What did you replace your fine India with?

[Ånk]

... Or did you?



Ive been searching for those 4x2 or longer slipstones to use as a compliment and while being far away from the bigger bench stones I have.
These things can be problematic for many reasons especially if your on a tight budget and the most apparent problems are:

don't want to buy crap

Don't want to get ripped off

The price for material and shipping needs to be as good as possible.

So why India?
I got a second hand India combo from my fiance that really has grown on me.
It's defenetly not the fastest stone out there but that's partly what's makes it good. And maintainence is pretty unproblematic, and when it gets burnished, take the pain a bit and grease your elbows and that's it, you've got a good stone that's as flat or round as you need it to be. And the pricetag is good.
So I thaught, why not a smaller one for field use, a kinda midrange stone for sharpening on the fly.

So. With that said, I would of course, respectfully, like to ask the folks here, a couple of questions based on this:

You who when needed, go to your lo, mid or high grit India stones, why do you keep doing it? What's your reasons?

And you who take another route stonewise, what do you do instead and with what? Why don't you embrace the Indias?

Just to be clear, sharpening and honing can be done in many ways.
I choose stones, and strops if needed.
I live familylife in a apartment with so benchgrinder, waterweel and rotating strop is really not my cup of tea, and is pretty impossible. And some good stones that gives you good feeling are way better than "gadgets".

Some people take the sandpaper route, but I don't. I'm not that kinda guy I guess. Sure it's handy sometimes for certain things, but I don't want it as a base for what I'm doing. Good stones, and in this case, slipstones, makes more sense to me for a number of reasons.

So, without terrorizing you any further, enjoy you day and get back to me if you can.

[Brian T]

Welcome. Show us your carvings some time.

You will be using select river stones and sandpapers of you carve with adzes and crooked knives.
Then, the edge is stationary and the abrasive moves.

Photographs show that steel is so thin and flexible that 1500 grit is about the limit. Next I use CrOx/AlOx (or the palm of one of my dirty gloves.) My strops vary from worn out chainsaw files to water pipe and tennis balls.

[Ånk]

Thanks Brian.
I uploaded some pictures in the welcoming/introduction thread, please have a look mate!


Please tell me more about those select river stones, never heard of them. From what country and what river? If somethings "select" then usually it's offered along with something more "standard". Perhaps you've tried those too.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to prefer not to use a fine India, but go the sandpaper route. Why?

[Brian T]

Two things, Ank

You find very fine grained stones in rivers here because they are too hard to grind up into rock dust powder. The game is to search for stones of the right size and shape for the curve, the sweep, of the knife. I have a few and I'll never stop looking. Our mountain rivers get rearranged by spring flooding every year so there's always millions of new stones to look at!

It's very difficult to find and buy fine sharpening stones here. Files, yes. Carborundum for axes, yes. Steels for kitchen knives, yes. Not much else. If I can find them for free in a riverbed, good.

7-8 years ago, I think, I switched from the common gouges and mallets to the tools used by the First Nations here in the Pacific Northwest. For the most part, the knives have many different curvatures and so do the adze blades. I had nothing but water stones and diamond plates that could not fit to the sweeps of the tools. The 3M fine automotive wet & dry finishing sandpapers are easily flexible enough for all my knife edges. I go only as far as 1500, I think the sheets run up to 2500 if my memory serves. I secure the blades and move the abrasives.

Here's an example of the blade sweeps:

Buy Sharp Curved & Straight Wood Carving Knife Online

I like the CrOx/AlOx honing compound that I scribble on file cards to wrap around pipe mandrels for honing. For the sweeps of the adze blades, a tennis ball has just the right radius!

[pallin]

Hi Ank - I started whittling with a pocket knife many years ago. Much of this was on long backpacking trips, so I used a small carborundum pocket stone for sharpening. When I moved on to relief carving with gouges, I switched to Arkansas stones, both medium and hard, with honing oil. Now I use wet-or-dry sandpapers and finish with chromium oxide on cardboard. So the only India I've used is India ink.

