Hello all. Looking for some recommendations for sharpening stones for the bonsai tools. Fairly new to this, so if wet stone do you use an oil or water, or maybe it doesn’t matter (?). Any feedback appreciated…thanks
It might help, it might not but it is interesting to watch.
A maintenance man at my work place sharpened mine with a grinder so I think it depends how expensive your tool is, what the material is and your skill set.
I think you could use a stone, a grinder, a file etc etc depending on what your knowledge base is.
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As I recall Ryan uses water stones. Personally I’ve always used oil stones. Hard Arkansas, Soft Arkansas, and Washita - in order of fine to coarse. I would never recommend using a grinder or file unless you want to ruin your cutting edge. Ryan did a livestream on tool sharpening a couple of years or so ago. I’m sure you can find it if you search the library.
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@Roger_Snipes yes sir. That’s the live stream I watched. Your specific feedback and information was great. Appreciate the feedback…
Is there a link to the video or the name of the video?
@tangled_tanuki it was in the Bonsai Mirai Academy titled Bonsai Basics 101 - Tool Sharpening. About a 5-minute video.
Here is a link to the tool sharpening stream in the library:
For some reason the link won’t paste into the reply, but if you go to the library and search on “Tool sharpening” you will get three or four results, one of which is Tool Maintenance. That’s the one where Ryan goes through sharpening procedures.
I haven’t used them for bonsai yet but I use Norton water stones for all my hand planes and my straight razor. Trust me they are worth every penny.
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I sharpen all my knives and tools using Naniwa lobster stones (water stones). #200-400 grit for putting a new edge/removing chips, #1000 grit to sharpen or maintain sharpness, and #2000 and above for polish. Just soak them for the recommended amount of time and keep them wet while you sharpen. There is technique involved so check some videos on YouTube if you don’t know how to sharpen tools/scissors etc.
If you take your tools to a Japanese knife shop to sharpen they will use water stones.
You can get a 200-1000 combo if you want for something quick and cheap on Amazon as well but I prefer to use quality waterstones for my good chefs knives so I have them anyways for my tools.
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