Which SHARPENING Stone Is BEST? | Tool Duel #2

who gonna start some wars with this one we're onto sharpening stones which one is best which one is going to suit your needs the best yeah let's start some debates welcome to told you [Music] right as always on the subject of sharpening disclaimer before I start these are all my own opinions these are things that I've seen over the years Axminster over the years at rye cut wood just stuff that I've noticed I am sharing my opinions on it I'm not trying to change anyone else's however if you are uneducated on any of this this may help so on the menu today we have water stones these are either natural or more commonly synthetic they come in a variety of grits they come in well this one's a combination stone for example so we've got 1,000 we've got 6,000 on this side a bit more bang for your buck in the middle here we have got scary sharp which is something that Matthew Platt from workshop heaven endorses and lots of other makers we actually use this quite a lot of Riker wood because workshop heaven helped us out a lot they're they sponsored us a lot of equipment essentially what this is is very very fine sandpaper attached to float glass it's important to use float glass because float glass is as flat as the curvature of the earth more on that later finally or sorry a second to last we have diamonds those these are metal plates with diamonds bonded to the top of them and finally we have straps which is what you would have seen quite often most likely so let's go through them all starting with water stones right so if you've ever been in your granddad's garage chances are here's got a sharpening stone in a box and that is actually most likely an oil stone now that was more popular back in the old fashioned days should we say water stones have in most cases superseded these the reason is they have a few advantages over in all stone however they do have a few disadvantages as well obviously the main advantages about water stones have over oil stones is that they cut a lot quicker oil stones they're not very quick at removing waste the oil kind of clogs all the metal shavings into the stone and stops it from cutting efficiently and that leads on to the second disadvantage oil stones have the water stones in that they are messy if for example I was sharpening my tools in an oil stone got my hands all covered in oil and then wiped my hand across its nice pristine bit of work that I was working on that would get a lovely oily patch in it that not only would be filled with oil but with metal shavings as well and just just make an absolute shambles of your work which wouldn't be ideal water stones all you need on them a little bit of water you need to soak them a little bit beforehand but that is all you need and also you can get water anywhere you want and it's all fine it just wipes straight off metal shavings weren't getting bedded in it or dried on so that's a nice advantage with water stones the discipline says they have is that they wear a lot quicker than oil stones this is the trade off for water stones cutting quicker than oil stones because they're constantly exposing new grit so with water stones you need a way of keeping them flat so underneath here this again is a bit of float glass and what you'll do is put a bit of wet and dry on there get your stone and after each use and get that perfectly flat another way of doing this which is slightly less messy is to get yourself a diamond plate this one is from DMT and it is made specifically for flattening abrasive stones do not use this for sharpening your tools because the bonding isn't quite the same as another diamond stone so this actually has diamonds on it but essentially all your date on it like that you need to do this with water but I haven't got a water source here on it and that gets your stones perfectly flat so yeah that's the main premise behind water stones they cut quickly and they come in a variety of grits like I said before this one here is a 1,000 grit and a 6,000 grit in the same stone this is actually my favorite one of the two because now you get the most for your money and you can get a really really sharp edge on this 6000 grit which do I like it's well here's a 10,000 I go to it occasionally but I don't find I need it that often to be honest so yeah whether you go for oil stones or water stones just bear in mind that need a way of keeping them flat so either float glass or a specific diamond plate for it if you watched my previous video on honing guides you would know that I dislike sharpening so with oil stones being slower at cutting material that means that sharpen he's going to take longer and I don't want to be doing that so okay for the quick cutting stone quick flatten before each use Bosch ready to go so onto the next one okay so this is the scary sharp system now like I said this is just very fine sandpaper or in this case that's very fine sandpaper you can get lots of other grits stuck to float glass now float glass is important because it is perfectly flat I can't remember exactly how they make it but this glass is hardened on a perfectly flat surface and is leveled out by gravity so that is as flat as the curvature of the earth or pull of gravity if you want to get scientific but but that's a very important point the reason for this is because it keeps your sharpening surface perfectly flat like I said with oil stones and water stones they start to get dishes over time as you start using them and you need to flatten them this does not dish over time because it's stuck to a hard surface below well like I said in the introduction I use this for many years at right word because workshop haven't sponsored us with loads of it and there's no denying it's really great in a communal workshop if we were all using water stones having to rely on the other person flattening it and keeping them flat before and it's just one of those things that you just can't keep on top of with this it's stuck to a flat substrate and it's ready to go you