Friends:
The latest sharpening thread and the ones that went before it beg a couple of historical questions. Back in the days before scanning microscopes and diamond paste were everyday wood-shop equipment, when people couldn’t measure grit beyond saying that one stone was fine and hard and another was softer and coarser, how did guys like Duncan Phyfe do it:
a) What did the use;
b) How did they use it?
The obvious follow-on question is, why wouldn’t those techniques work for us (not saying there is a moral element to this or even a philosophical one, western of Zen — just a practical question)?
Joe
Replies
I would love to see Adam Cherubini weigh in on this. He has written before along these lines suggesting that maybe we are overdoing the goals we set for ourselves compared to the product we produce. We might check out his blog on the Popular Woodworking site.
Joe,
I don't have the answer to your question but, wasn't the steel used in their planes and chisels quite abit softer? I just guessing at this from what I've read about present day metals with Rockwell hardness in the low 60's,
Neil
Good question -- I really don't know. Steel quality was uneven, but hardening was known -- probably measured by "proof" of some kind like guns and armor. ALso, hand forged tools can hold edges better -- given a qiality steel. But , this is all conjecture as I just don't know.
Joe
I think they just used those big wheel stones you pedaled like a bycycle. Stick a can of water on top of the stone and let it drip down and sharpen your blade by eye.. At least that's the way Roy Underhill does it.
Adam C is the best when it comes to clarifying historical woodworking ways. I love his articles in Pop Wood. FWW should pick him up.
If FWW picks up an expert on woodworking history, I would hope it would be Don McConnell.
Edited 8/13/2007 9:58 am ET by VTAndy_
who's Don MacConnell?
Here's a brief bio of Don:
http://www.planemaker.com/aboutus.html
and another bio on OldTools:
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/bio.phtml?message_id=53338If you search on the OldTools archive, you'll find some excellent contributions; he has also contributed to this forum and others. I believe that at one point he wrote some articles for Popular Woodworking. Always highly informative, professional, and careful to refer to historical sources.
-Andy
Edited 8/13/2007 10:01 am ET by VTAndy_
Sandstone wheels were used for farm tools. We had one in the barn.
Hand grinders were used in our boat shop from 1920-1960, followed by several carborundum stones of different grits kept in a coffeee can full of kerosene and used on a sharpening buck. We also had one hard Arkansas stone.
“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
Burnishing was done on their leathery palms.
Bob,
I recently picked up a 2" X 8" X 1" stone that appears to be sandstone ($1.00 purchase). My first impression was that it might be a #### (similar "fineness"), except the color is so uniform. The stone is also very flat (normal nicks and such on all edges). It does not have the feel of any manmade stone.
In your travels, have you or anyone you have been around used a sandstone bench stone and if so, did you use it like you would an oilstone?
T.Z.
Bob:
We, too had a big grinding wheel. At some point, it cracked.
Thing is, back before carborendum, back before grit measurement, the old masters had much more limited choices than we do, or so I would speculate. How did they get and keep an edge in an age when running up through ultra-fine grits was impossible?
J
They had Cherney Forest Stones, they had Turkey stones, stones just as fine as anything today but softer. Shops ideally had grinding wheels but for the traveling carpenter or the small shop grinding tools was a big income for hardware stores.
Joel
http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com
I have an old hard white Arkansas that my G Grandfather used for his straight razor, and that stone can certainly put on a mirror sharp edge.Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Arkansas stones were only commercially available starting in the 1840's - 50's. Once avaiable they drove all the other softer stones from the market.Joel
http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com
So they used basic stones. Why can't we? Why all the dissertations on other stuff?Joe
Well said. No idea why folks insist on making simple things complicated. I was on a remote job site once without any sharpening equipment on hand. Not even any sand paper. The chisel I was using was dangerous it was so dull. Found a rock on the site that looked to be about the correct grit and just flat enough. It worked in the crudest , most fundamental way. True story.
-Paul
No reason not to. Sharpening isn't brain surgery. All you need is some basic technique Joel
http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com
Reminds me of fly fishing. You can spend lots of time studying and buying gear, and pay through the nose, but what you need most is skill -- which cannot be bought.
Joe
Joe,
and all,
Someone mentioned Turkey stones. One of Roy Underhill's books has a story wherein he went on a quest for a local (to him, NC) quarry for a natural sharpening stone. Nearby, to me (Shenandoah Valley, VA) in the National Forest, there is an area designated as "Hone Quarry", but I haven't been able to get a line on just where, in the woods, the quarry site was. Occasionally one will find an old natural stone with irregular edges. Busted out of the ground, and used as is, or dropped and broken?
