Hello, here is my sharpening technique (I read it somewhere): I firstly sharpen with 1000 grit waterstone and then apply directly a microbevel with a 8000 grit by sliding a credit card under the roller of my sharpening jig. I don’t have clear in mind if the next time, when I need to resharpen, I have to repeat the process starting from the 1000 grit or I just need to hone the microbevel.
Thanks Enrico
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Replies
You can just re-hone the microbevel until it gets too large to be done efficiently. Then it's back to reforming the primary bevel again.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
If you have put on a true micro bevel, a couple of passes on the primary bevel should remove it. Some folks think they are using a micro bevel but they are actually using a secondary bevel, which will be more difficult to remove. A micro is very difficult to see, one or two passes. They seem like a waste of time to me. Folks that need to renew their edges, like carvers, use a leather strop. You can bring the edge back to surgical sharpness several times during use. No need to break out the equipment a dozen times a day.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Hammer,
You were talking about microbevels.
I use nano-bevels and am thinking about a pico-bevel. We need to take "small" to new levels. For a nano-bevel, I use a process in which the blade does not actually touch the stone. The wind is enough to take a few molecules of metal off the edge. For a pico-bevel, I put a cloth screen over the stone, and pass the blade in the direction across the stone but keep it about three inches away. No metal is removed, but the atoms are rearranged. Absolutely fantastic. I am going to try to get Brent Beach to test my process. Without an electron microscope, it cant be tested fairly.
:-)
The discussion of sharpening continually gives me as much pleasure now as watching Howdy Doody did when I was a kid. It could be the most humorous topic in woodworking.
Have fun.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
I was putting a pico-bevel on an edge the other day, and someone came in the shop and startled me. The resulting injury ( a cut from the surgically sharp edge of the .000001 thick shaving, that I put under the honing guide) put me in intensive care. It was a case of...
Pico-boo! ICU.
If it had been a very slight nano bevel accident, it would have been a ...
nano, nano boo-boo.
Ray
Ray,
You must stop being so serious. Let's have some fun here. You know that American skier, Pico Boo Street. Well that is how she got her name. Her father was a carver and he was putting pico-bevels on his gouges when informed that his wife's water had broken, and he got a pico boo boo. The idea for nano bevels came to me from an old episode of Mork and Mindy. Nano Nano.MelPS when I got your message, I was worried, I thought that I was going to be descended upon by Larry Williams, Joel of Tools for Working Wood, and Adam Cherubini for breaking some cardinal rule of sharpening. I hate it when the sharpening police show up at my door and want to check the flatness of my stones.Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
We need to take "small" to new levels''I sharpen untill I can breah on the edge and hear TWO screams as the microbe falls off the edge in two parts!
Yeah, well I was vistied by G-men the other day who warned me to ease up on my sharpening as I was approaching a sharpness that risked splitting an atom:
View Image
Samson,
Scientists are now thinking that splitting the atom was not such a wise crack.
MelPS Yuk Yuk Yuk. Sometimes I crack myself up. I am a fan of really old jokes. Recycling is a good thing.Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
SCIENTIST SPLITS ATOM, FINDS TOY PRIZE INSIDEPromise of Hidden Surprises Has Propelled Fission Research for Decades
Princeton, N.J. — A Princeton physicist recently split an atom of hydrogen and found a toy prize inside, the journal Science reported in its June issue.
View Image
In this colorized photo, physicist Enrico Fermi brags about the plastic whistle he found after splitting open a uranium atom.
"It was just a cheap plastic clicker you use to make cricket sounds, and it broke, like, the second time I used it, but it was the surprise I found most satisfying," said Prof. Harold Lumiere of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Science noted that it was the first prize found inside an atom since Allison Wyatt of Cambridge University discovered a magic puzzle toy in a lithium atom in February. For Lumiere, it was the first time in his 15-year, atom-splitting career that he has come across anything more than the normal protons, gluons, and quarks.
"I know that over at MIT, Hendricks has amassed an entire collection of little gewgaws — spinning tops, decoder rings, stickers," he said. "He is so lucky. I hate him."
