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My Sharpening Process

4K views 37 replies 13 participants last post by  BigRedKnothead 
#1 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
 

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#2 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Best line of the blog "biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out" Is that your quote? If so may I use it?

Good blog. Sounds like a good sharpening process to me.
 

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#3 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
IT IS! lol. Feel free to use that whenever you want Dan. Thanks for reading, I'd love to see you post your process, your perspective is always extremely valuable.
 

Attachments

#4 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Great post love that phase also.
"biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out"
 

Attachments

#5 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Maur- Great blog! I agree with, "biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out".
What ever works for the user.
40 years ago I was a saddlemaker. We "learned" to use oil stones and Arky rocks for sharpening.
There was a strop on every bench charged with "white rouge" and "red rouge", and each was used daily.
I use a strop regularly, espically when I'm planning.

I'm including a link to a "polishing and grinding" reference.

All strop compounds are NOT created equal.

"biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out"
 

Attachments

#6 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Darn it Jordanp took my idea.. I was going to use that quote as my signature quote… I move to slow.

I should do a blog with mine. I know I have gone over it before on threads but I have never done a blog about it. I will do one eventually.
 

Attachments

#7 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
FWIW- I posted a summary of grit comparison on our Guild's web site.
http://www.sunflowerwoodworkers.org/articles/AbrasiveGritSummaryTables.pdf

My research until 2011. Still working.
 

Attachments

#8 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Nice write-up buddy. There is always more to learn on this topic. Thanks for taking the time. Gave me some more things to try.
 

Attachments

#9 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
I have been converted to Paul Sellers honing method. I use oil stones instead of diamond stones, because I already have some great oil stones. I have been honing this way now for three months. There is no comparison in terms of speed. This is much faster, therefore it encourages me to hone more often. My irons get wicked sharp using this method. Now, let me say very quickly that I have tried five or six separate methods. They all work and will produce surgical edges if practiced enough. The advantage for me for this method is speed.
 

Attachments

#10 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
I'll buy into the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out. But thankfully we all have Dan posting his magical pictures to let us all know we have work to do.

Nice write up Mauricio.
 

Attachments

#11 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Ha ha, wow I don't think I've ever been quoted before! Thanks guys, and thanks for the props Jordan!

Now that I think about it my tag line pretty much says the same thing "Confusion is the Womb of Learning, with utter conviction being it's Tomb" Prof. T.O. Nitsch. (Smitty's College Professor) LOL

And I say that because for a while I thought I had it figured out. I was using sandpaper from the Auto parts store and stropping on mdf, I thought I was sharp until I tested my edge on pine end grain and then I realized I had room for improvement. But until I came to that realization I didnt open my ears to what others had been saying about their sharpening methods. Thus, I didn't get any better for a while. Some people (me) have to learn things on their own the hard way I guess.

Dan the world needs your blog on sharpening. Otherwise it's buried in the HPOYD thread, hard to find and not searchable.

And Don, good point, it might have been Dan with his magic shavings that got me thinking, hey I cant do that! Thanks buddy.

kslim what are the white and red compounds about? I bought some green compound from TFWW but I didn't like the polish I was getting as much as the gold. And your right about compounds not being equal, it's just hard to know the differences because they are not forthcoming about what's in them. Kind of like finishes.

And thanks for the link! I had a similar one favorited but not as good or complete as yours!

Red glad you got something out of it and thanks for the inspiration.

Ron your comments really have my thinking. I know PS method gets you pretty damn sharp and any perceived disadvantage on my part is more than overcome by the speed and simplicity of his method. The other thing I like about it is how compact it is. I like how it all fits on that little board. You really dont even need a sharpening station because there isn't much mess. Hmmm… All I need is two more stones and I'm there. The fine and x fine DMT dia sharps. Single grit so I don't have to flip them over.

Here is a question about PS' method, what do you do the polish the backs? You're not getting there with the diamond stones; do you polish them with scary sharp?
 

Attachments

#12 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Great post Mauricio. Your quote is definitely an absolute truism.
 

Attachments

#13 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Great blog Mauricio,

I was on my way to the shop to write about my sharpening technique, but on the way there (a few steps past the back door), it changed and now I have to start over!

"For Sale - All the junk that goes with the other 7, er 8, er 10 sharpening methods I've tried"

Still not sold on the current waterstone with some diamond stone thrown in method. I'm messy by nature, so yeah, it's a mud fest.

Big flat expensive diamond stones and/or shaptons will be my final, end all, be all, sharpening method.

