I have recently purchased the Norton waterstone set that included the flattening stone. In the past I used wet/dry sandpaper on a piece of glass to flatten my stones and found the stone much easier to use but……… always a but; I ran into a problem with it. I just purchased a set of Lie-Nielsen socket chisels and while prepping them ran across the problem.
If you look at the attached image, the 5/8″ chisel on the left is one that I honed to 8000 grit with the untouched 3/4″ on the right for comparison. See those striations? I’m fairly certain that they were caused by the grit from the flattening stone becoming embedded in the 8000 stone. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Couple of questions, do you leave the flattening stone in the water to soak just like the sharpening stones?
I do clean the honing guide wheel off before changing stones, should I also rinse the stone under running water to remove all traces of previous grits?
Hopefully this won’t be a huge problem but I was after that mirror finish, the striations will probably come out fairly easily with the 4000 but wonder what I may be doing wrong, any and all advice is appreciated!
Replies
John,
Although I do not have experience with the Norton flattening stone you are referencing, if it is a frangible medium - that is to say the abrasive particles are suspended in a resin that deteriorates in use - then there is a risk of cross-contaminating your higher grit stones with those particles. I use King brand water stones with a DMT Dia-Sharp diamond plate (black) to maintain flatness and I have had good results with that setup. I use an atomizer (large spray bottle I found at Autozone) to spray down the stones during use, spraying any slurry or loose particles off the stone and into the pond and then re-establishing a "clean" slurry on my 8k with a Nagura.
I sharpen free-hand as well, so I can't comment on keeping your honing guide from contaminating the other stones - which I suppose would depend on what style/material your guide is. The brass wheel on the old Veritas guide I had could definitely pick up grit from one stone and transfer it to the other - even after I carefully cleaned it. Just one more reason to bite the bullet and learn to do it free-hand IMO.
Hope that helped a bit.
-Ian
flattening waterstones
I would second Ian's advice. I think it is very easy to cross contaminate the waterstones on the flattening plate. I rinse really well and use a garden hose except in the winter when I'll run it under the faucett...the other thing I do is flatten my finest grit stone first then work down the grits so my 8000 goes first and my 800 is last. I too sharpen by hand and find it to be much quicker and the difference between using a honing device and by hand is not that different.
Neil
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