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Thread: Stones
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18th July 2023, 11:59 PM #16GOLD MEMBER
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40 years ago, no hardware store would've assumed anyone was buying tools for work at a bench. If you're thinking of woodworking like making furniture, the instruction on how to sharpen tools to do that died around 1900. Anything after that is site focused or intended for beginners.
The older texts all pretty much say the same thing - grind a tool at a shallower angle than you hone and "lift" the tool and work the edge with a fine stone when you hone it so as to not be wasting time honing a bunch of steel that doesn't meet wood. Fine in those texts for cabinetmakers and joiners was turkish stone or hard arkansas stones, or in books like hasluck's carving books, a medium stone followed by emery on a substrate to get the same result.
Sharpening properly reduces labor, gives a better finished result before going to scraping and sanding if you have to, and would've been economically important.
What we have left now is power tool work and hand joinery where people feel like a level of sharpness below one which was used for all work historically is really sharp and some modern concoction.
The modern concoction is the idea that "real" woodworkers sharpen with a synthetic combination stone and spit on the stone and strop it on their jeans.
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19th July 2023, 12:37 AM #17GOLD MEMBER
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19th July 2023, 04:10 AM #18GOLD MEMBER
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To mellow out a little what Chris said (he's not wrong, though), it's something to ponder this stuff.
It's another to draw conclusions too early. if you get far enough into hand work, you will find out what matters and what doesn't. Unless you're one of the unfortunate individuals who reads finewoodworking and relies on youtube and other blog stuff for advice on what the "ultimate best way" is. If so, you'll be stuck buying your 9th honing guide in year 17 of hand work and still believing that you can't sharpen accurately without a jig.
And then it won't matter, either!
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19th July 2023, 09:22 AM #19
He seems to jump to conclusions. I must have touched a nerve.
Actually, I didn’t know the woodwork forum existed until recently. Consequently, I haven’t read past threads. But since being here I’ve been surprised by the amount of discussion devoted to the topic. I couldn't understand why. Hence, my question.
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19th July 2023, 09:37 AM #20GOLD MEMBER
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well, if you started with a single stone (presumably a combination stone) and you get a hold of a much sharper tool when you're planing or cutting joints, you'll figure it out.
Except that much of what's discussed is thinking that it's a lack of the right equipment but it's a lack of the right use of the equipment.
And I'm sure it's profitable to sell the sharpening kit, so the influence of distributors and influencers will keep it in front of you, regardless.
which goes back to my original statement - if you find no need for something sharper, then there's probably no need. If you find the need for something sharper, then you'll get the need. How that's achieved, not being trapped into the failings of others ("you can't do that!" is common, but it usually means "I can't do that" when someone says it), and avoiding people who went to trade school 50 years ago and thinking they learned everything about hand tools and sharpening because it was the "golden age". An absolute plague on the English forums, for example - I suppose for the want of not finding out that the "old chippie" who worked in the 1940s really didn't work in remotely the same environment as someone who worked in the 1840s as far as hand tool competence goes).
A good friend of mine grew up as a kid in the early 50s and was gaga over making guitars. He knew he needed something sharper, but all he had was a block plane (he still made guitars with it, though) and a combination stone. He said he would sit at the kitchen table at night and rub the edge of the block plane on a paper bag - basically abrading it slowly - until it was sharp enough above and beyond the level of the combination stone.
He went on to grow up and do absolutely world class work, but was intolerant of "sort of" sharpened tools done on coarse stones.
There is nobody on here who can describe sharpening better to you than the passages in holtzapffel and nicholson. The challenge in reading those is that you'll never find a good full sized fine turkish stone. Fortunately, you don't need to.
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