Hello fellow edge crazy people.
Do you sharpen on whetstones? If yes, maybe you could help me.
Short story -
Please recommend me some good quality water stones - for both creating new edges and for a perfect mirror polish.
Long story -
A few years back i bought a 1000/6000 stone for about 20$.
Back then comparing the result to sandpaper i though it could be actually around 3000,thinking it was low quality.
It smelled of ceramic and needed to be soaked for about 5 minutes.
During those years, since this was my only stone and was too fine to re-create edges, i kept upgrading my home made edge pro instead until i created perfect mirror edges from nothing.
Since it was very time consuming and i have learnt a lot about sharpening during that time, i decided to give water stones a shot again.
I ordered a few cheap stones in 10-20$ price range thinking they would be just as "bad" as the previous one, which works OK, feels smooth enough, does not dry too quickly after it has been soaked long enough and it grinds metal quickly enough for a 1000#
Well i was wrong!
I bought 240, 600 and 2000/5000
They all just let the water fall through even after an hour of soaking.
They all feel rough and dont give a very good feedback.
Well the 5000 gritt is kind of acceptable, but still worse than the 1000 gritt of my previous stone.
That all would not be so bad given the price, but i only have half of my 240 stone left, after sharpening only five knives!
Do all coarse stones behave like that? Do they get used up this quickly? I hope not, as i looked up some high end stones which do not even need soaking and seem to work OK.
The 2000/5000 stone does not get too much use and seems to close the gap between 1000/6000 just allright, even if sharpening on it is not quite as enjoyable.
After this bad experience i decided to try stones on the other side of the quality spectrum. As i am too poor to buy more cheap stuff.
I will practice sharpening until the stones are gone (which wont take long) and then ill need a replacement.
I find water stones, even as bad as these much more enjoyable to sharpen with than creating a perfect edge on a jig.
The convexed grind plus the ability to affect the edge the entire time and make sure its ground with the same angle everywhere for any knife shape are the main reasons for me.(You know how the jigs always make one part of the edge wider than the rest)
Plus when i strop a knife which has been sharpened by hand the strop is much more effecrive than on a V edge, where it often dulls the knife even more. That makes for an easy revival of a dull edge - without setting up angles for an hour.
Would you please recommend me a good coarse stone that gives a good feedback and is capable of creating new bevels? (First thing google found was the naniwa SS 220 or naniwa 400)
I would also like to get some mirror polish stone recommendations (naniwa 12000?)
If you feel like mentioning some stones to replace the middle area, i do not mind at all as i might eventually upgrade all the stones or just buy the whole set.
That said the coarse stone gets the most use and so is the most important to me right now.
Price does not matter as long as it suits the quality, that does not mean i do not like bargains though!
Thank you for your help!
PS: I still did not get used to the new site and could not find any water stone thread. I hope you do not mind.
I also typed this entire thing on my phone just to accidetally press some button and have it all deleted and retyping it all over again to a text file on my pc!
Oh! And now as i logged in from my pc the first message i typed somehow reapeared there!..
I stayed with the last version
Do you sharpen on whetstones? If yes, maybe you could help me.
Short story -
Please recommend me some good quality water stones - for both creating new edges and for a perfect mirror polish.
Long story -
A few years back i bought a 1000/6000 stone for about 20$.
Back then comparing the result to sandpaper i though it could be actually around 3000,thinking it was low quality.
It smelled of ceramic and needed to be soaked for about 5 minutes.
During those years, since this was my only stone and was too fine to re-create edges, i kept upgrading my home made edge pro instead until i created perfect mirror edges from nothing.
Since it was very time consuming and i have learnt a lot about sharpening during that time, i decided to give water stones a shot again.
I ordered a few cheap stones in 10-20$ price range thinking they would be just as "bad" as the previous one, which works OK, feels smooth enough, does not dry too quickly after it has been soaked long enough and it grinds metal quickly enough for a 1000#
Well i was wrong!
I bought 240, 600 and 2000/5000
They all just let the water fall through even after an hour of soaking.
They all feel rough and dont give a very good feedback.
Well the 5000 gritt is kind of acceptable, but still worse than the 1000 gritt of my previous stone.
That all would not be so bad given the price, but i only have half of my 240 stone left, after sharpening only five knives!
Do all coarse stones behave like that? Do they get used up this quickly? I hope not, as i looked up some high end stones which do not even need soaking and seem to work OK.
The 2000/5000 stone does not get too much use and seems to close the gap between 1000/6000 just allright, even if sharpening on it is not quite as enjoyable.
After this bad experience i decided to try stones on the other side of the quality spectrum. As i am too poor to buy more cheap stuff.
I will practice sharpening until the stones are gone (which wont take long) and then ill need a replacement.
I find water stones, even as bad as these much more enjoyable to sharpen with than creating a perfect edge on a jig.
The convexed grind plus the ability to affect the edge the entire time and make sure its ground with the same angle everywhere for any knife shape are the main reasons for me.(You know how the jigs always make one part of the edge wider than the rest)
Plus when i strop a knife which has been sharpened by hand the strop is much more effecrive than on a V edge, where it often dulls the knife even more. That makes for an easy revival of a dull edge - without setting up angles for an hour.
Would you please recommend me a good coarse stone that gives a good feedback and is capable of creating new bevels? (First thing google found was the naniwa SS 220 or naniwa 400)
I would also like to get some mirror polish stone recommendations (naniwa 12000?)
If you feel like mentioning some stones to replace the middle area, i do not mind at all as i might eventually upgrade all the stones or just buy the whole set.
That said the coarse stone gets the most use and so is the most important to me right now.
Price does not matter as long as it suits the quality, that does not mean i do not like bargains though!
Thank you for your help!
PS: I still did not get used to the new site and could not find any water stone thread. I hope you do not mind.
I also typed this entire thing on my phone just to accidetally press some button and have it all deleted and retyping it all over again to a text file on my pc!
Oh! And now as i logged in from my pc the first message i typed somehow reapeared there!..
I stayed with the last version
