Breaking in the stones
- This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 04/17/2019 at 10:22 am by
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Others will chime in a give good advice I’m sure, however in my own experience, I found at around the same point you are at, I gave my stones a good cleaning and like magic, they felt smooth and broken in. I have yet to read of anyone using other means of breaking in their diamond stones. At that point, I become a lot more aware of how much of the stones I was using and from that point on, I’ve made an effort to use as much of the stones length as I safely can. The more I sharpen with that in mind, the smoother and more complete my strokes are. Hope this helps.
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Chuck, I only advocate using the steel stock to break-in stones when there are high spots or clumps of abrasives your looking to knock down or even out. The sharpening experience you gain through continued sharpening use of your stones can’t be replaced. As you continue to use these stones you will learn how to discern through the feel, (i.e., the sharpening feedback), and the look of your scratch patterns on your bevels as the stones improve and become consistent when they’re broken in.
If you’re really anxious to get your stones broken in I’d only use the coarsest grits on the steel up to but not including the 400 grit. The 400 grit on up get used quite a bit more then the coarser grits and break-in fairly easily with 8 or 10 knives.
Marc
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Thanks for the quick replies I appreciate it.
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Chuck, I only advocate using the steel stock to break-in stones when there are high spots or clumps of abrasives your looking to knock down or even out. The sharpening experience you gain through continued sharpening use of your stones can’t be replaced. As you continue to use these stones you will learn how to discern through the feel, (i.e., the sharpening feedback), and the look of your scratch patterns on your bevels as the stones improve and become consistent when they’re broken in. If you’re really anxious to get your stones broken in I’d only use the coarsest grits on the steel up to but not including the 400 grit. The 400 grit on up get used quite a bit more then the coarser grits and break-in fairly easily with 8 or 10 knives.
I saw a YouTube video yesterday of a guy talking about when he uses his 100 grit, he is careful not to create a burr for fear that he’s taking off too much material which I thought was good advice.
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The purpose of using the 100 grit is to remove steel when profiling a new bevel angle. If you find your removing too much steel then go up a grit, or two. We always recommend that you use the finest grit diamond stones that you can get away with efficiently. If the stone you pick to start with seems to be too much effort and time to do what you’re attempting to do, then step down to a coarser grit until you find the grit appropriate for the task. The same is true in reverse. If the stone seems to aggressive go to a less coarse stone.
That’s why we have a 50 grit/80 grit diamond stone for those times the 100 grit isn’t aggressive enough.
Marc
(MarcH's Rack-Its)
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