Thread: round rotating water stones

Originally Posted by kevint

I wish there was a Dick Biz in my home town. I'd love to wander through there. They have lots of cool stuff.

That's an understatement!

I have to be very careful when looking through their catalog, too many tools that are just superbly crafted and worth every penny I don't have.

I have one that is similar but so far I have not had any success with it.

The one I saw in Leiden 30 years ago would do all the work. It had a contraption that holds the blade and then you plug it in and the thing will do everything: put the blade on the rotating stone, turn the blade regularly and add water or fluid with sharpening particles.
When you return to it blade is sharp.

A bit like this one: http://websites.labx.com/rankin/deta...utonumber=3062

Don't tell me it is expensive (and this one is 2nd hand!): these are for professional use.

That'd be very useful for doing production style work, I wonder if the Dovo/TI factories have similar devices.

I would like to watch it in action, while I doubt the results are as good as a hand honed razor (can it do a rolling X?) I'd be interested to see all the mechisms working and such.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

That seems like a lot of unnecessary work/equipment to get a razor touched up.

In all honestly, using a Coticule and a Nakayama, I can refresh a razor in about that much time. Besides, that machine inhibits the the direction in which the steels is abraded, edge leading on one side but trailing on the other. I don't see any advantages.

I suppose it works, so, to each his own, but I wouldn't buy one.

The main point is to know which tool to use for what purpose. Of course you are quicker with a coticule/whatever when touching up a razor. But that's NOT the purpose of a machine like that! It works wonders when you have to establish a new bevel on a wedge or a frowning razor. What you do in 1-2 hours manually gets done in a matter of 2-3 minutes. This machine is NOT intended to finish razors but to help when quite some has to be removed. Of course you have to manually hone the razors of the finer hones afterwards.

Since I've got the machine I reckon it has saved me an entire day of manual work on razors that needed serious grinding. And then there's chisels, plane blades, blades from kitchen tools....
But, of course, each to his own.

I didn't really mean to make it sound useless, it obviously has a place in the workshop of someone that does much more work than I do. If it enables you to work better, and produce better work, than it is most definitely worth it.

Also, I thought it was being used to refresh edges; bevel grinding is much more suitable for a machine, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

But to be fair, I can also do some serious bevel reworking on the DMTs. In approx. 10-20 minutes the DMTs will take an 1/8" chip out of most blades and have the edge ready for finish polishing on the natural stones. The right techniques, when done with care, will really shred metal off of any edged tool with those diamond plates.

If I did more than my own chisels and plane blades I would seriously entertain getting one, for those tools, it seems very much worthwhile.