And well he should. Atomic prizes are so rare as to drive scientists into the field of physics, and then, quite often, drive them mad. Legendary theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, in fact, first became interested in nuclear fission after watching a professor at Cal Tech discover a mystery motion fun card inside an Iodine atom. Feynman himself, however, never knew that joy. This deficiency caused him to declare, on his death, that despite his Nobel, he had failed to win the only real prize in physics.
Even Enrico Fermi, a pioneer of fission, had to wait nearly 10 years before discovering a plastic whistle inside a newly split nucleus of uranium. "He was so happy, he just cried and cried," wrote colleague Edward Teller in his 1952 book, "The Physicists Guide to Isotopal Isolation and Collectible Atomic Prizes."
"For days after, Enrico kept running around the lab, his fingers to his lips, trying to play that whistle," Teller recalled. "Of course, we couldn't hear it, but he said he could. He was such a goof."
View Image
More than half a century later, perceptibility remains an issue with physicists. "You can't do much with (the toys) because they're infinitesimally small," said Lumiere. "You can only play with them under an electron microscope, and if you have to sneeze, kiss it goodbye."
Some winners, meanwhile, have been forced to part with their prizes without so much as exhaling. In his book "Bohr, Baubles, and the Bomb: Why the #### Lost the Nuclear Race," historian Everson White recounts how Hitler's quest to build the ultimate weapon was thwarted by his own policies that claimed atomic prizes were the property of the Third Reich. Danish physicist Niels Bohr, a fission pioneer, fled occupied Denmark after learning of the policy, while German colleague Werner Heisenberg stayed behind but sabotaged the program after Goering confiscated a "Hi Score" pinball game Heisenberg found in a phosphorous atom.
Ironically, while the lure of tiny tokens has shaped history and led scientists to unravel much of the riddle of the atom, the existence of the prizes themselves is perhaps the greatest mystery facing physics today. Who, they still wonder, put the prizes there?
Many have proposed theories. Einstein thought it was aliens. Niels Bohr suspected it was Einstein. Ernest Rutherford conjectured that the prizes were natural formations.
But most physicists today accept the argument espoused by Nobel laureate Ernest Walton, who along with John Cockcroft split the atom in 1932. In early 1946, Walton was thrilled to discover a decoder ring and secret message inside a carbon atom. After four days of painstaking work, he finally deciphered the message: "Sorry," it read, "you're not a winner. Try again."
"That's gotta be God," Walton reportedly said.
Mel,
Heard about the scientist who ate uranium? He got atomic ache.
Ray
Ray,Uncle!.
I give.!
I can't top that one.
You ought to go to Hollywood. The writers are on strike. You could surely write for Letterman or for Leno. If you wrote for Leno, he'd probably let you ride his new Indian. That may be rarer than your old Indian.MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Hey Mel,
A Termite walked into a pub and asked, "Where's the bar tender?
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Mel,
You were recycling old jokes. So was I. I believe that one was from the little "newspaper" they handed out to us in grade school. Remember the Weekly Reader?
Why do I remember useless stuff like this, and can't recall my own pin # in the checkout line?
Ray
Ray,
I do remember the Weekly Reader very well.
It was a nice break from the McGuffey reader.
Things weren't all good back then. Those darn ink wells didn't always reach up high enough for the braids of the girl in front of me. For me it was even worse than for for you. I had to go to Catholic school. The nuns wouldn't let the girls wear patent leather shoes because it reflected what was underneath their dresses. When I heard that I became a shoe watcher. Never could see anything, and I didn't know what I was looking for, but I figured that it must have been good. Now what was your name again?
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
How did you get a copy of the electron microscopic picture of my plane edges after sharpening?