just need a little bit of water on it again you don't need to soak this on sink so bit of water and that is ready to go the disadvantage I found with scary shop especially in a communal workshop was when you're using narrower chisels especially in eighth of an inch this is a quarter miniature it shouldn't be too bad but when you push forward it can sometimes catch in the sandpaper and rip it up basically but otherwise it's really great stuff if you're careful on it and especially if you work on the backstroke most of time which is actually how you're recommended to use it you can get a really sharp edge on this it comes in full-size sheets like this which you cut to size but you will need to replace them over time and you haven't got a permanent solution to your sharpening unless you keep replacing it obviously so yeah I really like the stuff the fact it stays perfectly flat and also the grits that you can get for it are as a massive spectrum of them you can go down to the stupidest grits with this stuff which I'm not even sure it starts doing anything to the metal by that point but yeah there's a lot of versatility in terms of grits just bear in mind that it's not a permanent solution you do need to replace the sandpaper every now and then so let's go on to Diamond stones now like I said the advantage with the scary sharp stuff back there is that it stays perfectly flat and that is another advantage with Diamond stones it is diamonds bonded to a metal surface it stays flat over a very long time and I really rate these now these come in different qualities should we say so we've got two budget ones here now these ones here are from Axminster and we use these for a lot of our general purpose sharpening got a 400 grit here and a 1,000 grit and the budget ones are alright to get started although I say that their diamond bonded to a flat surface budget ones do sometimes have a little bit of undulation on them which isn't too much of an issue when you're sharpening the bevel on a chisel or plane blade but when you're flattening the back however you want this to be perfectly flat so these are all right if you're sharpening occasionally you're not too worried about your edges you just want a chisel that's gonna cut wood basically so that's a good starting point for anyone who doesn't have anything as you want a low maintenance solution to your sharpening meets if however you are craving a slightly better edge you can get these sort of moderately priced ones unlike these two with a 400 grit and a 1000 in separate stones this is 400 outside 1000 outside so you get two grits in one stone which is always nice and I found this one to be pretty good it's flat enough there's been tiny undulations in it but really not enough to worry about and I haven't found an issue with it and yeah quite like that stone for a moderately priced one it's good and finally you can go on to the premium ones now this is by brand called DMT who are our market in the diamond sharpening systems this is one of their smaller plates we use this at work for our general purpose things but when you go for a premium brand you will get a perfectly flat stone and not only that but these premium ones have a lot more diamonds on them and therefore cut a lot quicker to achieve a one of the equivalent grit so if you want one that is perfectly flat it's going to cut very quickly go for a premium one like say this is the smaller one from DMT however they do ones that are sort of this size and a little bit bigger they come in various grits so I really like diamond stones for how flat they stay and how quickly they cut but just bear in mind that there is a difference if you're going to go up between the cheaper ones and the more premium ones so for my kind of work where it's fine woodworking and things I would definitely say go for either a moderate or a premium one however if you're just doing it for general home use or site use such as installing hinges these two would be fine for you and if you can stretch through it that would be even better that would probably be a little bit overkill so finally let's go on to drops okay so I get quite a few people come in to store and they think that they can just get away with buying a strop and use that for all of their sharpening needs just when the chisel gets blunt rub it back a few times rather than a few times right back to you times the they do the old hand thing as well which scares the bejesus out of me yeah a strop isn't best used as their primary means of sharpening instead it's best for removing the burr and polishing the edge after you have used all these other stones here so when a strop you can put a variety of grits and that usually comes in a paste this one here is sort of a liquidy one like that and that can just float you can get your finger in there and wipe it on and that is a fine one I've got a superfine here as well as you're using the opposite side and yeah that really takes your tools to the next level after using sharpening stone so such as water stones and Diamond stones for example I would definitely recommend getting one of these for your final polishing stage after using the stones over there so which is better well you can't be saying it but there isn't really a best one to be honest what you should be doing is looking at your workflow and matching your equipment to suit that so for example if you sharpen freehand firstly don't just get yourself a honing guide but sorry I shouldn't have said that if you sharpen freehand a Waterstone is going to be a little bit dodgy for you the reason is like I said before they're very soft now a little story I did a exhibition with Axminster last year at a boatyard down in Portsmouth and that that boat yard there was a lot of people were using oil stones now like I said before oil stones cut slower but they are very hard now one of the chooses from the skill center was doing a demonstration of sharpening and he was using water stones for it and what happened is one of the people from the boat yard came