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Thread: The goofy stones thread....

  1. #16
    Really interesting stuff ,David .Due to your writing, a while back I got out my yard sale buys from years ago ,and categorized them by scratch patterns on flat steel samples along with the stones I actually use . Starting to understand this subject a little better. My 1200 king stone is about the same grit as some Arkansas stones I have .Decided the other day to sharpen my pocket knife with an Arky. Kept feeling the edge, nothing happening.Finally I decided to try cutting wood with it. It was sharp! Same grit range as the water stone ,but a very different edge to the touch compared to the aggressive edge of that 1200. Don't know how particular you are about what oil you use but I'm using Ballistol because I can thin it with water to exactly the viscosity I want for faster cutting. Emulsified with distilled water it mixes without any errant globs and stays mixed. Still prefer the waterstone.

  2. #17
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    David,

    Great thread. I am not sure if the answer is above.

    I have a stone with an impression at one end that says "razor hone." If my reading above is correct it should work with water? I recently bought a couple of old razors for a couple of bucks. One of them looks like it can be rehabilitated into a user.

    What about flattening a razor hone?

    tia,

    jtk
    Last edited by Jim Koepke; 12-13-2012 at 1:09 PM.
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  3. #18
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    You can try wet and dry, but some of those old razor hones are monstrously hard. I'd use a diamond hone, and keep plenty of water around. Presumably, it's a brick red colored thing? Though it really could be any color. They vary in fineness a lot, and could be similar to a 2k grit hone or similar to a 12k grit hone, or anywhere between. If it seems like the ceramic hard kind of stone, you could take your granite plane lap and work it a little bit. Any metal that gets on it will not embed in it because they're usually too hard, you can just rinse off any gick that gets on the stone, but since they are hard, the surface needs to be worked down then to a reasonable grit or the coarse scratch lines in the stone will make it act more coarse than it would with a smooths surface. 400 grit seems to be a good place to stop, though you can go finer with sandpaper to condition the surface.

    They can usually be used dry, with water, or with lather. When they were new, they came with instructions to use them most of the time. Their intended use was to work back toward the bevel but presumably not quite get all the way to the edge, because their aggressive scratches carried all the way to the edge would rip up the face of a shaver and pull hairs.

    The instructions usually will say that at the first sign of dullness (which in an old razor is often due either to lack of stropping, or bluntness of the edge from wear), to pull a razor across them with light pressure 5 times on each side (so as not to let them work all the way to the edge and put nasty frizzle on the edge).

    They are the oldest example of modern waterstones that I've seen (some made in the 1800s), and they're really not a lot different than a lot of modern stones.

    Whatever you do, don't use oil on any of them that don't explicitly tell you to.

    All that said, use your woodworking stones to rehabilitate the razor, and until you've got a razor bevel you like, tape the spine of the razor with electrical tape to protect the spine. It's easy to put a lot of wear on the spine of a razor, and it's viewed as unfavorable wear. If you or anyone else on here gets to the point that you can't get a razor where you want it to shave comfortably, I'd be glad to do an initial hone as long as you send me something to send the razor back in. I barbicide them before after I hone and strop. It took me a little while, despite the stone fetish, to get a really comfortable and sharp shaving edge on a razor. Their flexibility makes them a little more sensitive to sharpen than woodworking tools. (Yeah, I thought that was mumbo jumbo hocum at first, but unfortunately it's not).
    Last edited by David Weaver; 12-13-2012 at 1:18 PM.