With the money I've spent over time, there could be a tormek sitting on my bench, or a dozen diamond and ceramic stones. Tormek never appealed to me. Not that I have the $600 plus to invest in one.

ksSlim - regarding your tables, thanks so much for posting them Back when I bought my first 8000 grit waterstone, I was using 2000 and 2500 wet/dry sandpaper from Napa Parts, IIRC, for the final hone. I could bring up a mirror polish on the face of an iron or chisel using the 2000 W/D, and dreamed of the polish I could achieve using an 8000 waterstone. Heck, going from 2000 to 8000 grit, it was a no brainer. I was using some well used 2000 grit W/D so it was more like maybe 3000 W/D (never seen 3000 W/D but you get the picture). So after a few swipes on the well used 2000 or 2500 W/D, I forget, I switch to the 8000 waterstone. I worked up a slurry using a nagura stone and when to town on that stone. After a few swipes I looked at my progress and imagine my surprise to see a slight haze on a previously pristine mirrored face. I didn't know the 2000 W/D was about equal to the 8000 waterstone. And really, that is still not a well known fact among woodworkers, just my opinion.
 

Attachments

#14 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
David, thanks for weighing in. You know I kind of feel silly now because it never clicked for me that 2000 grit sandpaper was the same as a 8k Japanese waters stone. I mean I know that the grit system was different and I had seen charts like what Slim posted but I never realized how they lined up. It's not obvious because a 6K water stone is smoother to the touch than 2k paper.

And you're right. I used to get a mirror polish on the back of my irons with sandpaper which I don't get with the 6K stone. I have to finish it off with the 1 and .3 micron 3M paper to get the mirror.

Shaptons sound cool but if you talk to Dan he will tell you they wear out too fast for what they cost. He does a lot of plane restorations but still…

I like the Paul Sellers Diamond Stone idea followed by the strop but I think I would finish with the XX Fine (3micron) stone and skip on the XFine which is 9micron.

You know it's a little shady that DMT would call their XXFine 3micron a 8000k grit stone when a Japanese 8k stone is 1.2micron. In my book that's a 4000 grit stone.
 

Attachments

#15 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
I use a two sided diamond stone 600/1200. I sharpen with Paul Sellers technique except for the high grit counts. It works great for me including end grain, pine or whatever. I touch up as I work which takes only a few seconds. I guess we all work different or are satisfied with more or less. It's always interesting to discover how different the requirements are from one person to the next. I'm not saying this belittle others who want 12000 grit edges, but just to say that good woodworking can be done with a lot less, so as not to scare any newcomers off.
 

Attachments

#16 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Stefang so your using the PS method but not following with the strop?

I think your right that good work working can be done with much less. I mean, imagine sanding your wood to 1200 grit? That's pretty damn smooth, and that's what you're doing basically with your process.

However as a newcomer progresses and want to be able to plane difficult grain then I think the higher grits become more important. For example take a look at this picture. Here I'm taking my smoother over a knot in walnut. There is no tearout, just a slight bit of roughness right before the knot that can be taken care of with a scraper.
Brown Furniture Table Wood Floor

Brown Table Wood Flooring Wood stain


I think its situations like that where you want the sharpest blade possible. Now if that can be done by sharpening only to 1200 grit then I stand corrected. Like I said before I'm open to improvement.

By the way I do have a 10degree-ish back bevel on my smoother iron so that helps to.
 

Attachments

#17 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
No Maurice. I'm not normally stropping, but occasionally I do. You make a very valid point about the harder woods. I normally do not use the hardest woods simply because I can't get them here. I do have a small piece of imported walnut though and I have to admit that it is very hard compared to anything else I've experienced. I sliced off a 1/4" X 3" piece on my bandsaw for cutting with my scrollsaw and I was surprised how hard it was compared to the other woods I've been using, including white oak. My edges do shave the pine end grain quite well though. Just for the record I am aware that the finer grits and the water stones create sharper edges than my routine, but I just haven't needed sharper, so I don't want to use the time to get there. I will have to plane some walnut and see how it goes just for fun. I'll let you know how it went.
 

Attachments

#18 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Question: Does anyone know if there is a difference between DMT's Dia-Sharps and the EZE diamond stones Sellers uses? Other than being less expensive. And is the green honing compound offered by TFWW the one to get?

I went to Dia-sharps last year. I have the X-Coarse (120), Coarse (220), Fine (600) and X-Fine (1200.) I seldom use the X-Coarse. Usually only need Fine and X-Fine. And then when I felt the need to go further I use 2000 w/d sandpaper. That puts me pretty close to Sellers' system. And now that I learned here about Sellers' system I'm going to get some leather and try that instead of the w/d sandpaper.

Mauricio , you're right about DMT's numbers. It's all very confusing. The chart ksSlim posted shows the XXFine DMT stone coming in at 9 microns/1500 grit. The XFine at 14/1000. It shows the rest of their stones matching up with their claims. For a limited time they are offering a Med-Fine Dia-sharp that they rate 6/4000.
 

