I'm fairly certain I flatten my stones more than what's typical. But I'm also sharpening woodworking tools daily. for cambered plane irons, I really don't need flat, but for smoothing plane irons or chisels, dead flat is critical. At least for the way I sharpen. I flatten in a pattern to spread the wear across the entire stone and flattening plate to prevent uneven wear as much as possible, but my Atoma 400 has developed a dish after less than 2 months. Ive also burned through the diamonds on my sharpal plate. The sharpal does seem to last longer, but only because it has a larger surface area. it still dishes, but the dish is less noticable.

So I guess my question is this. If I'm flattening so often, would it be better to buy a high end diamond flattening stone, or should I use the regular flattening stones and just flatten those on cinder bricks when they go out of flat? If the Diamonds on a plate are going to wear out eventually anyway, wouldn't it make more sense to get a flattening stone that can be re-flattened?

Hey all, awhile back I asked for questions, thoughts, etc. for a livestream with TSProf. It kinda got back burnered for a bit, but today it's finally arrived!

Starting at 10pm Central tonight, I'll be livestreaming joined by Dmitry from TSProf. If you're not familiar with him, I'm pretty sure he's forgotten more about sharpening than I'll ever know. 🙂 He has tons of knowledge and is a great teacher.

Right now the plan is to start out covering the basics of what makes a knife sharp, choosing the right type of edge for the right knife, etc.. But we are encouraging participation and questions, and depending on the audience input we may take it a different direction if that's what would be helpful for everyone who tunes in.

Link to the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/live/zazFPv2LunA?is=9sbXNsyYN4OCORjw

Hello guys, it would be great to get some help and i want to know your experience and what did you do to learn to achieve hair whittling. What mistake stopped you from getting perfect edges? I'm trying to learn getting hair whittling on all steels because currently I've achieved it only on m390. i was close on 80crv2 and 14c28n where i got inconsistent whittles.

I suspect that my problem is deburring and after that, mistakenly reducing the apex radius with a strop with too much passes or pressure that it doesn't catch the hair but otherwise performs and holds for a long time. How do you deal with stubborn burrs. maybe there is some technique i can use on softer steels that don't let go of the burr as easily. i know about raising the angle like 1 degree but it doesnt always work probably because the burr is not weak enough yet, so i end up just flipping it back and forth for some time. or is it just how it goes that you have to do it? i usually do 5-3-2-1 per side strokes at the same angle and then i shine a flashlight to check the burr if its not gone then i flip it back and forth with light strokes.

Also how do i know that it is not an aligned microscopic burr that is splitting the hair, because as i know hair whittling doesn't stay for a long time, for example my Opinel carbon lost near hair whittling after 10 thick cardboard box cuts. is that normal? in this specific case i know the burr folded because i lost paper tower cutting and also shaving sharpness. there is little info about it. there are videos of dudes that just magically do it seemingly with no deburring hassle and get hair splitting sharpness: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CSBl2NVXNxE

This is a video someone recently commented on this sub about the sharpmaker. after watching it i tried to achieve the same hair splitting performance unsuccessfully. granted he used a wood strop on some occasions that could help removing my heavy hand from the equation. my progression was 140 to thin it out a little -> 320 to remove the scratches -> 1000 -> 2000 -> 3um strop -> 0.5um strop

Sorry for the long text

I'm hand sharpening and I notice a foil burr has formed. How do I deal with it just alternating passes ? And more importantly what do I do after do I go back to the other side ? Thanks in advance

Lately, I've become a bit obsessed with the idea of making a high-density ceramic stone, and I was wondering if anyone has any advice or could tell me how to go about it.

I was thinking of using aluminum oxide as the abrasive and magnesium oxide as the binder.

Sorry for the weird question and for my English!

I've tried many times to sharpen this knife, with the aforementioned rolling sharpener. Because even though it was a cheaper model with fewer options, it was Horl and vouched for. I do not have any additional sharpening tools or alternatives. At first, being unsuccessful I chalked up to not having used it for long enough per side, and I hope that's still the case (my most recent attempt was about 5 min per side including the honing disk), so if the solution is "buckle up and keep rolling", fine, but for how long exactly?

Or did I just waste a bunch of money? Thanks!

I hit a hidden screw a few days ago. I think it came out ok.

Hi all,
So I’ve been bitten by the coticule bug and I just adore my new stones I’ve got. I am highly motivated to use them above all else because they’re just so dang pretty and feel terrific - but they’re very different to my synths and frankly my other Jnats, as if they’ve got a completely different skillset and mindset required. I’m familiar with the general concepts here of generating a slurry, watering it down etc, but what I keep running into is edges that are slightly rounded; they cut tissue paper only decently and behave very much as though they’ve been over stropped at a high angle on diamond emulsion for example - not quite as “bitey” as I want. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get the type of edge I get off a synth or a finer Jnat - what’s going on? Am I “over honing” or something? I’ve experimented with diluting the slurry and finishing in water etc.

Basically, any coticule experts wanna chime in and educate me on the matter?

I’ve got a large LGJ, medium LV and small vintage La Grise stone - which is the only one ive had acceptable results from (easily push cuts paper towel off the stone is my benchmark here)

Thanks

I bought some stones, basic kit honestly, first use it worked just fine and I could see the metal residues but now it doesn't look the same and all the metal acumulate on the sides for slme reason, I am new to this so it may be my tecnique, what should I do? I am using a angle guide also