I bought a sharpening stone - Page 4

One word of caution: sharp knives are dangerous. My knife handling technique has apparently become sloppy in these last few months due to my dull knives. This has come to bite me in the ass now that my knives are razor sharp. I'm currently sporting two battle wounds on my left hand due to careless handling.

When using proper technique, I agree. Unfortunately, I was not. The ease at which a sharp knife cuts is a bit jarring when you are used to using a dull knife.

Try reading the razor forums and hearing about the gents who have a first aid kit under the sink.

Their sequence of treatments, depending on the severity of cut:
Cold water
Alum block
Styptic pencil
Super glue

Is it possible to fix a good knife that has been abused on a grinding wheel?

^^^ maybe, depending on the nature of the abuse. If it's just a rough grind but the edge profile is intact, you'll want to re-grind the bevel and then polish as you ordinarily would. If the edge profile (i.e. - curvature) has gotten distorted (bumpy or flat spots), you'll need to grind away the bumps (vertically on the spine of a waterstone or a diamond plate) until you get back to a graceful edge curvature. Then grind the bevel and polish. If however, the steel is discolored (grey, blue, or black), the steel has possibly been over-heated on a bench grinder and the temper may be drawn out of the edge. Depending on the degree of over-heating, your edge-holding capabilities may be diminished to some extent. Before doing too much work, I'd grind the bevel to raise a burr - if a burr forms all along the edge, you're still good. If you can't raise a burr, you probably ought to discard the knife.

My sharpening system is a little unorthodox but works well for me (I sharpen knives, chisels, bench plane blades, and straight razors-which I then hone on a strop). It consists of a 12" by 12" piece of 1/4" plate glass, spray adhesive and automotive sandpaper. I cut the sand paper in 3" by 8" pieces, spray the back with adhesive and stick it to the glass. I then put the plate glass on a towel on the edge of my workbench. I can have up to 8 different grits on the plate at one time. Cheap, flat and very versatile. As Thomas says, there are many ways to get to Rome, just thought I would share mine in case anyone wanted to try it out.

I waited a long time to post a response in case I was temporarily upset by your post, but even now, a whole week later - I still feel you are a dangerous heretic and should never be allowed near a knife again.

(kidding)

Actually the only thing that kept me from trying this was securing the plate glass and high-grit sandpaper. I hear it works really well and you never have to flatten a stone again.

This is customer service at its best. "Dear Merchant - Enclosed please find my favorite ___ of yours which I have carelessly abused. I was wondering if it might be possible to somehow fix this? I'm happy to pay for all reasonable repairs".

One week later - fixed/replacement item arrives , no charge. L.L. Bean used to be like this - I don't know if they still are.....

Hey Thomas, or anyone who knows,

I want to get some Japanese sharpening stones, seeing as I am in Japan and all, but have no idea what I am looking for. Any brands I should look out for? My knives are all Global except for one from Aritsugu. I also want to sharpen up some pocket knives from Opinel and Case.

Hmmm, I'll pare back the throat-clearing and jump in.

My main stone is sold under the King or IceBear brand names, and is a combination stone 1000 grit on one side, 6000 grit on the other. It's quite inexpensive and cuts well enough. Norton, though, is probably the most-used and most-consistent brand - I never hear anything bad about them.

Both the King and Norton are re-constutited stones: they are formed, rather than mined, which explains the low-ish cost. They're also available in combination grits (1000/6000, or 4000/8000), which is good.

A couple of other well-liked brands with single-grit stones are Naniwa and Kitayama. These, though, are more expensive and tend to be found as single-grit stones, which are great if you're sharpening herds of knives on a weekly basis. Probably impractical for your expected use, though.

In Japan, you're also quite likely to find natural stones, which are mined and flattened and at times quite beautiful, but...I don't think they're so much better to justify the extra cost.

So, what do you need? The basics are a 1000-grit stone (or thereabouts, 800-1200 are in practice similar enough) for a medium grind and establishing the bevel, and a 6000-8000 grit stone for polishing. If you have a lot of metal to grind, you can drop to a 300-grit stone (but I doubt you'll use it much), and if you're trying to get a shave-ready edge, you'll could go with a high-grit stone (10-15k) - although I use a leather strop and green chrome paste. Overkill for knives, though, unless you're cutting sushi.

The other thing you need is a flattening stone. Japanese waterstones cut quickly and dish quickly as a result, so you'll want to flatten your stone periodically. Norton sells a flattening stone, although my preference is a DMT extra-coarse lapping plate. For a long time I used sandpaper and a flat surface to do my lapping, and it worked fine.

These (1000, 6000, flattening stone) should be plenty to handle all your knives, even the Aritsugu. Good luck and holler back if you run into other q's.

It may be a good idea for some to check out the The Interactive Guide to Straight Razor Shaving on Badger and Blade. It taught me many things about sharpening blades in general. I think it can also help people in choosing the right stone for their money; a "Japanese stone" is nothing more than marketing lingo to describe a certain grit of stone.

A trick I read there, is to flatten my stone with wet/dry sandpaper and a mirror. Much cheaper than a diamond stone.

Excellent poast Thomas. I have been using the same King combination stone for about 3 years and don't have anything bad to say about it. Which grit would that be? Japanese synthetic water stones are not really a widely marketed product so I would be really surprised if there was "Marketing Lingo".

I use Japanese synthetic waterstones only.
They are cheap, durable and effective.
A combination stone of 1000 and 6000 grit will do nicely. KING is the most common brand seen outside of Japan.
My advise is to buy the largest one you can find. Sharpening with a small stone is hell...

Here is a very nice clip on using waterstones by a pro who uses his knives a LOT.
http://www.youtube.com/user/itasan18#p/u/10/qZj0I3mpBGg
If interested in Japanese cuisine, check his other vids too.

Cheers,
M