(01-26-2018, 11:39 PM)Bud Wrote:(01-26-2018, 06:22 AM)me2 Wrote: What kind do you have?
I do have I think close to 25 or 30 different stones and many are double sided. I don't think that you would be impressed because most were picked up at farm and garage sales. I'm going to have to get the box out and look because I think that few are labeled or marked in any way and only a couple still are in the box they came in. It's pretty obvious that they are an assortment of grits. Some are so uneven and worn that they should probably be tossed and others look as if they've hardly been used. I was just reading your's and Mark's new posts here and as a result I think that I'm getting motivated to give it another try. Too many projects. I'm determined to get the wife's ceramic kiln up and running again so I can try my hand at knives made from files. Got the wrong parts the first time and now, hopefully, I've got the right ones on order. If push comes to shove I'll just leave another ink pen in my shirt pocket and toss it in the laundry basket like I did last week. When she got the clothes out of the washer she was plenty hot enough to melt steel over that.
My best recommendation for this situation would be to choose one of the dual grit stones and try to learn on that. Different stones have different properties and don't always behave the same when sharpening. Choose one that is coarse enough to cut quickly on the coarse side, and one that doesn't wear fast or make a slurry on the fine side. I don't know what brands you have, but I use a Norton Economy coarse/fine 2 side stone. Sharpen at whatever angle you can hold consistently. Angle is important, but getting it sharp is more so. Are you open to using a guide of some sort? If so, a simple one is to prop up your stone on one end, and then keep your knife horizontal. For a 6 inch stone, prop one end up 2 inches. That will give a 20 degree ish angle. A 20 degree angle on an 8" stone is about 2.75 inches. You'll have to find a way to hold it still, and that could be challenging, unless you have a vice or something. I use a piece of wood on a base and prop the stone vertically. I'll link to it below.
Once you have a way to control the angle, then just scrub on one side until you get a burr, flip and repeat. The remove the burr. There are several ways, but the best I've found is to elevate the angle about 2x what it was, make 1 or 2 LIGHT passes on each side. Then move back down to about 2 or 3 degrees above the original angle and make light alternating passes to sharpen it. 10 or 20 per side should do it. To be honest, I find way too much emphasis put on holding a consistent angle. It helps, but sometimes I hold the stone in one hand and knife in the other, and sharpen very fast. There's no way I'm holding a consistent angle like that, with the knife and stone flopping around in my hands. But, it gets sharp. It doesn't look very good, but that's secondary when trying to sharpen fast.