Advise or Tutorial for Sharpening w/ Waterstones

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me2

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Oct 11, 2003
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I'm having some trouble sharpening with my 800 grit waterstone. I have an unknown brand 800 grit waterstone from Klingspor, and a Norton course/fine combo India stone. The course side of the India stone alone will produce a good aggressive hair shaving edge. I have been able to produce a hair whittling edge on the waterstone 1 time, and have not been able to do it again.

I use a block that holds the stones (both benchstones) at an angle of 17 degrees, when holding the knife horizontal. I keep the waterstone wet, but use the Norton India dry. After tonight, the waterstone seems to cut so slowly, but still leaves a dull edge after deburring at an increased angle. Also, the corners of the water stone get scraped off by the edge just in front of the plunge grind, the choil I think its called. Anyway, I decided to try the waterstone after reading Leonard Lee's Complete Guide to Sharpening. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Many here rave about them, and in the finer grits they have no corresponding equivalent that I'm know of in other types of stones. Perhaps I just got a lemon. Any tips or guidance is appreciated.
 
My 800 grit King waterstone was a disappointment at first. Sharpening with a slurry was not producing a sharp edge. Someone suggested that I use a stropping (edge trailing) stroke. BINGO, it worked. I now use a stropping stroke on all my waterstones. It works for me.
 
I wish I could help. I think waterstones are much more sensitive to the angle you are holding, but I have no basis in fact for that. I pretty much use them for my straight razors, and stick to diamond and ceramics. I can easily get a knife popping hairs on a ceramic, take it to a waterstone, then dull it completely.... Go figure.
 
I just spent about an hour total sharpening all the knives in the kitchen block (6 total) on the Norton. I didnt sharpen the 7" chef's knife, since it still has a tree topping edge from the Sharpmaker, and responds well to the waterstone, one of 2 that does so. I tested it once and the waterstone cut faster than the Norton, but this evenings experience does not show that its repeatable. Also, with some practice and 2 tries, I got a RADA Cutlery Santoku treetopping sharp straight from the fine side of the India stone. Since I dont have any serrated knives, and my waterstone seems to be more trouble than its worth, looks like my Sharpmaker and waterstone are going into retirement. Previously, I used the Sharpmaker for a hair whittling edge consistently. I'll still need it for my Vapor and its recurved edge, but I'll be using it less now that I can get the same edge on a combo grit stone.

I really feel like I'm missing something with the waterstone, since they seem so popular and work for so many people. I just want to make sure I give them a fair shake.
 
Are you keeping the waterstone really wet (not just wet to the touch but having standing water on it)? Some stones need more than just a spritz of water on the surface to be effective. Also, try varying the pressure on the stone (too much forces the edge into the stone dulling your sharp edge). Last but not least, keep the angle very constant; speed can be your enemy on the waterstone when maintaining edge angle. "Feel" the stone contact the edge and listen to it, the sound of the blade on the stone will frequently tell you when you have the right touch pressure, contact angle and amount of water on the stone.

NJ
 
me2 said:
...I really feel like I'm missing something with the waterstone, since they seem so popular and work for so many people. I just want to make sure I give them a fair shake.
Click to expand...

Did you try using a lite stropping (edge trailing) stroke on the waterstones? Some suggest that cutting into the slurry may dull the edge somewhat. A stropping stroke also eliminates the possibility of gouging a soft stone. It worked for me and I'm still a novice on waterstones. Also make sure you don't have a wire edge hanging on.
 
I would try two things on that stone:

  1. Try to raise a hint of a burr across the edge instead of a clearly visible burr
  2. Deburr at the same angle that formed the burr using edge-trailing, alternating strokes with light pressure.

You may also want to flatten your waterstone as well. If it's clogged with steel, it'll cut slower and if it's dished, your preset angles won't match up with the edge so well. Dished stones and double-bevelled knives aren't so much of a problem when freehanding, but as soon as you steady out your body's internal levers with a machine such as an inclined plane :eek: , small problems may occur. Thinking about how the sloping sections on a slightly dished and inclined waterstone can turn that 17 into 10 and 27 and how that range of extremes can slow sharpening down on top of clogging as well as make for a very thick convexed edge.