Attachments

#19 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
CL, I'm not sure, I think Paul Sellers had a blog about both the DMT's and EZE laps and he was cool with the DMTs to. Wow, I just noted the EZE laps are cheaper than the DMTs. I didn't know that.

I have the Green Compound from TFWW, it's the no name brand stuff they say is good. I don't know, I feel like I got better results from the flexcut gold. But don't take my word on it, I'd get some more opinions because its so hard to tell the difference from one compound to another. PS just blogged about one he got from Harbor Freight that he liked.

My Duo Sharps are X Course (220), Course (320). I use the X Course side for flattening the water stones.

I caught that discrepancy on Slims chart to. Or at least it's different than what I see on amazon. X Fine is 9 micron / 1200 mesh (listed as 14 micron on slims chart) and XX Fine is 3 micron/8000 mesh (listed as 9 micron on slims chart).
 

Attachments

#20 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Very intresting. I do enjoy reading how others are getting to the razor edge.
 

Attachments

#21 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
It looks like a good method and it's a detailed description on the process. Thanks.

helluvawreck aka Charles
http://woodworkingexpo.wordpress.com
 

Attachments

#22 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
I love these discussions. Great post.

Thank you Mauricio.
 

Attachments

#23 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Glad to be of service folks. But selfishly this has been very beneficial for me to think through all of this out loud.

I'm going to see Paul Sellers at the WW show this weekend which I'm very excited about. He didnt come to Atlanta last year.

Maybe I'll pick his brain about his sharpening process. I want to like it but I'm still not sold.

His 3 stones are 45, 25, & 9 Micron. Then he goes to a strop which I assume is an average of .5 micron (some bigger). I know it works and I really want to buy into his process because it's so fast but 9 to .5 is a big jump on the final polishing step.
 

Attachments

#24 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Might have to try the 3m film on my smoothers. Ever do the 'ruler trick' on the backside? I was reluctant to try it, but when I did, I liked it. Big time saver, and produced the best edge I've made. So much to learn.
 

Attachments

#25 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
Try it out Big Red. If you have a woodcraft close by you can buy a small pack to try it out. I think its like 5 bucks there. If you like it you could just do either the 1 or .3 micron from TFWW. Actually I think Woodcraft sells a bigger variety now.

Dan (who of course is the man with the absurd shavings) has both but often just uses only one of them, Not a lot of noticeable difference. Both are crazy smooth, they don't even seem like abrasive paper. Hard to tell them apart.
 

Attachments

#26 ·
My Sharpening Process

Bigredknothead did a blog on his sharpening process recently and I thought it was a good idea; I enjoyed reading it and wish more people would do the same. So I'm following suit and hope that others will weigh in with their own no nonsense techniques.
http://lumberjocks.com/BigRedKnothead/blog/34842

This is what I've settled on, at least for the time being. I like it because it's a pretty easy and inexpensive process. Maybe it helps bring some sanity to someone else who is trying to decide on a sharpening routine.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I do which has worked for me.

I've got two options. Option A is for blades that don't have to be absurdly sharp like Jack, Scrub, and Jointer planes. Option B is for the extra touch on Smoothers or edges that will be used on end grain.

Option A:
Course (320grit) DMT followed by 1K/6K (double sided) water stone. I've been finishing that up with a leather strop with Flexcut gold compound.
Hood Rectangle Wood Grille Mesh


I sharpen free hand, almost never use a honing guide. It easy to get the angle by hand but I've found it's important to always start with the course stone for a few reasons.
• If you don't start coarse the other stones will take too long
• Also I feel like you don't fully renew the edge without it so you won't end up as sharp
• When sharpening free hand you will have a tendency to make the bevel angle steeper and steeper each time to get a burr. Eventually you could end up with a bevel angle that is too big. I've done this once, put a 45 degree angle on a blade, it turns into a skid that won't cut wood. Lol.
• I like to create a convex bevel on the coarse stone like Paul Sellers does but I try to just hone the "micro bevel" on the water stone. That makes those stones faster since they are removing less material; also it keeps your stones from dishing so fast.

• Another benefits of the DMT Coarse stone - I almost never use a grinder. The DMT is almost always sufficient. And the great thing about the DMT is that the course side (220 grit) works great for flattening the water stones.

Option B:
I do this when I want to get the sharpest edge possible.
Course DMT, 1k/6k then, instead of using the strop I will use 1micron and .3 Micron paper.
I just started using MDF tiles for the 3M paper so I can just toss them when they are done. I got this idea from Dan and so far it's working well.
Table Wood Desk Tool Bottle

Yeah, that's a Cobra tank in the background! Long story, it was a gift from a friend, the childhood story associated I will save for another day.

