Reply To: Move from water stones to diamonds or not?
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ed and I agree — grinding is the issue. As ed surmised, I’m using mostly cryogenically-hardened A2 and some japanese steels, so my grinding gets done on an actual grinder with a cbn wheel. Like ed, I just don’t have the patience to spend a long time grinding by hand.
Good advice from him on finding your lowest grit. That’s where it all starts, and what takes most of the time. Imagine you get a vintage 1″ pigsticker off ebay, it’ll take you 30 minutes, easy, to flatten the back of that beast, and maybe much longer, depending on the condition. If you’ve got the time and the inclination, no worries. If it rankles, switch up your lowest grit. For me, no grit by hand was fast enough, hence the grinder.
Same with the bevel. A big 1″ bevel takes a lot of sharpening. Changing that bevel angle takes way, way more time. Again, if you’re OK with the time is takes with your current media, you’re done, but otherwise, try a coarser grit until the juice is worth the squeeze. For me, I had to go to hollow grinds off my grinder. With a cbn wheel, I can grind right to the wire edge with no fear of burning the metal, usually in around 45 seconds? Here’s a video of the process, done by Joel at Tools for Working Wood..it takes him less than 45 seconds:
https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/blog/907/title/How%20To%20Grind:%20Part%205%20-%20Grinding%20the%20Hollow