Paul Sellers: don't need to sharpen more than 250 grit.

[G S Haydon]

For me it was E, D and a small amount of old Fs.

 

Since Feb this year it's been all of the above, just from the point of interest.

 

Dan, I hope if I had a cheap shot a while back about guides it was not taken personally, some times a post sounds funny in my head, on the screen this may well be different.

[Dan S]

Dan, I hope if I had a cheap shot a while back about guides it was not taken personally, some times a post sounds funny in my head, on the screen this may well be different.

It wasn't you, I was referring to an interaction I had with someone 6 or 9 months ago on a different forum.

[wilburpan]

It's sad if that's the case, FWIW this is probably the only in depth sharpening discussion this forum has had since February that I'm aware of. How about a quick poll?

 

How did you discover your sharpening medium and method?

 

A: Demonstrations by other woodworkers

 

B: Advertising

 

C: Forums

 

D: Family

 

E: Apprentice

 

F: Reference Books

 

Primarily A, from the first woodworking class I ever took.

[Tom King]

I'm pretty sure I ordered my first set of sharpening stones from Smith in Arkansas from an advertisement in The Whole Earth Catalog in 1973 or 1974.  I remember laying on the floor and hand writing a bunch of letters to different manufacturers from ads in the big WEC.  I think that was a few years before the first issue of Fine Woodworking.  I got on some mailing list from ordering some stuff, I think from Garrett-Wade, and a couple of other catalogs, and received an invitation to be a charter subscriber to Fine Woodworking.  I still have all the magazines up to the point that I stopped subscribing probably in the mid '90s. I've never paid any attention to other magazines or people on the internet before I joined these Forums, and never took or knew anything about classes.  Actually, I was pretty surprised when I saw that there were people making a living talking about it.

 

I still have that first set of stones.  The Washita was a great stone, but a tornado hit a shop I had in 1988, and the stones got tossed out in the yard breaking the Washita and Hard Arkansas right in the middle.  I still used them like that for a number of years until I ordered some more, larger stones from Hall's.  I never had to flatten the Black Hard stone, and it will still do an amazing job.

 

I have every variety of sharpening stuff now, and would be glad to let anyone do a hands on that wants to if we can find a place and time.

 

I can sharpen by hand or guide.  If anyone would like to bet money, I'll take a guide for time to super sharp.  I can have the guide on in 5 seconds, and go a lot faster with it on a stone.