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mel Fulks View Post
    Really interesting stuff ,David .Due to your writing, a while back I got out my yard sale buys from years ago ,and categorized them by scratch patterns on flat steel samples along with the stones I actually use . Starting to understand this subject a little better. My 1200 king stone is about the same grit as some Arkansas stones I have .Decided the other day to sharpen my pocket knife with an Arky. Kept feeling the edge, nothing happening.Finally I decided to try cutting wood with it. It was sharp! Same grit range as the water stone ,but a very different edge to the touch compared to the aggressive edge of that 1200. Don't know how particular you are about what oil you use but I'm using Ballistol because I can thin it with water to exactly the viscosity I want for faster cutting. Emulsified with distilled water it mixes without any errant globs and stays mixed. Still prefer the waterstone.
    I'm not too particular about oil. I use WD40 for fine stones, and mineral oil for coarse ones. I've heard of people using ballistol and smiths honing solution (i've never tried either) because they can use them on a natural stone that's not been used with oil and still go back and rinse it off later and use the stone as a waterstone again.

    Arkansas edges definitely are different, they respond very well to more careful sharpening, and at the lower grits, much better to a bare leather strop than does a waterstone.

    Modern synthetic waterstones are still my favorites, though, despite all of thise foolishness. The next round of stuff I post will be more geared toward woodworking, though I really have a much softer spot for the fine finishers because they can do double duty in the bathroom and the shop.

  5. #20
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    Thanks David.

    Presumably, it's a brick red colored thing?
    My recollection is that it is kind of a dirty (brownish) brick red.

    Currently my beard is growing out, keeps my face warm in what is expected to be a cold winter. Trying to shave off a well grown beard with a disposable razor is an exercise in frustration. Haven't been able to find my straight razor that was bought way back in the 1960s.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  6. #21
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    washita stones

    1355601121799.jpg1355601239564.jpg1355601471110.jpg1355601382442.jpg

    Pictures of a couple of washita oilstones.

    The first is a Woodworker's Delight, I don't really think it's materially different from the pike/norton washita stone. Like that stone, it seems to be different than the soft arkansas and hard arkansas stones that most sellers sell now as newly mined stones. I don't know if they all come from the same place or not, but I don't think there are any current offerings like these. They are fairly coarse on the unworn surfaces but they break in to be a great touch-up stone for chisels. They don't make a polished edge, but they make a sharp edge that responds very well to a bare leather strop.

    The clean face on the woodworker's delight was actually on the bottom of the box, I turned it over. It's had little use but the front face is dirty.

    If there was an equivalence, it would be like the speed of a 1000 grit waterstone with the finish after stropping of a 3000 grit waterstone, but it's a different kind of edge vs. a waterstone.

    I think the woodworker's delight is similar to a pike/norton lilywhite washita, but I have never been able to get one (a pike lilywhite - or rosyred) inexpensively.

    The pike #1 is the same type of stone and same fineness as a lilywhite or rosyred washita, but it has some inconsistency in its appearance and density. The inconsistency has no effect on its use.

    If you only had one oilstone (and the carbon steel tools to go with it), one of these in 2x6 or 2x8 is a really nice stone to have.

    This type of stone knocked out (or almost did) all of the other stones in the UK in the 1800s, because it was fine enough for work but fast enough to be used by itself and much faster than the charnley forest, llyn idwalls and hone slates that were common at the time. You can get a sense of its prevalence increasing in the UK between the Holtzapffel turning books. Even now, the non-branded washita stones bring more in the UK than in the US, despite the fact that they are probably more widespread there.

    Anything that's branded as a new washita stone and not coming from norton now is not similar to this, and can be avoided.

    These are nice stones, though. One in good shape for $50 or less is nice to have, as long as it's not beat to death. Some of the ones that show up on ebay have a huge dip in them, what looks like almost a quarter of an inch from heavy use.
    Last edited by David Weaver; 12-15-2012 at 3:31 PM.

  7. #22
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    Frictionite Stones

    Frictionite hones (and variants) were made by American Hone Company, and the most popular ones that remain were made for razor hones. They produced All kinds of hones/stones, though. Early on, they were in Olean NY, and produced stuff under their label and stuff under private label for other makers like Dubl Duck (which is a popular vintage premium razor and hone name).

    Somewhere mid-century, they moved to Moravia, Iowa.

    I don't know what the abrasive is in them, but they claimed it's something that came from rhodesia, and that they folded up shop because it became unavailable.

