We’re down to just 1 grit level( very very fine) of the 4 in the set (coarse,fine,very fine, very very fine) is it possible to buy replacement of them? And if we do can we make some sort board that has 4 section carved out so they sit inside it and then epoxy or glue them in there so they won’t be misplaced again
Yes. They’re on the agenda to vote on next meeting. (Over $200 for the set).
Can anyone weigh in on gluing them down? I feel like they need to be able to be stood up to dry and also washed when they look “rusty”
Yea stew mac has a 3 set of the exact ones we’re missing for 175 same brand, but sounds good, I didn’t know purchases under 500$ Were voting, but Hopefully everybody see the benefit cause the alternative is the constant grinding down of the tormak stone to get larger and smaller grits for everyone who want to sharpen something and at close to 900$ those aren’t cheap to replace so having those stones serves as a cheap in comparison alternative to that, so they serve a lot of purpose and save money! And you turn the board vertical for cleaning but making the all 4 attached to each other is the important bit or well end up back where we are now with them being misplaced
Hadn’t seen that price on stewmac, nice find. They’ve been ordered.
Maybe something like…
@Chris_Fazio, my understanding is that you have some basic woodworking skills…yes?
Lol, I think I have a couple in a box somewhere I can use to make one, and I’ll just hold of on the glueing them down till there’s been more of a consensus of weather or not that’ll be a good idea
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If MDF (finished with a judicious amount of polyurethane or whatever makes sense to repel to occasional water misting) is deemed an acceptable material for this, I am happy to donate whatever is needed.
If it ends up being a Vcarve project, i.e. so we can remake easily in the remote eventuality it gets mistreated or ruined, then so much the better.
So I actually have some Hard maple Scraps that I’ve been using as a thing to put between stuff I’m using chisels on and the table that’ll work perfectly but I’m not v carve trained so this will have to be done using c carve, I was thinking since they’re small enough just stick tape a templet on it and route it out the use one of those chisel stamp things to get the corners nice and 90
I have some leftover solid surface countertop. Haven’t drawn it yet but roughly thinking about a shallow depressed pocket about an inch bigger than the diamond stones with radiused side walls to make it easy to wipe clean and raised square edged things to keep the stone in place. And make it big enough overall to have space for running a sharpening jig on the surface.
Im not clear if we are wearing out the stones or they are being stolen. What is typical abuse. I only use my diamond stones flat on a tabletop for chisels and plane blades. For knives having the stone mounted low doesn’t work very well, it needs to be a few inches above a surface so there is room for the handle and your fingers. So I have a separate holder for that.
We need to know exact dimensions of the stones to size the pocket accordingly.
Pocket is 8x3.
I assume the stones are walking away or are breaking. I think it’s unlikely that they are wearing out and someone is tossing them based on their judgement of wear.
Just a thought. What if we went with a couple of midrange oil or water stones and made a few stops? I don’t go over 1000 grit and finish on a strop. I’ve seen our diamond stones pretty worn from heavy irregular use/abuse. Amazon combo water stones run 15_20$.
1 those things wouldn’t last 10 mins in the space, the surface is too easily deformed, it wouldn’t stay true for a second, drop chipped unevenly worn, while it may seem the diamond steel ones are damaged by the abuse thats the beauty of them they can withstand that and generally with a good cleaning can be brought back to normal condition! They’ll never deform or break!
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I tend to disagree about the longevity. Both water and oil stones can be flattened relatively easily using a flat tile and sandpaper. Maybe less of a target for theft. And some of the abuse I’ve seen with things like glue, resin, and rust on diamond stones would easily be resurfaced. The people that care about the sharpening tools already know these things and will address them when they need to use them. The people that don’t, and don’t care won’t be bothered by it anyways because they’re going to be getting poor results regardless of which stone they use. I think part of the discussion and decision comes back to what level of overall quality in our tools that we need to present. Especially for those that tend to be misused.
I’m curious why this topic used the term fret levelers? What does that mean?
I assume because the product listing he found it under called them such.
Ok so a fret leveler is not the same as a diamond stone or waterstone for sharpening chisels and planes. I totally misread what this was all about.
The items being sold as fret levelers are diamond stones for sharpening chisels. We would be buying them with the intention of using them as sharpening stones.
A fret leveler is a specific type of sharpening stone made of steel and diamond grit, which is just a sharpening stone, but since as he mentioned above they have to be resurfaced, they’ll not be a good fit because yes as he mentioned rust and stuff gets on the surface once thoughly cleaned off they’re perfectly flat and ready to go, vs stones which deform over even the most casual of use. Which is why people who use them know how to resurface them cause even single user stones deform, so I used fret leveler in the title to avoid it being confused with a request for sharpening stones