What type of stones do you use Toni? I reckon you probably have more experience than most of us put together so I'd be interested to see what your setup looks like.
Hi Ryan.
Along the years I have accumulated quite a few stones that were from my dad, other were given to me by the master carver who also gave me his tools, and lately some more thanks to internet. Finding good stones here is difficult, basically becasue one doesn't know where to look for them, even in "speciallized" shops either they do not have them or don't know what to advice you.
Of all these ones that I'm showing here I only use a small part of them, as the "bad" ones are relegated to oblivion.
These were the first stones I had they were given to me by that master carver about 30 years ago, they are natural, worked well enough and I used them until I got others that were better. The thin one on the left is a reshaped stone originally sold for honing shaving straight razors. He used the cigar shaped one tho hone the interior edge of semicircular gouges.
These ones I bought them about 6 years ago, they are almost useless, specially the ones on the left with the grooves. Maybe some day I will reshape them and try to use them. I think that they are water stones, but I'm not sure.
These are the ones that I most use, a medium grain India bench stone and a cristolon medium grain square slipstone and a couple of india slip stones of different thickness. These square ones are quite good because they come with 3 edges already shaped in 3 different radius and the third one is flat so you can shape it at will.
These are a similar setup as the previous but they are traslucent hard arkansas. The rectangular one on the left was given to me as a present by my dad about 20 years ago. The others I bought them together with the india square ones of the previous pic. These two sets are the ones I use.
These ones were from my dad, they are of very different and fine grains, these stones were used in a metalographic lab were he worked to prepare the metal samples to be inspected on the microscope. I used some of them when I started carving but as they need to shaped accordingly I stopped using them. The two slips work but I use them very seldom, specially because I do not sharpen my thing gouges as often as the bigger ones.
So as you can see my collection is made of errors, heirloom stones, and others. I also have some self made hand strops, and this set up of different hard felt wheels with green compound that speed up the stropping when carving a piece.
One of the things I can tell you is that with time I find myself using less and less different stones, and mainly those that I find work well. Another thing that I can tell is that they are all oil stones, which I find better suited for carving gouges as water stones wear too fast IMHO. Besides you never risk getting rust in your gouges.
Later on I found
http://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/ which is a heaven for sharpening stones and accesories, I whish I had known them long ago.
Hope this helps.