out of sea with the tutor sharing his thoughts on sharpening that provoked an argument as it always does in sharpening and he says now your method of sharpening is wrong I'm going to show you how you properly do it he got his chisel and because he was used to using oil stones which are harder he went in there freehand with a six mil chisel and dug straight into the water stone he thought that water stone was going to be as hard as the oil stone and just glide across the top he took a massive chunk out of it so if you sharpen freehand just watch out if you're going to buy water stones you're going to have to be sharpening on the backstroke do not think that you can do it on the push stroke because you will just dick to China in that thing this is also a similar case for scary sharp if you're sharpening freehand you're just going to start digging into that once you start doing push strokes you're gonna have to rely on back strokes on that as well Diamond stones they're hard enough you can sharpen freehand on those so if you're a beginner and you just want safe and consistent results when you're sharpening I usually throw people to Diamond stones when they come into store just because they stay perfectly flat and it's one less thing to worry about water stones and oil stones they dish over time and you can really easily ruin the back of your chisels if you start putting a massive curve on them now over time you might find that you want a sharper edge so again this rider one goes to a thousand grit and then you can take the strop to that and that takes it to probably about four thousand maybe but you might want to take that a step further DMT the premium diamond stone company do Diamond stones that go up to eight thousand grit if I remember correctly however what I've found when diamond stones start going to high in the grits they clog very quickly in fact even with this 1200 grit stone this has started to clog up and as a result when you're flattening the back of your planes and chisels they start aqua plating over the top of it and they stops cutting and I've seen that mimics in a lot of reviews before so that is one problem with diamond stone this is also a similar case with scary sharp just starts out complaining over the top when you go to too high of a grit so this is where you're going to start needing to look into water stones again because like I said before as you work them in they keep exposing new grit and they keep removing this Wharf so that is where water stones come into their own and they're endorsed by a lot of reputable people such as Krish Wars and David Charlesworth for example if you're a intermediate sharpener perhaps you've been using Diamond stones for the past few years perhaps you've been using your granddad's oil stone and you know you need to keep it flat I cannot recommend a one thousand and six thousand grit water stone any more this thing polishes to such a nice finish with the six thousand grit especially when I then take it to my strop with the superfine paste find that's a really nice edge on there just bear in mind if you do go down the water stone roof it can be quite messy and it takes up quite a bit of room obviously now the mess isn't too much of an issue if it gets on your work like I said before because it's just water wipe straight off if you're working with oil stones always just gonna ruin your work so definitely have a designated sharpening station if you're working with oil preferably have a sharpening station if you're working with water stones so the setup I used over the years was this diamond stone from actual minister four hundred and one thousand grit combination then with a strop and I got really good results from that really liked it very consistent and it was just good to be working with sharp tools for once then I started craving that little bit more so I went up to the one thousand six thousand grit water stone and with that I purchased the DMT flattening plate the reason for me is because I was at rocket wood I didn't have a designated sharpening station to put my float glass and to put all my flattening sandpaper on I needed something portable that I could take to the sink with me so that flattening plate diamond stone took it underwater rubbed it together sorted nice and flat and then beyond that 6000 grit I take it my strop and put the superfine paste on it just to get rid of the remaining burr and that is all I really need I own this ten thousand grit water stone the rest of them are all props from accident stirring things but I own this ten thousand grit water stone don't find I need it to be honest so overall if you're starting with absolutely nothing I would recommend a combination diamond stone of moderate quality just to get you started and also a strop with some paste on it that will get you a really sharp edge you can shave arm here with that so good get started if you want a little bit more one thousand and six thousand grit stone and work out for yourself which is going to be best for you in terms of flattening either float glass or granite for that matter with sandpaper on it or a designated flattening plate just bear in mind these are expensive so have a look hopefully you found that useful again Chuck any comments arguments below let's have a fight about sharpening oh that was the most backhanded ending ever yeah see you in the next video

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 223,095

Rating: 4.8461018 out of 5

Keywords: Which sharpening stone is best, waterstones vs oilstones, diamond stones vs waterstones, scary sharp vs waterstones, scary sharp vs diamond stones, how to sharpen a chisel, how to sharpen a plane, how to sharpen a blade, what is the difference between waterstones and oilstones, How to flatten waterstones, How to flatten Oilstones, sharpening equipment, plane, chisel, sharpening, handtools, how to sharpen hand tools, quickest way to sharpen a plane, easiest way to sharpen a chisel

Id: iljvtGUZXzE

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2017