked with pencil lines......

you'd have to be blind not to see the valleys.......all the valleys, the dips, or whatever you call it will show up like dogs bollucks the first pass you make with a dry stone. Once they dissappear ( you can take a couple more passes after that if you like to make sure ).....its flat...... I've checked hundreds of times afterwards with a ruler.....

Actually, I would suspect your more likely to screw that up if the stones wet...cause your lapping blind, fiddling about with rulers.

I've been doing this for a long time, with excellent results with flat blade edges.... all the planes that require a flat edge when lapping bevels.

Sorry, I'm getting a bit cross. But seriously, do any of your guys acknowledge anything I'm saying ? ..... had enough. Night.

Jake

Sorry - didn't mean to make my comments sound so critical. Don't take it personally. Note that I was not questioning whether you get your stones flat, but rather that you cannot check that this is so by just eyeballing the surface.

The problem is that, by writing about and advocating a methodology, then you are inviting others to do as you do. You may have gone through the checking process before, be sure in what you do, but others have not got there yet. They still need to check to see what they are doing.

Regards from Perth

Derek

If I had to rank threads based on their potential of stirring emotions, anything to do with sharpening would be number 1. At least among people who actually sharpen things.

I've done dry and wet. Most times it was wet because I was flattening them during or immediately after use. But dry was faster, just requred me to dry the stones first...

The only King I have left is a 6k and it needs little flattening, but due to a lack of planning on my part I flatten when wet. I use Shaptons these days and simply use the cast iron flattening plate and a little silicon carbide grit, using a light spray of water.

But I'll also throw in my own heresy. I think because we can, we flatten stones to a greater degree than our forefathers. All those oil stones we find in the wild weren't all dished because of some uncarring clod. Same goes with flattened backs, spotlessly perfect bevels to within a 1/4 of a degree of each other, and well, the list goes on. They still found a way to make nice furniture.

I also think there is a fundemental difference how flat flat is based upon whether one uses a guide or freehand sharpens. Even how one freehands. With a guide, if one is shooting for a near even bevel, the stone needs to be pretty flat--at least if it is using a wide flat roller. Less important if one uses a narrow or cambered roller.

Well, enough rambling.

Take care, Mike

Hi Jake,

I don't even use water stones, so I suppose I'm just an impartial observer, but I reckon your method makes sense. Easy to see what you are doing and, by the look of it, you are flattening them on that concrete wall thing you built for flattening your plane soles - and you know that's flat Judging by your pictures, your method looks good to me and it's very fast

Cheers

Paul

my 2 cents worth i use a lower grit waterstone to flatten my 8000 when i see it needs it. Rubbing the two together works just fine for me.

I find that for my 8000 i can see it when it needs some TLC even when its wet.

Another 2 cents

I remember seeing a guy on tele giving a sharpening demo. Im pretty sure he was from Lie Nielson. All he did was rub two stones the same grit together for a couple of seconds each time he used them. I dont see it getting much quicker than that.

Cheers Paul

Guys I hate to point out the obvious BUT flattening a stone is not rocket science and any of the ways described can work depending how the process is carried through.

What does matter is the end result, do you get SHARP evenly ground blades? If you do then it works and thats all there is to it. I personally flatten the lower grit stones wet (extermely quick) but the higher grit stones dry, only because I find I waste too much stone flattening the higher grits wet. It works for me.

I think it is important that we debate these things constantly because this is how we learn from one another but sometimes things can come across more complicated than they are. This runs the risk of alienating beginners by making things appear more complex than they are.

Lets not forget that some of the greatest furniture-makers of the previous century did great work with very little (ie oil stones, that are VERY difficult to keep absolutely flat).

Ok off to have breakfast now, it might correct my hypoglycaemia

routermaniac

Originally Posted by MikeW

But dry was faster, just requred me to dry the stones first...

Thank GOD for that .... ta Mike. thats all I've being trying to say.

that ......Its quicker, so why not try and organise a routine to take advantage of this.

Originally Posted by apricotripper

Thank GOD for that .... ta Mike. thats all I've being trying to say.

that ......Its quicker, so why not try and organise a routine to take advantage of this.

Because of poor planing on my part !

I also think this or a quicker method is more important on the lower grit stones which dish faster. The one King 6k stone I have left only needs it once in a while. But then, I probably don't care so much how flat my stones are as some do.

I typically hand sharpen using a sideways method similar to the way the US importer of Shaptons advocates. This uses nearly all a stone's surface and so wear is pretty even across a stone. And the Shaptons need less flattening than most or all other water stones. Helps reinforce my laziness

Take care, Mike

Originally Posted by apricotripper

......Its quicker, so why not try and organise a routine to take advantage of this.

Maybe only marginally so. (are we talking seconds here :confused: )

Because I use my edge tools a high percentage of the time that I spend in the workshop, I can't afford the time to wait for the stones to dry out. Most of my tools get a quick sharpen every time they get a run. So the stones get a couple of swipes on the 220 grit diamond stone at the end of the sharpening. From go to wo, I'd say it takes me less than 5 mins to do a plane blade & a couple of chisels & flatten the stones.

The old adage is; spend little time sharpening & do it often instead of a lot of time infrequently.

honestly wish people would read the posts more.

Seem to me to be the cause behind most of these debates.

Thing is, no-one had really disagreed with you. Well, Derek sort of disagreed but not really. But for me, and I bet for a lot of others, it's a lovely idea but totally impractical. As I explained last time, I've got one set of stones and I'm not likely to get another set just so that I can keep one set dry. But if I ever do, I'll keep it in mind, so thanks for the reminder.