Stop Sharpening with Sandpaper!

when i first started woodworking about 12 years ago everybody knew how to get started sharpening their tools you'd get an inexpensive little honing guide like this one and then you'd buy a few packs of this wet or dry automotive sandpaper this black stuff and you'd fix it down to something flat like a piece of scrap glass like this and then you put your blade in your honing jig you work it back and forth on the paper with a few drops of water for lubrication and boom you got a sharp blade some people call this the scary sharp method which i've always found sort of silly but the first time i did it i was really impressed i took my blade out of the holder and i was like wow that is a that is a beautifully polished and very sharp edge this is this is idiot proof clearly this is the way to sharpen tools of course the romance faded pretty quickly this paper is not intended for sharpening steel so it's it's kind of fragile you're going to tear it and then it needs to be replaced it also wears out pretty quickly and then it needs to be replaced i like to glue my paper down so every time i have to replace it i've got to get in there with mineral spirits and dissolve the glue and scrape it up and then put fresh paper down and you end up with some problems with economy so one of these packs of paper costs about 650 and you only get five sheets in a pack and you're probably going to need four different grits so you're going to spend 24 or 25 dollars to get all the grits you need and any idiot can look at that and say well that's not a long-term solution you're very quickly going to end up spending more money with the sandpaper method but most beginning woodworkers think very reasonably well i'll get four packs of this paper and i'll use this system until i wear those packs out and then instead of buying more then i'll invest in a real sharpening system because honestly 24-25 bucks to get started what could possibly be cheaper than that well i'll tell you what's cheaper than that is a complete set of diamond stones clearly i have lost my mind we all know what diamond stones look like they look like this they're big they're quite expensive i spent 140 on this set they work really well but they're not an affordable sharpening option unless all of a sudden they are i was online a few weeks ago and i came across this set of diamond plates for 20 bucks not 20 bucks each 20 bucks for all four and they go from 400 grit to 1200 grit so that's not bad and i was like well i've obviously got to buy a set of these right i mean look i'm not stupid i wasn't expecting them to be great but i buy a lot of tools that you never see on this channel if something looks remotely good and it's cheap i just get one and most of them i try out and they're garbage and you never see a video about them but i got these in the mail and my immediate thought was they they don't look bad i mean they're small and they're relatively thin but they're flat and highly polished very nicely finished overall they have a rubber backing so they're not going to slide around on the bench and it looks like they're made out of aluminum so they're not going to rust that's a positive looking at them they just look i don't know surprisingly confidence inspiring so i liked the original looks and as i'm looking at them i'm thinking these look awfully familiar i've i've seen these before and so i go over to my lathe and i start digging around in my lathe tool sharpening supplies and i find this this is my thousand grit diamond hone that i use for my turning tools that i've been using for my turning tools for like three years and it's the same it's it's obviously the same design and manufacture the same size same everything i've been honing turning tools with this thing for three years and turning tools are made from high speed steel harder and tougher than the plain carbon steels i use for just regular flat work and you know how's this stone holding up after three years fine like better than fine good i don't even use like water or oil on it or anything i just use it dry and it's it still works i still use it so if this stone is the same as these stones and these are 20 bucks i know i paid more than 20 bucks for this one back in the day if they've gotten this cheap i i guess i'd better make a sharpening setup we'll start with a sheet of melamine this is particle board with a plastic coating this stuff is low friction waterproof and it stays flat a lot of cheap furniture is made from melamine so i always pull a few pieces out of the trash when i see it once i've got my diamond plates spaced out i'll cut my platform this is the same cheap hardpoint saw that i've been using for years it's still perfect for these rough jobs and i don't have to dull my nice saws cleaning melamine is no problem although it will dull your blades a bit faster those corners are going to be rough and fragile so be sure to round them off with a file i want my stones to be evenly spaced and i'm going to leave space on the end for a strop tracing the stones in pencil is useful because i'm going to glue them down and i want to make sure that i only put the glue where the stones are going to go now melamine is a low friction material which means it's not easy to glue stuff to it that's no problem i'm just going to roughen up the surface with a little sandpaper you don't need to sand all the way through just give the surface a little tooth for a job like this where we're bonding plastic to the rubber on the back of the diamond plates contact cement is the best adhesive it's also super flammable and really toxic so use it outside if you can i'm wearing a respirator contact cement is probably different than other adhesives you've used it's really good at sticking to itself and it only sticks after it's dry i know that sounds insane bear with me you paint it on both surfaces and let it dry completely which takes about 20 minutes see totally dry then you press the two surfaces together and they bond instantly pressure is the magic ingredient here so you need to be very firm but once they're on they're not going anywhere to make things simple i'm going to put a strop right next to the stones a little bit of contact cement on a scrap of leather a little on the board let them dry press them together and rub the leather with some green compound or use some other color of