The beauty of your dry India stones is that they rarely and barely dish and they're often porous enough to tap clean. Their crystals aren't as fragile as Crystolon/SiC which offsets the fact that they're softer. I think that priced-to-own waterstones also use aluminum oxide as their main abrasive, but they're binder is clay instead of vitrified bonding. Nice if your need for sharp abrasive crystals is high and constant (isn't it always?), but annoying when trying to compensate for having human arms and hands.

Since I've already rambled on too long, do you set or grind a bevel with your coarse India and then go to polish it to a hair-whittling edge with your 800 grit waterstone or fine India? If you do; and even if you flatten your waterstones with a zeal that approaches idolatry; verify that the angle of your waterstone matches or is higher than the angle of your coarse India stone. That can make things a bit off; especially if you're doing more grinding with your 800 grit stone than your 120 grit stone. The tendency to use more pressure to speed things up is there and so are the troubles of high pressure on a thin, little edge.

If that still doesn't help, I wouldn't know what to tell you. I try to use the niftiest waterstones I can find (from the latest high-tech ones to a polishing stone my buddy made with an angle grinder and a stone he found at a garden center :thumbup: :cool: ayyyy!), but a crappy 800 grit edge is no match for a hair-whittling 400 grit edge (how fine is the India again?). And when you think about the results you can get with wet/dry or lapping film over glass (the grit system for automotive wet/dry seems more modest than waterstone grits), it's hard to justify the $25-400 per stone.

Best of luck with either regaining your hair-whittling waterstone edges or with getting over the "need" to use such stones and just enjoy and improve on the hair-whittling edges you get from other means.
 
I tend to not mix the stones, so its either the waterstone/Sharpmaker or the India combo stone. I've lapped both stones recently, with the last couple of weeks. My angle holding is a bit sloppy, to the point that the minor dishing that may be present in the waterstone probably wont even show up. The stone usually has standing water on it. However, I tend to press pretty hard, so maybe I'm actually sinking the edge ever so slightly into the stone. One thing I did change from the one instance of a really sharp edge off the waterstone is I changed the holder from vertical, ala the Sharpmaker, to horizontal, so I hold the knife different now. Really light strokes seem to be the key. With the waterstone, I raised a burr, cut into the stone twice to remove, then alternated at very light pressure at an elevated angle, from 12 to 17, to get the good edge. All in all, it was quite tedious and took about 30 minutes. Of course, this was enhance by using a relatively soft steel the forms a very tenacious burr in the first place.

One thing to note about my technique. When raising a burr, I typically cut in both directions, edge in and edge trailing. I go from choil to tip honing into the edge and, without picking up the knife, from tip to choil with an edge trailing stroke. I need to explore the waterstone and try some different techniqes, such as trailing only. Thom, does deburring with a trailing stroke really work? I would think it would be quite tricky. In the last day or 2 I've taken to deburring using 2 alternating strokes at 45 degrees. Cutting directly into the stone like gunmike and Cliff recommended doesnt seem to work as well for me. Thanks for the tips, and I'll keep trying.
 
Here's the rub: so long as you have an edge, you have some form of burr or another. The process of removing steel weakens the last remaining site of contact at best and goes deeper when more force is applied.

What that has to do with deburring at the same angle that formed the burr is that the edge is being achieved by folding and biting away the ends of the burr that are too out of line and too weak to hold sway as a useful cutting edge.

What makes me a big fan of edge-trailing deburring is a tendency for my handskills to be sloppy. Use whatever to raise the burr, but if you have an off-stroke when moving edge-leading, the chance your edge will bite into the hone and be seriously damaged is greater than when fudging the angle while edge-trailing (the edge will likely face only humorous damage). That said, when sharpening with a stone tilted horizontally, I do what you do in terms of leading choil-to-tip and trailing tip-to-choil and sometimes deburr using light, alternating choil-to-tip leading-only passes (not with a leather strop or polishing paper, of course).

Thanks to ksskss and jaeger99, a lot of us horizontal sharpening on tilted abrasives folks are buying surface levels to place on our blades while sharpening. Surface levels (aka bubble levels) tell the user when his or her knife is off-horizontal and demand slow movement to be accurate (which gives additional benefits in terms of depth and quality of exposure of the edge to the abrasives). I'm on a sharpening-free break until the end of May (I overdo things), so if you try adding a bubble level, please let me live vicariously through your new discoveries.
 
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