Doubtless, each region had it's own local source of natural, mined, quarried stone that was more or less good as a whetrock. But some, Turkey, Arkansas, gained an international reputation as being better. Finer grained and/or harder.
With all the recent (well in the last 20 yrs) whoopla about first Japanese waterstones, and then "scarey sharp", I've found no reason to stop using the old-fashioned oilstones, of the days of yore, as I was taught to use.
From the farm where I grew up, I have a large (33" dia) grindstone, that is about as fine a grit as a medium India stone. No doubt the quarry that produced that wheel, sold benchstones as well. There was a recent article in the Chronicle of the Early American Industries ####'n about a quarry in the midwest US, that produced an abundance of grindstones in the late 1800's, early 1900's.
Ray
You do not need all the fancy “Mongo-super-scary-sharp-micro-adjustable-highend-techno-jigs”. My opinion is that all that crap is primarily designed to relieve cash from the amateur Woodworkers wallet. My sharpening kit consists of one cheap 6” high speed grinder with a 60 grit white wheel and home made tool rest, my grand fathers hard white Arkansas oil stone and a few slip stones for gouges and curved edges and a Norton fine India oil stone for kitchen knives. That is it, period. It is all you need, no jigs no sandpaper, no float glass. If it worked for the Townsends, Goddard’s, Frid and Krenov, well then it is good enough for me. Hell, grandma was known to sharpen kitchen knives on the edge of a crock, and the chicken and veggies turned out just fine.
The 1840's would have been in my G Grandfathers time
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
I'm having trouble posting it, but if you look on Pike-Norton's website, their history says they've been quarrying shist-mica since 1923 and navaculaite sometime after that date, and alum oxide artificial stones have been made since the 1920's.
“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
The original Pike stones are very coarse and were used as sythe stones. Arkansas stones were commercially mined by Norton and others starting in the late 1840'sJoel
http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com
Hi Joe,
I did write an article on this subject recently.
They used natural stones which varied in quality. Generally, they lacked a good coarse stone which is a fairly big deal. Without a coarse stone, edge maintenance becomes more crucial. Repairing a nick can be very difficult etc.
Many American cabinet shops appear to have had grindstones. I haven't surveyed British inventories but I would suspect to find the same thing. I have one and used it for the better part of a year for my article and found it very slow cutting. But some have suggested I didn't give it a fair enough shake. I perhaps could have used a bit more pressure on the stone and spent more time truing and dressing it. (I spent 10-15 hours and quit there).
=====
Moxon described hollow grinding in 1680. You could run that section in FWW today (minus the words like "hast" and "rubbeth") and it would be as informative and helpful and seemingly up to date as anything. He hollow ground, then honed out the hollow. He recommended 12 degree bevel angles for plane irons.
=====
About their steel:
They had steel of similar or superior hardness to ours though it wasn't wear resistant like some modern steels so it may have been a little easier to sharpen. Also, they very often laminated steel to iron. This certainly made their tools easier to sharpen (and also allowed them to make tools with edges harder than ours without them shattering).
=====
My Take;
A lot of my opinion on the subject was based on the poor performance of my grindstone. If I had it to do all over again, I would find more grindstones and try them to see if mine was just a loser.
Otherwise, my guess is they ground low angles, honed a bit higher freehand, and didn't worry if the back was flat. This is an approach you could try. It would be faster and yields some positive outcomes. The elliptical edge is theoretically stronger than the hollow ground or flat bevel. In use, I detected no difficulties and some benefits of knife edged tools. So shaped plane irons have an obvious advantage, but chisels (shaped essentially like carving tools) worked surprisingly well. I even found no trouble using mortise chisels honed this way.
So I guess I think we do sharpen to too high a degree and I'm not convinced our mirror like flat backs are the only way to do the job "right'. I think David Charlesworth's ruler trick is a perfect example.
Adam
Hi Joe,
While it is tempting to go into a good deal of background (including the fact that the use of microscopes to study sharpening signatures can be traced back nearly 300 years), it seems more useful to keep things fairly simple.
We know that rub stones (fine sand stones) and grindstones were being imported into Boston by the early 18th century, and a 1768 Virginia store inventory lists the following stones as part of a set of English joiner's tools:
1 Rubb stone & ragg stone
1 Fine turkey oil stone
[James Smyth, _The practice of the customs ... _, 1821: "Rag stone ... is used by artificers, for the purpose of giving a fine edge to knives, chissels, and other tools which have previously been sharpened upon stones of a coarse texture."]