Why isn't a strop sufficient? I've heard Paul Sellers say that green compound will get you to like 12K grit. I'm being picky but if you read the fine print on these products they tell you the AVERAGE grit size is .5 micron. Which means that there are larger particles which make the compound cut faster. Does that affect the cutting results you get? Probably not, I'm just being picky here.
From what I can gather only pastes made for use on sharpening machines are purely .5 micron.

Overcoming the messiness of water stones:
One of the downsides of water stones is the mess of flattening. I've come up with a way that minimizes this quite a bit.

I keep this bucket of water near the sharpening station. I wet the stone and the diamond stone in the water and rub them together. Then I rinse the stones with fresh water from a squeezy bottle when I'm done to clean them off. I also use the brush to clean off all the grit from the holes in the DMT.
Wood Flooring Table Space Metal


I hardly get my hands wet doing this so it's not that bad.

So here is what I call sharp. Take a piece of soft pine and test the edge on the end grain. For a while I thought it was just the same to do this test on oak but it's not. The pine will only cut cleanly with a very sharp edge because the fibers yield more than hard wood.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Plank


Take a look at the right side of this piece… a clean surface. The left side was cut with a not so sharp chisel.
Interestingly I tried this on a chisel sharpened up to 6K and nothing more and I was able to get the same result. So maybe the 6K stone is sufficient.

However I still think getting a blade as polished as possible improves edge retention. If your edge is serrated on a microscopic level it will cut but the serrations will round over more quickly than a continuous sharp edge.
Take a look at these magnified pictures from Leonard Lee's book on sharpening.

Rectangle Wood Building Slope Font


6k followed by a strop looks pretty sharp but you can see the edge is not as straight and smooth as the 8K. Also you can see the deep scratches on the 6K pic. That can be from the 6K stone but I think they are from those larger particles in the stropping compound.

Anyway, that's the little I know about sharpening. It's subject to change if I read something those changes my mind.

*Potential Changes"
I'm thinking of maybe going with the full Paul Sellers method with diamond stones and stropping. I'm going to use the strop more with my current method and see if I like it long-term. I like it because it's so fast and it could save me a lot of time on flattening. But then there is that that issue with stropping compounds I mentioned above that bugs me. Maybe the speed of the process outweighs the slight increase in sharpening frequency? (if any). Like I said I'm going to strop and see how that works for a while.

The other route would be to buy an 8K water stone which would eliminate stropping and 3m film. But they are like $80 for one stone which kind of makes me wonder if the marginal benefit over stropping is worth the price. I do think Water stones are slightly slower because of the flattening you have to do but the polish you get is superior to diamond stones so it might be worth it… I'm undecided.

My current process works so I will stick with it for a while.

It's also relatively inexpensive.
• Course/Extra Course DMT - $65
• 1k/6k Waterston - $50
• Leather for strop could be free but I got a big bag of leather scraps for like $10 at Hobby Lobby but I also used that for vise faces and I still I have a ton left over.
• Flexcut Stropping compound - $10
• A sample pack of 3M film at TFWW is $14 if you decide to go that route but you will have to keep buying it. It will get expensive over the long run.

So not counting the 3M film you're at about $125. But you don't have to spend that all at once. I built up to this gradually because I'm a cheapskate. I started with scary sharp, then bought the stropping compound, then the water stone; I was flattening the stone on a cinder block until I got the DMT.

Hopefully I haven't board you. My hope is to help others like me who have struggled to find a process that works well. Also if you have any feedback that could make my process better I'm open to suggestions. The one thing I've learned from this process is that the biggest obstacle to getting better is believing you've got it figured out, so I'm open to anyone's input.

Thanks for reading.

Mauricio
By the way I got to meet Paul Sellers yesterday and ask him about his diamond stones. I also got to see the results of his work first hand.

I asked him about the big jump from 9 micron to the strop. He said that the diamond stones get broken in and end up being finer. Also, he said, just look at the results!

I've got to say, the results are undeniable, all he does is plane pine at the demonstration which, as we've discussed above, is soft but requires a very sharp blade, especially the end grain.

His end grain pine is pretty much perfect. And he isn't taking light slicing shavings like I am. He is going at if full speed and its smooth with no breakout on the end of the board. End grain on raised panels, whatever. He even raises a panel on a knotty piece and he had almost no tear out around the knot.

Man with the EZE Lap stones being only $35 (free shipping), I can get the two I need for $70. Heck you can get all 3 for $105, free shipping!

I can always use the 3M paper if I think I need more polish, ether way it would still be the same number of steps I'm doing now. 3 stone then strop, or 3 stones then 3M paper.

Oh and one more tip, he lubricates the stones with Glass Cleaner from the dollar store. It's not the same as Windex. For some reason this stuff doesn't make the stones or the abraded particles rust.
 

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