After learning how to sharpen my chisels and planes with the scary sharp method, I decided to invest in diamond stones. Some time ago at the makerspace I saw some scrap oak with “help yourself” written on it, and as I still needed to build a holder for the three stones, I took some pieces and thanked in my head the anonymous donor.
The scrap wood had been sawn on the machine so it only needed some planing to make a small board.
After that I chose the pieces arrangement and proceeded to the glue up:
The stones are 3 x 8 inches, I sized the board accordingly. The next step was to carve the recesses to host the stones. This was the occasion to test the router plane I had bought a bit before. Funnily enough, it didn’t go as smooth as I thought: I wanted to go too fast, and the sole of the router was too rocky. Both my faults, as the router itself is a fantastic tool worth the investment. I am going to add a wooden sole to it for this kind of use cases. I cleaned up a bit and with some extra chiseling I could dry fit the three stones.
The last step was to fix the stones to the the board itself. As I have some gaps between the wood and the stones I went for epoxy. I applied some coats of Danish oil to protect the wood and then I set the stones in place.
All in all it was a fun project to do. It’s a beautiful, solid and useful object/ I am enjoying it every time I sharpen my tools. I have some wood left from this board that I am going to use for the strop to complete the sharpening set.
And many thanks once again to the anonymous wood donor!