Having recently revived my interest in green woodworking, in the form of spoon and bowl-making (and possibly some further simple carving stuff, such as chess pieces) I’ve been acquiring carving knives,  gouges & spoon knives as well as buying a carving axe or two. Sharpening to a very fine edge is appropriate, it seems.

I can easily do any grinding and initial sharpening with the stuff I have; but getting the super sharp edges, especially on the spoon making knives, seems to require final honing to a very small grit size if the tools are to be as responsive as various vids from experts suggest. One method is to use MDF or paper wheels on a grinder or similar, loaded with ultra-fine homing pastes or particles. So I’ve made some with a circle cutter on the drill press.

I have a number of questions for anyone our there with experience of such an approach:

1) Is it enough to charge an MDF disc with the typical honing waxes that come in a stick from the likes of Flexcut, Veritas and others? The paste seems to easily get scraped off the MDF wheel rim and also seems to dry to a flaky (and flake-off) condition quite rapidly. I read that adding soft beeswax might help.  Any other suggestions to keep the paste on the MDF wheel rim?

2) A commercial version of such honing discs has one wheel with an edge charged with 180 carborundum grinding grit, for performing a degree of initial shaping that’s not quite the full grinding. Is it possible to charge MDF discs with various grit sizes of such lapping grits, such as the set of lapping grits available from Veritas?  If so, what’s the best method for sticking the grit to the MDF such that it won’t get scraped off very easily when sharpening?

3) Has anyone tried the diamond lapping liquids that come as a suspension of diamond particles applied to the sharpening surface with a syringe?  Does such stuff work with MDF as the substrate?

Thanks in anticipation for any advice about such honing methods you can give.

Lataxe