A question to those who use the so-called "scary sharp" (wet and dry abrasive paper on a hard flat base) method for sharpening chisels and irons: what do you use as the base? Plate glass seems to be "scary expensive", so are granite tiles usually flat enough? What else is flat, available and cheap?
What base to use for "scary sharp" sharpening method?
Apr 05, 2013
7 Replies
Any normal glass will be flat enough for that.
A piece of an old marble wash-stand top would do nicely.
I found a thick glass shelf for around £3 quid in my local pound stretcher shop. I use both sides with a total of 8 grades of wet and dry spray glue mounted on it
On Friday 05 April 2013 16:50 unknown wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Any honed marble or stone[1] tile I would have thought - as in "buy a sample tile from the tile shop for a quid" kind of thing.
[1] but not travertine - soft and full of holes.You're sharpening a chisel, not polishing optical parts for Hubble. Surely "basically flat" is good enough?
Or a new oilstone? Even if you want to stick paper to it, it will be flat and squared off.
I find a decent thickness worktop in the kitchen is fine. Soak the wet and dry then flop it down. You do not want too much pressure anyway.
You will need glass of a reasonable thickness as glass flexes. A flat surface for the glass would do but then you wouldn't need the glass.
In message , Tim Watts writes
So german products should be OK then ?
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