Sharpening

I cross posted this on SMC but figure what the hey, I'm lazy and might as well copy to the Blog.

I finished the bath Wall Cabinet and it is hung. 

Work is insane, when between projects and tired from work like now my shop offers a sanctuary but little is done. Mostly I will spend my time sitting at the work bench holding tools, rearranging tools, and tool maintenance. 

BTW, I've round heels when it comes to sharpening systems and am rarely a purest to any one way but lean towards use of natural stones. 

Last night was one of those times but I had a little extra energy and as I've been thinking of adding Jnat stones to the mix I thought I would do an A/B test of diamond/oil stone/strop vs. Shapton ceramic stones. To make it interesting I used my normal freehand method on the oil stones and the new LN jig on the Shapton's. The irons were two 2" LV PM-v11, mounted in a LN #4 and a LV #4. While the test was purely subjective, I can say there was little to no difference in the shavings or the surface left. Effort to plane, again little difference but if I had to pick one I would pick the oil stone iron. That of course could just be my natural bias to oil stones. The "bing" of the bevel, the Shapton's win hands down, the Shapton's sure can polish iron. After many passes on some Cherry with each I looked at the edges through a 20X loop and the oil stone edge was still pristine, the Shapton, good but not perfect.

As I said: purely subjective, could the results be repeated by someone else....maybe, maybe not. Bottom line, I found it instructive and confirming my bias toward natural stones. AS always with anything wood....YMMV.

ken