Hey all, newb here. I’m building my first workshop in my basement with hand tools only (might add power tools later) and looking for some advice.
I’m still undecided on a sharpening setup, so wondering what other people like. How fussy are water stones, and how do you manage keeping them true? Do you have any cool tricks or things you want to show off?
If you’ve never sharpened any before the easiest setup is probably sandpaper on a granite tile (they’re generally very flat) and a guide clamped to your chisel or plane blade. There are many photos of people using guides on sharpening stones on the Internet, but I don’t know how great of an idea it is. Ideally you want to sharpen across the whole length of the stone to promote even stone wear and that’s hard to do with a guide.
If you want to sharpen on a stone with ya guide, a good trick is to color in the blade with a sharpie. This will let you see where you’re removing material more easily, which can help you adjust your angle.
It seems impossible to me that you can apply uniform and even wear to a stone, unless your blade is longer than the stone itself or divisible by its width.
Mathematically speaking, the wear is distributed as a convolutional process and will apply a bell-curve shaped wear pattern over time. There’s nothing to do about that except accept it and flatten out the stone.