[Jamie Sharp]

Have you considered wood and polishing compound?

Green is 2000~ grit, black is 600~800 grit.

Works great on curved knives as you can always sand wood to the shape you need, or sand out any nicks in the wood as needed. Cheap too! And if it gets dirty/damaged you can just toss it out and make a new one for pennies.

[Ånk]

Two things, Ank

You find very fine grained stones in rivers here because they are too hard to grind up into rock dust powder. The game is to search for stones of the right size and shape for the curve, the sweep, of the knife. I have a few and I'll never stop looking. Our mountain rivers get rearranged by spring flooding every year so there's always millions of new stones to look at!

It's very difficult to find and buy fine sharpening stones here. Files, yes. Carborundum for axes, yes. Steels for kitchen knives, yes. Not much else. If I can find them for free in a riverbed, good.

7-8 years ago, I think, I switched from the common gouges and mallets to the tools used by the First Nations here in the Pacific Northwest. For the most part, the knives have many different curvatures and so do the adze blades. I had nothing but water stones and diamond plates that could not fit to the sweeps of the tools. The 3M fine automotive wet & dry finishing sandpapers are easily flexible enough for all my knife edges. I go only as far as 1500, I think the sheets run up to 2500 if my memory serves. I secure the blades and move the abrasives.

Here's an example of the blade sweeps:

Buy Sharp Curved & Straight Wood Carving Knife Online

I like the CrOx/AlOx honing compound that I scribble on file cards to wrap around pipe mandrels for honing. For the sweeps of the adze blades, a tennis ball has just the right radius!

Nice one with the tennisball brian.
It's an easy life to live when we do what we can with what we got and the success it total from it.
Useful stones in the wild where I live is nothing to be bothered with. Here is mostly on granite, quartz like rock and stuff that do more harm than good. You - can find finer sandstones that floats between 500-1000 in other places like Gotland for instance. If I was suddenly alone in town, and everybody else was gone and took all apparent abrasives with them, I would look for a roof with schist-tiles and take a couple of flat ones and get to work. Works OK-ish, a bit soft but it would make the abrasive missing neo-caveman Ånk very happy if theres wasn't something else around.

Thanks for the link, VERY cool stuff. Intresting indeed!!!

[Brian T]

Ank: roofing tiles! Why did I never thing of them? Even large pieces of broken tile would be useful.
I judge the river stones by feel = shut my eyes and feel the rock. I want the silky ones.

I have chopped up a bunch of Morakniv #171 for wood carving. Used them for years. Good.

Jamie Sharp is quite new here in WCI Forums. Canadian and not far south of my place. I bought a couple of his crooked knives, # that he does not show in his catalog any more. The handle length/balance is really good = easy on the wrist, you don't even know it's there. The handle circumference is OK with my big hands.
Good steel. Once I got the edges that I wanted, nice tools to use almost without thinking.
As crooked knives go, even the completely finished ones, his prices are very reasonable.

[Jamie Sharp]

Thank you for the kind words Brian T. You can still find your knives in the full catalog: https://www.jamie-sharp.com/collections/all or by using the built in search for the number, but you have to include the leading 0 because.. reasons. (ie, search for '068')

I designed the knives and handles with lots of feedback from a talented artist much like yourself, who owns more knives then I currently have for sale and has bought dozens of my knives alone.

It took a lot of work before he was happy with them but I feel it was really worth it to be able to make something that artists would truly enjoy using and praise me for making for them.

Rest assured I have gotten better at sharpening over the past year and am continuing to improve my techniques. I hope to produce knives that can be used straight out of the box by even the most discerning artists.

[Ånk]

Two things, Ank

You find very fine grained stones in rivers here because they are too hard to grind up into rock dust powder. The game is to search for stones of the right size and shape for the curve, the sweep, of the knife. I have a few and I'll never stop looking. Our mountain rivers get rearranged by spring flooding every year so there's always millions of new stones to look at!

