Hand techniques

Ah, the sharpening. Here's where you can discuss sharpening stones and media, along with sharpening techniques.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Hand techniques

Mon Jul 06, 2015 11:09 pm

dmccurtis wrote:I've watched that video, and Dr. Matt's others. It's intriguing, but I find it hard to draw conclusions from. HIs postulation that adding CBN to the stone catalyzes slurry break-down, and that may be, but it seems to be a solution in need of a problem. The image he shows of the non-'supercharged' Nakayama edge looks surprisingly poor, and I don't think indicative of a normal result. It's hard to tell from small pictures, but to me, it looks like the results from a stone either too hard for normal use, or too hard for its user.

Not to make things too personal, but I tend to take sharpening advice from razor sharpeners with a grain of salt. The razor community has lots of flavour of the month products and wonder-techniques, and lots of contradictory ideas about what works and why. It's even worse when Japanese naturals are added to the mix, with so little good information about them readily available.
I'm interested in the ideas, and willing to try them out. It seems to me that people who are into sharpening razors do end up with the most direct visceral feedback of their sharpening work, and while their methods may not perfectly translate to plane and chisel blades, it's worth a look certainly. I've been trying out the CBN and diamond sprays and nanocloth strops for a while.

There's plenty of info on Japanese stones in the Kezurō-kai newsletters.
dmccurtis
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Re: Hand techniques

Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:06 am

I'm always interested in ideas; even if ultimately flawed, new ideas are always welcome. My experience, though, is that many of the novel sharpening methods complicate the process, obfuscate mechanisms, and yield no better result. Granted, most of my sharpening experience has focused on kitchen knife sharpening, which has its own unique challenges and requirements vis-a-vis tool and razor sharpening. Much of the tool and razor sharpening techniques are exported to the knife world, since knife sharpeners are a comparative minority, so I've seen and tried a lot of different things. I've settled on a stone-only regimen, synthetic up to the medium grit point, and naturals all after that. Despite trying various compounds and substrates, I was never able to surpass the edges I could get off of stones. Of course, my experience is by no means universal - if something works, it works. I'd be interested to hear your experience with nanocloth.

Where could one sign up for the Kezurō-kai newsletters? I'm very curious what they have to say about naturals. I think by this point I have consumed every English-language resource available on the web.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Hand techniques

Tue Jul 07, 2015 7:51 am

The Kezurō-kai newsletters spend a lot of time covering rocks. This does not mean that they discus sharpening techniques on those rocks, they just talk about the rocks. They look at the history of different mines, the significance of different strata, the chemical and elemental composition of the stones, etc.. Bores me to tears frankly.

You could try contacting them and ask to be put on the mailing list. I didn't do that, as a friend in California sent me a stack of the newsletter several years ago. I was hoping to uncover something interesting about plane set up and sharpening, but no such luck.

If you're more interested in the sharpening aspect, then Kunimoto is the guy to read:

http://seisakunohibi.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2010-12-10

That's his 22 years of sharpening piece. He also wrote a follow-up, 25 years of sharpening, but he has taken it down as he's writing a new version. The '22-years' version deals with issues concerning natural stones for a good portion.
dmccurtis
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Re: Hand techniques

Thu Jul 09, 2015 12:44 pm

I'll try to get in touch with them. I enjoy that stuff, but to be fair, I'm pretty boring.

I've come across Kunimoto-san's blog before (perhaps linked to by you?), but hadn't taken the time to read it. Well, read the word salad that Google Translate spits out. Lots of interesting insight there, and a rather surprising amount of cursing. Now, I'm no expert in Japanese vulgarity, but I don't suspect that "this abrasive fucking cherish" or "Is it possible to polish only abrasive shit! ?" come from the original Japanese. Between this and Google's Deep Dreams, I'm beginning to think there's a very disturbed AI stuck in their servers.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Hand techniques

Thu Jul 09, 2015 3:09 pm

Google translate is atrocious for languages with a large gulf between them, like Japanese and English. Trust me, Kunimoto-san isn't big on the cursing...

You're seeing the word 'shit' in there as a poor translation for the word 'slurry'. The Japanese term is to-kuso, 砥クソ, 'kuso' being translatable as 'shit' - literally, slurry is 'stone shit' I guess...
dmccurtis
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Re: Hand techniques

Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:28 pm

Yeah, that was one mistranslation that was easy to decipher. It's actually one of the more sensible ones I've seen. As far as "this abrasive fucking cherish," well, I like my stones too.
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Brian
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Re: Hand techniques

Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:43 pm

Love it!
durbien
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Re: Hand techniques

Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:49 pm

In doing my "bag" research, Chris linked me to an online store that sold hundreds of different types - one of the differences between types (according to Google T) was whether there was a pocket for "convex holding". It took me awhile to figure out it was for a tape measure.
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Brian
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Re: Hand techniques

Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:19 am

Chisel porn :twisted:

Haven't received these yet, as I'm wondering why the hoops arent the filed ones I've seen on other Yamahiros. That being said it's a pretty minor thing, just not what I was expecting.

I think that the finish on the blade is really cool and the workmanship looks pretty spot on. It's interesting to see how much steel is in the 6mm chisel.

Image

Image

Image

These are white steel #1, looking forward to seeing how they perform in the cut. I will wait to cut any mortises on the table I'm building until I receive these (baring any delays in transit).
dmccurtis
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Re: Hand techniques

Tue Aug 11, 2015 1:42 am

Nice looking chisels. I've always dug those blued hoops and ferrules. Hopefully they perform as well as they look.

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