Sharpening - it’s always about the Sharpening

[Srick]

I've been at the sharpening game for years. I adore razor sharp tools - I hate the process of getting there. And like so many of us, I have a collection of oil stones, water stones, diamond hones and special wheels all gathering dust. Sharpening has always been a pain and I have screwed up more than my share of edges when I got sloppy.

But I may have finally found my holy grail.

Taylor Tools (taytools.com) has two systems that you should check out: a drill press system and a glass plate flattening system. The secret is self - adhesive 3M Cubitron abrasive disks which are specifically made for sharpening steel.

The drill press system has two acrylic disks with aluminum hubs that get inserted into a drill press. One is for gross sharpening and has a stick on disk of a coarse grit (ie 120) on one side and 220 on the other. The second disk has 220 on one side and a leather strop on the other. Then, I use 1000 grit Aluminum oxide adhered to a glass plate for the final hone (plus one more strop).

The disk system alone gets your blade pretty sharp. Adding in the honing step gets you to a “paper slicing” sharp edge in a few seconds.

Even my dullest tools have taken only minutes to sharpen. There’s no risk of burning the tool like an abrasive wheel, and by using the wooden jig (which you can purchase or build) it’s very easy to get a consistent angle on your tool.

This is the fastest and easiest sharpening system that I have ever used.

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P.S. - the concept of using an abrasive paper\medium for sharpening is not new by any means, but this Cubitron is amazing stuff (as is the technology behind it - do a search!). So you don’t need the Taytool system to make it work, but it is very convenient and reasonably priced.

[MaineGeezer]

Using abrasive paper as the abrasive when sharpening was a reveoation for me when I tried it. I've been using the 3M gold Stickit stuff that comes in rolls. The process I worked is more cumbersome than what you describe, but the thing that makes it great as fas as I'm concerned is that it's FAST compared to using a stone, especially in the early stages when one may be wanting to take off "a lot" to get rid of a chip in the cutting edge. Anyway, if the 3M Cubitron abrasive paper is notably faster than the #M Stickit, it must really be something. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the review of taytools.com