$1 Cinder Block vs $200 Diamond Lapping Plate for flattening Sharpening Stones

I'm gonna do an experiment to see if this $1 actually in my case free from my woods cinderblock can do just as good of a job at flattening my nice water stones as this $200 diamond lapping plates [Music] you may be wondering what in the world is he thinking even considering flattening his water stones is nice expensive water stones on a cinder block well I'll tell you so I've been doing a lot of sharpening getting ready for my upcoming class the introduction the hand to a woodworking class here there's a lot of sharpening to do and and I thought back to something that my my good friend John told me who used to be a cabinet maker he had told me a couple years ago that he used to flatten his his water stones on cinder block because he said it was engineered really flat I thought whom that would be a really neat alternative to a two hundred dollar diamond laughing plate if it if it could really do a good job so that's what I'm gonna do here today now any of the products like these water stones all putting it links to where I got where so the ones I have in the link below but I use water stones because they cut a lot faster and I in my opinion a lot better than diamond stones and oil stones I do use those especially oil stones when I don't really want to use water but I've found that Japanese water stones they give a lot better cut a lot faster cut but as because they give a lot faster cut and sharpen a lot faster that also means they wear down a lot faster when you're using your tools on them they puts grooves in and and there's uneven surfaces on the on the water stones end up making it if you don't flatten it regularly will make you have unreliable sharpening so I'm just gonna jump in right here I haven't tested this before I wanted you to be here for this special moment and what I'm gonna do is I've got some of these stones as you can see that I just use I wanted to test them out I've been doing the sharpening for this class so I'm gonna do one side on this diamond lapping plate and then I'm going to do the other side this engineered flat junky cinderblock that I found outside next to my compost pile but it still looks flat and then afterwards I'm gonna I'm going to use a feeler gauge and an engineered flat straightedge I'm gonna see if there's any difference so let's get started here so this is a thousand grit well let's even start with I was a 4000 grit 1000 grit an 8000 grit so I'm gonna test all of those I won't make you watch the test of all of them because you can see I've given some good wear to these and I don't ever go between these water stones without washing the grid up I've got a buff bucket of water here okay so I hadn't obviously done a whole lot on there so I've got that all nice and flat so let's sit this is side let's do the other side on the cinder block imagine this would be a lot easier and cleaner to do outside with a garden hose and you know maybe uh actually buying a $1 cinder block at the store would be nicer because it won't have all this green stuff that's been growing on it okay this side obviously used a lot more and it might not be quite as aggressive which is fine because we don't want it to be too aggressive yep you can tell that I had worn down a lot more than the center but we're gonna see this may not be something I like to do we'll find out also I think a new standard block might be better because of this it might lack some of the little pebbles of this guy in it but I've cleaned it off this that's like good for the hose beforehand it's taken a while [Laughter] I didn't use the side of a ton more than this one so it's obvious that this works slower and then the diamond laughing plate and that diamond lapis late I've used probably a couple hundred times over the past five or six years so that grit so that speed that you saw was after it had already been worn down now we're almost there sorry about that this I thought it was gonna go a lot faster okay and finally so now I'm gonna grab a pencil here and we're gonna write cinderblock there on this side we're gonna write D for diamond so let me go grab my feeler gauge and my square and wipe this down a little bit and I'll be right back all right the moment of truth is here so you can see I've got this little feeler gauge this is a nice inexpensive feeler gauge but it does got a whole bunch of little metal strips that allow you to see if you can fit anything underneath a straight edge like this so this is an engineered really nice straight edge and this is the thinnest one I'll start off with point zero zero one five inches or point zero three eight millimeters and this is the diamond stone side I can't stick any it's not going in under any part of this so I'm gonna call that flat we'll even do this Chris crisscross here and it's kind of wanting to go under a little bit but it's not okay so we'll call the diamond side flat okay so here we'll start at the back see if the cinder block gave us a flat surface oh it's actually going underneath okay okay feeler gauge is going underneath there and it's going underneath there okay well I was honestly hoping to be able to say hey don't worry about buying this expensive diamond stone to get your water stones flat instead buy this dollar cinder block so just out of curiosity I am gonna see what kind of tolerance we're talking about there okay so that was a little where's the next flat will try point zero zero two that's still going under zero three zero three okay so I think I can say at least it's not it's not as flat as I thought it was gonna be it might work for your your ions I haven't tested it out to see if it makes any difference that's kind of hard to tell but as far as this test goes the the cinder block just doesn't seem to stand up to it so this is gonna be the one the way to go I guess is to get one of these diamond lapping plates to get your water stones flat like I said you can find my water stones and even this slapping plate which I was hoping to not recommend downed in the description below the video so thanks for watching if you like this please like my video and subscribe and Hull us any plenty more and you can go to wood and shop comm and check out tons of free tutorials and buyer guides for tools and a lot of fun stuff so thanks for watching this is Joshua Farnsworth if you're interested in learning traditional woodworking with hand tools visit my website at wood and shop comm where you can find free video tutorials workshop tours of amazing traditional woodworkers and tool buying guides you can ask questions and share your projects with thousands of woodworkers on my free traditional woodworking forum make sure you subscribe to my regular blog posts and also check out my 10 steps for getting started in traditional woodworking enjoy

Channel: Wood and Shop

Views: 36,360

Keywords: woodwork, woodworking, traditional woodworking, roy underhill, woodwright's shop, chris schwarz, lie-nielsen, hand planes, hand saws, chisels, diamond stone

Id: oE3bAXAGGRY

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 14 2019