Building home made balsa hones

Hi Gents,


I've aquired a piece of balsa material 1/2x3x36" and am looking for advice from anyone more experienced than myself so I can learn from your experiences and perspectives. When I cut it into lengths it seems logical to mount it to a harder substrate to prevent any future deviations from a flat, true profile and then I believe the honing surface should be lapped. I have various sandpapers and a piece of truing glass for the lapping process and will pencil out a grid the same as I would do for my water stones on my DMT 325.

Not really sure what size I'd like. I could leave them 3" wide or cut it in half and have 1 1/2" lengths. I wouldn't go any smaller than 6" in length and 9" would be max as it divides evenly into 36 but the combinations seem endless :shrug:

Is 600 grit high enough to finish lapping the honing surface of the balsa?


Thanks,

A

You'll find most favorable what you like to use. Do you prefer smaller hones and x strokes or wide hones? beauty of that stuff is you can make it any size you want. make a 1"x40" if you really wanted to.

Alright well although cutting it in half and having one 1-1/2" X 72" hone was awfully tempting Rick, I ended up bucking it into 4-9" lengths and have 11" backers with little 1" feet. The backer I used is some fancy wood that was kickin' around but has this awful paint on it. Hopefully that junk sands off okay as I think the wood will look quite pleasant unfinished. Going to get to fastening this all together today I hope and will see if 600 grit is high enough to lap the honing surface once the dust settles. I'll get some balsa hone pr0n pics up when I'm done. Out of 4 hones, one is going to be #1/4 Amplex diamond paste (0-0.5 micron range) and one is going to be 0.1 micron Cubic Boron Nitride spray and is going to be my coveted 160,000 grit hone. I'm going to have to figure out what to do with the other two. Maybe I'll just have to wait until some finer abrasives come out to load 'em up with!:rock: :mexwave::rock:

Cut it into 4 pieces 9 in. long and glue each piece to a ceramic floor tile 3 in. wide. You now have 4 balsa hones. Put whatever pastes that suits you on them. Strop away...........

Jerry

Getting closer. Here is two of them. I need to pick up some glue though on the weekend to stick the honing surface to the stands. The wood is Philippine mahogany.Attachment 95184Attachment 95185Attachment 95186

My 2 new babies :D The stropping surface was flattened on 240 and polished on 600 which worked out perfectly. 30k on left and 160k on right.
Attachment 95948

Very nice,should serve you well.

Those look great!

Very well done! I really enjoy my balsa hones.

Hmmm... this is a great idea so simpel and great at one time! think i make some of those for my own.
By the way...think i steal you stand idea.
thanks for showing this.

wow man, those are really really nice. great work on your part. I would love to be able to make something like that for myself :)

Andrew,

I very much admire your woodworking skills. What pastes and or sprays did you treat the surface of the balsa with?
And how do they perform for you?

Again, very nice work. That would make a nice mounting platform for j-nat stones.

JERRY
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by mrsell63

Andrew,

I very much admire your woodworking skills. What pastes and or sprays did you treat the surface of the balsa with?
And how do they perform for you?

Again, very nice work. That would make a nice mounting platform for j-nat stones.

JERRY
_____

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Thank you Sir and thanks everyone :) On the left is Norton #1/4 diamond paste (0 - 0.5 micron range so 0.25 average micron) and the darker gray on the right is 0.1 micron cubic boron nitride spray. As to how they perform hehe I'm not really sure. I'm not quite there yet with my honing. I'm sure they'll work but someone more experienced in this type of set up would be able to comment better than myself.
Diamond Sharpening Paste, #1/4 micron grade, 5 gram
JENDE: Ken Schwartz CBN Sprays
These were my sources for the paste and spray.

Those look great.

If you want to experiment, try using much thinner balsa. When I started making them I was using thicker balsa like yours. But one problem I found, balsa tends to swell and contract depending on atmospheric conditions. So I would lap the balsa 100% flat, but then later find it was higher in the middle. The wood had swelled slightly with humidity?

Anyway, I switched to thin sheets and the problem went away. Flat all the time. When you think about it, if the balsa is bonded to a flat surface, it does not need to be thick.

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...u/P1000442.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Legion

Those look great.

If you want to experiment, try using much thinner balsa. When I started making them I was using thicker balsa like yours. But one problem I found, balsa tends to swell and contract depending on atmospheric conditions. So I would lap the balsa 100% flat, but then later find it was higher in the middle. The wood had swelled slightly with humidity?

Anyway, I switched to thin sheets and the problem went away. Flat all the time. When you think about it, if the balsa is bonded to a flat surface, it does not need to be thick.

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Thanks :) Yea I realized after I had made them that this might happen lol. I haven't even used mine yet but one of these days I'll put a straight edge across them and see. Hopefully it's not an issue with the humidity here but you're right, better to be on the safe side and use thinner sheets. With thinner sheets I would imagine it would be very important to spread the glue evenly because after whatever weight is removed from the setting and drying process, the wood could decompress unevenly which could translate to the surface. Not sure though.

I've used balsa for years, and have found that the balsa on the thin side works better for me. The nice thing about them is that they get better with age due to the continued loading and the diamond grit working it's way deep into the balsa. So, even if you have to relap down the road, you don't lap all of the abrasive away. Very Best, John