compound it really doesn't matter i also added a little cleat to the back so the holder hooks over the edge of the bench and i can grab it in the vise i forgot to film it for this project so here i am doing it on another project you get the idea a lot of people get a set of diamond stones and they are immediately disappointed either the stones seem way too aggressive at first or they seem perfect at first and then after a little while they get much less aggressive and people think that they've stopped working here's what's going on when manufacturers make diamond stones they usually overcoat them with diamonds they put more diamonds on them than the stones are capable of holding they do this because they know some of the diamonds are going to shed while they're being used so manufacturers kind of overdo it on purpose so you end up with the best surface this means you have extra diamonds on there that aren't very well stuck on and you need to work those off using a really simple break-in process it's very easy i've got a big sort of dull chisel and i'm just going to sharpen it being more aggressive than usual and working over the whole surface of each stone i'm also using lots of water to float off the particles and i can see the diamonds coming right off into the water it's really obvious spend a few minutes on each stone wipe them dry and you should be all set your stones should be broken in and you'll get predictable performance as long as you're breaking in the stones you can use this as an opportunity to fix up a dull old tool the break-in process should leave any edge sharp strop it and you'll have a nice tool just to show how well these cheap stones sharpen i'm going to test this blade on a piece of maple this is dense hardwood and the chisel won't glide through it like it will through pine but look at the shavings i can take with just hand pressure and look at the clarity of that wood grain you only get that from slicing the fibers with a keen edge so look i'm not naive i didn't think i could sharpen one chisel on these and call it good i've had these down in my shop for a couple of weeks now and i've been sharpening everything on this setup i've done chisels i've done plain irons i've actually done a lot of plain irons i've done marking knives carving knives i've done everything with these and they've been they've been fine they've been better than fine i would not say they're as good as my super expensive sharpening stones my really nice diamond plates and my finest oil stones stuff like that they're slower and when you finish sharpening something and you go to feel the burr on the back of the tool it's it's harder to feel i think these stones probably have more inconsistent grit sizes than more expensive stones and so you end up with a slightly more ragged burr and the edge probably isn't as finely polished but that's also what the strop is for the strop goes a long way towards evening out that final surface and the tool you end up with i mean look i've been using them for my day-to-day sharpening and doing projects so they work fine now anybody's obviously going to wonder well wait a second how long are these going to last let's be pessimistic let's say that these only last six months well compared to sandpaper sharpening that's still going to save you a ton of money and you're going to be working on real stones not sandpaper so you're going to develop the kind of real skills that you can transfer to oil stones water stones or expensive sharpening plates and you'll actually know how to do it you won't have to relearn i mean the thing that i can say right now with real confidence is that sandpaper sharpening the scary sharp method that is dead as of today if you can buy a set of diamond stones for less money than a few packs of sandpaper there's no comparison this is the way to get started and this is what i'm going to recommend to new woodworkers as long as the quality stays good and as long as the price stays cheap but i think they probably will and this video is actually part of a little series i'm doing about the new woodwork economy things have been getting expensive and scarce and it's been difficult for new woodworkers to get into the craft recently i did a whole video about all of those problems last week you can click the link and check that out if you haven't seen it yet this video represents one of my solutions to the problems of the new woodwork economy i'm telling people they need to think about things that are small local or high-tech to find solutions this is one of these high-tech solutions diamond plates used to be super expensive but they're getting better and better and better all the time and i think this is probably as good and cheap as they're maybe ever going to get that's the way to get started if you're getting started in woodworking you probably also want some plans for shop made tools and projects and we've been updating our entire plans archive we've gone through every single one of our old plans redone them in fusion 360. we've double checked everything they're in imperial and metric measurements they are the best plans we can possibly put out we always offer them at competitive prices and now you don't even have to go to my website to buy a plan you can just go down right beneath this video and there's a merchandise shelf with a bunch of plans on it you can click right there and buy one of our plans without even leaving youtube it's super convenient and plan sales are a big part of what supports this channel they're what allow us to stay independent and unsponsored and give most of our content away for free so if you've ever bought a plan or if you're gonna buy one thanks so much we really appreciate it we also really appreciate our viewers thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 1,059,593

Keywords: Rex Krueger, sharpening, chisel sharpening, diy, sharpening stone, sharpening chisels, chisel sharpening jig, sharpening jig, knife sharpening, diy sharpening jig, diy chisel sharpening jig, sharpening a chisel, knife sharpening system, sharpening station, diy sharpening, knife sharpening cheap, sharpening plane blades, cheap chisel sharpening, cheap sharpening stones, diy sharpening jig for chisels, cheap sharpening supplies, diy sharpening station, diy mdf sharpening wheel

Id: f4BEQeW8cdo

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 16 2022