Shapton Stones, Yep, they work

Mark & Juanita · 2006-03-20T05:33:08+00:00

Woodcraft has 15% off on Shapton stones, at least the ones that Shaptonrecommends for woodworking tools (1000, 5000, and 8000 grits). I've beenusing scary-sharp but not getting that have the "hair fall off your arm infront of the blade" sharpness that I've been looking for. Since I've beentrying more and more to avoid the use of sandpaper on my projects and touse planes and scrapers as exclusively as possible (I'm finding that thisis actually faster than sanding since one doesn't have to progress throughgrits), I used this as the justification to pull the trigger and try theShapton system. Got the stones home and unpacked and pulled out the bladeon the #4 smoothing plane. In the process of going through the firststone, my hand slipped and the blade contacted my left thumb -- yep, evenat the first grit, it's sharper than anything I've gotten thus far. [Dang,that smarts! -- it took quite a deep cut into the corner of the thumb] After getting the bleeding under control and some bandaids on it (Ifigured that the ER would just butterfly it shut anyway and charge me $200for the privilege of sitting around bleeding for 2 or 3 hours), Iprogressed through the 5000 and 8000 grit stones. While the finishedsharpening doesn't have the mirror surface I was getting with scary-sharp,I can honestly say that I have never had scary-sharp provide the sharpnessthat this does -- the blade shaved forearm hair with no effort and wasproducing very fine shavings in ash that was quite course-grained. With a couple of process changes for safety, I'm a happy camper. I'llhave to get the lapping system in the future. Even for the price, I'mstill in it for less than I would have paid for a Tormek or other electricsystem.+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough ...