Making my own sharpening stones

I previously wrote about the knife sharpening kit I made with bought items. As I was learning how to use them, I also learned that you can make your own whetstones from natural stones or tiles. So this evening, I set myself to do some experiments.

Sandstone sharpening stone

If found this flatish sandstone slate in the corner of the garage and thought the grain is good enough for a coarse sharpening stone. I just need it to have straight edges for ease of handing and a flat surface for the actual sharpening.

Luckily, few years ago, someone threw away a tile saw, which I initially thought was a table saw. Realising what it was, I left it unused until now.

I initially planned to cut a rectangular piece but then I thought I might as well cut it square to have more surface area that I can use for an axe blade.

Being sandstone, the cut was easy and fast but oh my how much dust it made. Next time I will do it in the garden.

Next step is to take the cut slate to the belt sander with a 40 grit belt and flatten the faces of the stone. The bottom side was only roughly sanded.

I also sanded an off-cut piece of sandstone to try as a pocket sharpener.

Here are my two homemade coarse whetstones. I cleaned off the rock dust of the stone and ran my fingers on the sanded face and it very promising.

Here is a close-up view of the sanded surface to show the grain.

Tile sharpening stone

As mentioned in my previous post, I was going to sand the back of a little rectangular piece of tile I found left in the garage by the previous house owners. This piece of tile has the perfect dimensions for a pocket sharpening stone so I don't have to mess with the tile cutter. The only issue I find with the tile is it's super fragile, if I drop it it will break in half. I learned that because I dropped the initial piece I selected for the previous post...

The grain is finer than the sandstone so I might use this after an initial sanding on the sandstone.

In a next post, I will do a sharpening test on these two stones and see how well they work.

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