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09/11/2012 |
There are a lot of gizmos used to hold waterstones when you sharpen. And it's obvious that whether the stone is by itself or glued to a stand you don't want it to shift around when you sharpen. A bunch of years ago I saw a video of a master sharpener in Japan. He used a wet kitchen towel to keep his stone from moving about as he worked. Other than the fact I didn't want to have to explain to anyone why a kitchen towel suddenly got grungy it seemed like a great idea to try. I used a paper towel instead of cloth and it worked great! Here is how to do it. 1 - take paper towel. 2 - Lay flat on sharpening table 3 - pour water on it. 4 - put stone on top of it. That's it. It works like a charm. There is a limit to the amount of force you can apply then sharpening with a towel clamp but normally if the stone moves it means I am trying to hard and I need to relax a bit. Try it you will like it.
While we are on the subject of sharpening I want to mention my stainless steel sharpening table that you can partially see in the pictures. For years I have used a piece of plywood to protect my bench from the mess when I sharpen, with mostly good results, but it meant shifting things around and I wanted a small permanently standing sharpening center. Last year I got a small wood topped table but I never used it for sharpening - it was just too nice to dirty up and I never got around to making a top for the top. Then we found this stainless table. It's pretty small only 18" wide by 24" deep and fortunately it doesn't take up much space, it is rock solid, heavy, and most important it has a heavy gauge stainless steel top. I am loving it because I can make a real mess and it just wipes up and we are using for small messy glue-up and finishing too. And it cost half of what the wood bench cost. (we no long stock the table but currently they are available at restaurant supply houses).
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Randy