Sharpen a sickle. Which grit?

S

Sir Joe

Joined
May 30, 2015
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114
Hello.
I am buying a Japanese grass sickle made of laminated steel.
I wonder if the finish should be coarse or fine.
I suppose the kind of cut is more slice than push so it should be quite coarse, right?
For my (coming soon) pruner I am buying a Japanese water Whetstone, #1000 (Japanese grit system).
Would that be ok for the sickle too, or should I get the #3000 one?

thanks
 
I live in a country (Thailand) where 90% of the rice harvested is done by hand with a sickle.
ALL the farmers use a file. All of 'em...
When I lived in Japan, I often saw farmers cutting rice with a sickle too. They sharpened them with a file.
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For a soft iron sickle the file is fine, but you said laminated blade so a file will not work on the hardened steel.

For waterstones I would recommend a coarse (220), medium (1000), and fine (4k-6k). This tool will see lots of wear and impact with hard objects so you will be best with a full spectrum set.

The "mechanics" of the cut lean more to push cutting/chopping which is much better performed with a high polish.
 
Jason B. said:
For a soft iron sickle the file is fine, but you said laminated blade so a file will not work on the hardened steel.

For waterstones I would recommend a coarse (220), medium (1000), and fine (4k-6k). This tool will see lots of wear and impact with hard objects so you will be best with a full spectrum set.

The "mechanics" of the cut lean more to push cutting/chopping which is much better performed with a high polish.
Click to expand...


Why do you assume that simply because it's laminated, that it's made with hardened steel? Japanese farm tools tend not to be. I can say categorically that none of the hand cutting tools on my family's farm in Japan are hardened steel. Of course, there are people who will buy anything, as we've seen time and time again, if they are 'told' its better...
 
Laminated steel implies a hard steel cutting edge, the standard sickle blade is only as hard as the soft laminate steel so I would take a fairly educated guess that the hard cutting edge is 58+ HRc.

Without further input from the OP both of our answers are pure speculation and we could both be wrong.
 
Last summer a gentleman brought me a few scythe's to sharpen. He explained the he uses them to cutt his grass and therefore had to be polished fairly well. I finnished one at 10k water stone another I only used 220 and knocked the burr off.
We went in the yard and made slow passes through the grass and the toothy 220 worked best.
So I would agree with the file!
 
If I were the OP I'd check what the seller recommends. A huge difference in terms or what to use on the tool, and what to use the tool for.

I admit it seems strange to run the HT on a sickle much above low 50 RC, but why use laminated steel if not to run it higher and still have toughness behind the edge.

On my grass sickle I used a chain saw file followed by a grooved steel, kept the steel on my person as I walked the property. Mostly used it for black swallow-wort cutting close to the ground.
 
For the extreme concave blade curve of a sickle I would look for long round ceramic "steels" or similar. I would look for a relatively coarse (usually grey) rod rather than the very fine white variety.
 
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