So, it seems to me that the following description of sharpening by Peter Nicholson, _The Mechanic's Companion ..._, 1831, is consistent with the available sharpening materials of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It doesn't cover every aspect of effective sharpening despite its length, but I think it gives us a fairly good idea of the general approach.
Page 93 - "To Grind and Sharpen the Iron
"When you grind the iron, place your thumbs under it, and the fingers of both hands above, laying the basil to the stone, and holding it to the angle you intend it shall make with the steel side of it, keeping it steady while the stone is turning, and pressing the iron to the stone with your fingers; and in order to prevent the stone from wearing the edge of the iron into irregularities, move it alternately from edge to edge of the stone with so much pressure on the different parts, as will reduce it to the required convexity [camber]; then lift the iron to see that it is ground to your mind - if it is not, the operation must be repeated, and the steel or basil side placed in its former position on the stone, otherwise the basil will be doubled; but if in the proper direction it will be hollow, which will be more as the diameter of the stone is less. The basil being brought to a proper angle, and the edge to a regular curvature, the roughness occasioned by the gritty particles of the grindstone may be taken away, by rubbing on a smooth flat wet stone or Turkey stone, sprinkling sweet oil on the surface; as the basil is generally ground something longer that [than?] what the iron would stand, for the quicker dispatch of w[h]etting it, you may incline the face of the iron nearer to the perpendicular, rubbing to and fro with the same inclination throughout: having done it to your mind, it may be fixed [in the plane]. When there is occasion to sharpen it again, it is commonly done upon a flat rub stone keeping the proper angle of position as before, then the edge may be finished on the Turkey stone as before: and at every time the iron gets dull or blunt, the sharpening is produced by the rub stone and Turkey stone, but in repeating this often the edge gets so thick that it requires so much time to bring it up, that recourse must be had again to the grindstone."
Hope this has been of some interest.
Don McConnell
Eureka Springs, AR
Don:
Missed your post first time around. Most interesting. It appears from the last couple of sentences that they used a hollow grind for purposes of taking thick blades down to a manageable edge.
Don't doubt for a moment that the old boys used high magnification to study edges, and really, don't question the value of the studies using today's microscopes. I suppose that I am just mildly skeptical of some of today's ideas on sharpening. It is a matter of degree, diminishing returns, and, time.
Joe
Joe,
some short answers:-
They used only natural stones-there was nowt else.
How did they use it? Most usually with water sometimes with spit, sometimes dry, but at all times they used Time-there was a lot of it around then-the same Time exists even today, but it just does not seem to go so far (;).
I have quite a selection of natural stones from various places in the world such as USA, Germany, Greece and latterly China. All are very fine and require the use of a rougher stone first in other words they are finishing stones.Most of them are good for a razor edge on a high carbon steel.
See the pics- the small one was used by my grandfather for his razors-hence the concave shape. I used it for sharpening pocket knives of yore which were made of h/c steel-such Joseph Rodgers and I.X.L.- and it worked better with spit-concave as hell but ideal for pocket knives. (If I flattened it I would two stones (;).
The bigger one came from Greece and is a marble of some sort-nowt wrong with it either. 6 inch ruler for scale.
But they all require a knack and some time available, and that is what the modern stones and other contraptions are sold on- they can work quickly and there is little learning curve.....
Philip,Regarding stones available everywhere, I got a kick out of this:"These stones come from Levant (Holy Land); the best is those which are of fair color, of a tight grain, plain & very uniform: this stone has the defect to have small whitish veins, either in length, or in thickness, which are as many hard spots which prevent it to sharpen well."Roubo c. 1774 France"There are three qualities of Turkey Stone (from the Holy Land), a dark blue to black variety and a lighter blue grey stone, both of which go to London…the third quality is much softer, almost white in color and easy to work, but it is very brittle, and consequently difficult to get in large and even pieces; this quality of stone is shipped principally to France."Holtzapffel c. 1840 EnglandRegarding time:"Though I say that Cabinetmakers sharpen their tools on the grinding stone, it is not used exclusively since they also use sandstones (rubb stone) like other Woodworkers; but it is the grinding stone that is of a better use, for it can sharpen with more haste."
A. J. Roubo 1774I guess they were in a hurry too!Adam
Thanks to both Philip and Adam and also to the others. This has become even more interesting than I expected.
Your points on time, Philip and Adam, are well taken.
As an observer, and anything but an expert, I wonder though if we have gone off the other end-- that is to say, from the slow but effective stones of yore, to fast modern methods, and then off into a quest for a state of perfection that could not have been known or even imagined by the old boys. The old boys appear to have been able to do well enough with the edges they could attain. When do the returns diminish?
Joe
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