Is it just me or does the cloud look like a clown?
t,
No, I see it too. I didn't at first but now that you mention it. Wnet back and there he is! BIG hearty laugh.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 12/3/2007 2:32 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
It's just you. ;-)
You guys haven't been keeping up! We are past cutting a quark into supersymmetric particles. If we could hold on to those slippery leptons we'd cut them up, too! The problem is the shield. Last time one was bisected the guy was sucked in to the other side of the astrophysics scale. The quantum effect either turned him in to antiparticles or he went to Nirvana. Now that's, scary sharp!Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
I've grown bored of splitting atoms with my sharpened plane irons and chisels. They just make a boring little squeak as you slice the skin open.
I think it's much more fun to break them open with a hammer. The atoms make a nice big bang as the head comes down on them and, the skin ruptures, and the guts spill out. If you hit hard enough and fast enough the bang's even better because you get half a dozen or so per whack and they don't have the time to take evasive action. Slainte.Richard Jones Furniture
I hit a guy named Atom the other night with an elbow in the jaw during a hockey game, and it had a similar effect as your hammer. I must say, quite effective. He was trying to split the atoms on the back of my knee with a hockey stick. I must say that a hockey stick is quite a bit less effective than a hammer, as he only left on scrape on the back of my knee. (I think he spelled his name, "Adam")
Jeff
PS Sorry, too many ales last night after the game.
I would have had a lot of ailes after a game like that.
I quit playing hockey 3 years ago for that very reason. I'd grown too grumpy to stay level headed during the game, and got suspended from both local men's leagues for droppin' the gloves.
Somehow, I got suckered into returning for god know's what reason this year by several of my friends who have been hounding me to play again. A large part of it for me is the novel idea that my son, who is now almost 18, will be able to play with me as soon as his senior year is over. Short of that, I have found that my grumpiness has not left just yet.
Jeff
Jeff,
For crying out loud, the Stanley Cup isn't at stake is it?! Remember, you're not Bobby Orr!
I used to play in an industrial league mmmmaaaannnnnnyyyyyy years ago and we had a ball. We never won anything, just a few games and got beat most of the time.
It was the first real exposure to playing a team sport. Now hockey is a sport that the whole team has to work or nothing works!
Keep pucking around old man,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob
That's my problem. I've only got one speed when it comes to anything competetive, and that is "kick the other guy's a$$". I just can't help it. Prolly shouldn't play anymore, as I can't do anything "just for fun." I'll let you know after tonights game! ha ha
Jeff
Jeff,
I hear ya. I used to watch the Big Bad Bruins back in the good old days, you know Derek, Bobby, Pie & Bucyk. I watched part of a game the other day and what a difference!
Just ain't the same.
I was a right hand shot on right wing. Used to give the defenseman fits! Hey man, good luck tonight. Slap a few in for the ol Giffer!
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 11/15/2007 2:47 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
Bob
Ahhhhh!! The good ole days of hockey.....Bobby Hull, Stash Makita, Tony O (and Glen Hall, too!!) Jimmy Pappin, and the rest of the gang.
When I was a kid, my uncle was a Chicago cop. He used to work security at the old Chicago Stadium. I used to sit at the end of the Hawk's bench and watch all the games while he worked security for the 1st level seating area.
I was skating before I could run well.
Jeff
The quark bevel is really the final one to have. All you have to do is think about it and if you are having a difficult day, go into a darkened room and say "quark on (whatever tool you are sharpening)". That way, it has been put out into the universe and it has become 'real'... sort of like The Velveteen Rabbit.You never see the quark bevel, but it's there.If you don't believe me, just ask me.
Jer,
It is good to meet a combination woodworker-nuclear physicist. Based on this thread, there are about a dozen of us. Stop to think about how revolutionary this thread has been. After this one, there is no need to ever have another one again. Damn. We are good.Have fun.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
esc,
like stated, just hone the micro bevel a couple times, then start again honing the base bevel. My opinion is the micro bevel (like 1-2 degrees) is more useful on a plane. I put a five degree secondary bevel on my chisels and they shave my arm hair.
firstly sharpen with 1000 grit waterstone and then apply directly a microbevel with a 8000 grit ...
Sorry. I had a good laugh on that! I start with 150 grit and finish with 180 if I have any left at the time!
Edited 12/3/2007 9:55 pm by WillGeorge
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