It's very difficult to find and buy fine sharpening stones here. Files, yes. Carborundum for axes, yes. Steels for kitchen knives, yes. Not much else. If I can find them for free in a riverbed, good.

7-8 years ago, I think, I switched from the common gouges and mallets to the tools used by the First Nations here in the Pacific Northwest. For the most part, the knives have many different curvatures and so do the adze blades. I had nothing but water stones and diamond plates that could not fit to the sweeps of the tools. The 3M fine automotive wet & dry finishing sandpapers are easily flexible enough for all my knife edges. I go only as far as 1500, I think the sheets run up to 2500 if my memory serves. I secure the blades and move the abrasives.

Here's an example of the blade sweeps:

Buy Sharp Curved & Straight Wood Carving Knife Online

I like the CrOx/AlOx honing compound that I scribble on file cards to wrap around pipe mandrels for honing. For the sweeps of the adze blades, a tennis ball has just the right radius!

Sounds to me that I'd be hooked on stone hunting in a second. Some weeks ago I went thru 1 or two kilos of smaller "could this be it?" stones from Gotland when I was there on vacation in summer. 3 of them was good, and I found some fossils as well so pretty fun.

[Ånk]

Hi Ank - I started whittling with a pocket knife many years ago. Much of this was on long backpacking trips, so I used a small carborundum pocket stone for sharpening. When I moved on to relief carving with gouges, I switched to Arkansas stones, both medium and hard, with honing oil. Now I use wet-or-dry sandpapers and finish with chromium oxide on cardboard. So the only India I've used is India ink.

A nice Sic-stone goes a long way In the beginning, but quickly becomes insufficient once you get a taste of what "really" sharp feels like.
What Arkansas stones did you settle on before you stopped using them?
Funny you should mention them.
I've been looking for decent ones for a while but here in the Nordics they get expensive, I guess because of import and kinda small market. I bought a used 6x2x1 soft Norton/Pike for 10 eur, and loaned a bigger translucent that was a real eye opener.
I get my tools sharp by other means, but would really like to try out the imfamous India-arkansas way of sharpening, so please, if you feel you've got any particular info on a decent progression and so on bottled up, don't hesitate for a second. Im all ears!

[Just Carving]

I use wet-or-dry sandpapers--wrapped around an appropriate size dowel when needed--and finish with Flex-cut yellow compound on leather strop--usually the Flex-cut strop with profiles--which you could create one for your larger profiles.

BobL

[Ånk]

Yes, I have used both paper and compound, I even made my own.
But, I would not choose green compound If what I needed was something midrange like a fine India. Perhaps after, but not instead of it. I think we drifting away from the original question, but that's all right.
A none answer is an answer too.

Come on guys, give the India some love or give it the opposite! Tell me your story!!

[pallin]

Have you considered wood and polishing compound?

Green is 2000~ grit, black is 600~800 grit.

Works great on curved knives as you can always sand wood to the shape you need, or sand out any nicks in the wood as needed. Cheap too! And if it gets dirty/damaged you can just toss it out and make a new one for pennies.

I have over fifty different profiles of gouges, so shaping wood for the bevel (& inside) of each would be a huge task. I have been carving for about 75 years, so free-hand sharpening works for me.

The Arkansas stones I have were all inherited from my grandfathers or others. One is a slipstone for lathe tools.

[Brian T]

I think that I can walk well enough to get into a couple of low rivers in late May before the big melt up top gets going. If I'm smart, I'll take a few crooked knives and a piece of cedar with me.
No better known way to decide if a fine-grained river stone works well or not.

This is an old film, transcribed onto digital. You see Mungo Martin (Kwakwaka'Wakw) tune up his knife with a river stone and a bucket of water. I think the movie shows the full sequence of making a bent wood box with very simple corners. Water-tight, for cooking no less.

Kwakiutl, Kwakwaka'Wakw, wood carver displays his craftsmanship, Mungo Martin, 1963 - Bing video