    They are the nicest feeling synthetic hones I have ever used of any type, and George mentioned that they were stocked for the craftsmen at Wmsbg, and that some there are still using them.

    Their price makes them esoteric, though. It turns out they are monstrously popular with axe men in australia - in competitions like the stihl timbersports, but that are done at a community level rather than at a professional competitive level. They drive the price of them up super high. As far as their fineness, the underlying abrasives don't seem to be any finer than anything we have now, but the binder for them is super smooth.

    If they had never been driven up in price like they have, they would be great stones for chisels and carving tools.

    I am generally sticking only to vintage stones and natural stones. This type of stone was made relatively unchanged since somewhere around 1900, they had serious staying power.

    P1060120.jpgP1060297.jpgP1060249.jpgP1060251.jpg

  8. #23
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    This is a really interesting thread Dave. The washitas are of particular interest....I hope to run across one some day. I might use oil stones more if I had one. I've heard that those types of deposits are still plentiful in the current mines (at least in Halls). I wonder if this is true and if so I wonder why no one is producing stones out of the stuff.

  9. #24
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    Halls probably has a lot of soft stone deposits, but it must not be like the Pike mine deposits in terms of properties.

    Joel would know why Norton wouldn't keep extracting the stones, it probably has to do with it being expensive to mine a few stones when the market is limited. I'd presume they open the mine, extract a bunch of material and cut and market the stones until that extraction effort is exhausted.

  10. #25
    David , On this "feed back" thing you sometimes mention,I can sharpen a dull knife on the 1200 waterstone and tell when it is sharp by the sound. With the washita ,as I posted the other day, I get no signal. Is there any " feed back" with those?

  11. #26
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    I can't tell anything on a washita, either. I guess you have to go just by feeling for a burr on a chisel, or in the knife's case, repetition with a little lighter pressure at the end, since they're not incredibly fast with light pressure once they're settled in. I wouldn't want to make a huge burr on a knife unless it was damaged.

  12. #27
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    Who else has some oddball stuff? Turkish oilstones (flaky soft novaculite from crete or somewhere near there), norway rag stones, tam o shanters, hindostan hones, queer creek oilstones, llyn idwal, dragon's tongue slates, .....?

    I have a couple of more others and then gobs of synthetics, but I'll leave the synthetics out of it. Well, and some japanese natural stones and comments about them that might be helpful to prevent people from wasting money or overspending.

    I know there are some flea market lurkers who've gotten some interesting things, anything interesting is always appreciated.

  13. #28
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    Dave,

    You need to develop a web site with detailed colored photos of identified stones, large enough that the rest of us can compare our "unknowns" to! I've been fortunate enough over the years to have picked up a number of vintage oilstones, with a few having labels for identification. But for every stone with a label, I got 2 or 3 without and can only make a wild guess as to what they are.

    The ultimate test, though, happens when you take a tool to the stone to test ability to sharpen.

    T.
    If the thunder don't get you, the lightning will.

  14. #29
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    I know where a big Tam O'Shanter is located. Still has the label, though just barely. What's the story on them? I think there's still a Queer Creek stone still in the box, too.

  15. #30
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    They're from scotland, I don't know what kind of hone they are (like slate, chert, novaculite, or whatever). They're out there in different shades. Somehow, I got a piece of gray in a bag of stones, but it's too small to even play with. The gray piece I have is a fine stone despite the look of a coarse stone at first, the whitish ones were an "it" stone in the razor community for a while. Eschers and and some japanese naturals seem to be the it stones for razors now, though.

    If that stone is not too expensive, it's worth buying as a flip. Figure that they are comparable in fineness to very fine oilstones and I think they're hard stones.

    With label for any vintage branded stone is far better than without. If you have the label, it's a tamoshanter. If not, people will end up asking "how do you know it's a ___"

    But not much else looks like it.
    Last edited by David Weaver; 12-17-2012 at 8:59 PM.

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