Thread: Help with choosing a finishing stone

OK I have 2 more pennies to spend, I am not sure where the misconception has arisen that the Shapton 16k leaves a harsh edge????
I have seen it twice today, I would respectfully disagree on this, however I would add that if you try and "Sharpen" with it you will get a harsh edge.... Shaptons do cut more aggressively, and you can go farther than you could with other finishing hones, so you have to be more aware that you are only polishing the edge..... Basically a maximum of 20 light laps should be all that are necessary on a 16k, if it isn't sharp enough then, you didn't do the pre-sharpening right..... Again this is JMHO here....

Bart, do you use a yellow belgian between the blue and the nakayama in your progression or do you just go straight to the nakayama from the blue?

Originally Posted by gssixgun

OK I have 2 more pennies to spend, I am not sure where the misconception has arisen that the Shapton 16k leaves a harsh edge????
I have seen it twice today, I would respectfully disagree on this, however I would add that if you try and "Sharpen" with it you will get a harsh edge.... Shaptons do cut more aggressively, and you can go farther than you could with other finishing hones, so you have to be more aware that you are only polishing the edge..... Basically a maximum of 20 light laps should be all that are necessary on a 16k, if it isn't sharp enough then, you didn't do the pre-sharpening right..... Again this is JMHO here....

I agree 100%. I routinely shave with razors off the 16K Shapton, and they deliver nice shaves. I find a little CrOx immediately after honing makes things very comfortable. I have found that edge sharpness off the 16K is not an issue.

I've recently purchased a vintage Escher Blue/green and look forward to comparing it to the 16K Shapton.

As, in my eyes, it is somewhat relevant to the subject at hand >here< are some pictures of bevels with different stones Zowda took during a test. Reposting just in case some people have yet to see them.

You can scroll down and click on a link that leads to pictures of the different >edges< as well.
Wish someone with the time, passion and hardware could do it with some more stones, if for no other reason that it wiggles my jibbles to watch the pictures. Personally I'm very partial towards the 16k Shap

Edit: ahh, looking at that no slurry 12k Chinese bevel picture makes me feel all warm and fuzzy

Originally Posted by gssixgun

OK I have 2 more pennies to spend, I am not sure where the misconception has arisen that the Shapton 16k leaves a harsh edge????
I have seen it twice today, I would respectfully disagree on this, however I would add that if you try and "Sharpen" with it you will get a harsh edge.... Shaptons do cut more aggressively, and you can go farther than you could with other finishing hones, so you have to be more aware that you are only polishing the edge..... Basically a maximum of 20 light laps should be all that are necessary on a 16k, if it isn't sharp enough then, you didn't do the pre-sharpening right..... Again this is JMHO here....

Glen,
Sorry If I insulted the Shapton Gods with my assumption that synthetic hones leave a harsher edge.
(Luckily I find myself under the protection of Coticule, a most powerful earthly Demon)
If you read my usual overly long writing well, you know that everything I said about non-diamond synthetic hones is all based upon forum rumors, although I was not addressing the Shapton 16K directly. I also think that "harshness" and "too sharp" are very close related, once we start talking about ultra-keen razors. I believe that the often reported harshness of a Feather blade is a totally different thing than the grittiness of an insufficiently polished DMT1200 edge, or a fallen apart wire edge for that matter. Maybe the inherent smoothness of many natural hones, and Coticules in peculiar, has a lot to do with their tendency to "massage" some ever so slight roundness to the edge. If you have sharpness to spare, that can be just the feature you need for a comfortable edge. I don't know. All I know is that after a year of intensive, obsessive yet methodous honing trial and error with only Belgian hones on a DMT1200-produced bevel, I believe I find myself at the barrier of what is physically possible with my combination of hones. My dilemma at the moment is whether I am going to add a Shapton 16K after the coticule, or a Naniwa 10K before the coticule, or a Shapton 8K before, or...????Just accept that my edges are great as the are?
Anyway, my apologies for the Shapton offence.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Bart, do you use a yellow belgian between the blue and the nakayama in your progression or do you just go straight to the nakayama from the blue?

I have tried many combinations. The nakayma with a slurry and without. Right off the Belgian Blue, after the yellow with slurry, after the blue and the yellow with water. In general, slurry on my Nakayama speeds things up without a noticeable downside. (although I usually take my time and hone without slurry on the Nakayama). It takes considered more laps after the yellow with slurry to gain the loss of keenness back. Right after the blue is quicker. After a blue and a coticule with water, it takes very few laps before the results max out, depending a bit on how good the results after the Coticule turned out. Either way, all methods lead to the same great edges in the end.
At the moment, I'm running a set of experiments, honing 2 groups of 4 Double Arrows. They all are honed till the Blue level, then two layers of tape are added and they each receive 20 laps on one of three Coticules or the Nakayama.
This creates a microbevel carying only the scratch pattern of the finishing hone. The razors are compared, two at once (left side of face against right side), group A by myself, group B by a straight shaving pall. First results show that the edges are all very close within range, high up in the quality zone that we are generally able to reach, apart from using CrO.
For creating such a tiny microbevel 20 laps are plenty, but with normal honing, depending on the width of the actual bevel, I need to do much more than that.

Bart.

That was great Bart...
I am still laughing my friend, I did just have to sacrifice a vestal virgin the the Shapton Gods though

Originally Posted by gssixgun

The variability of the grit on natural stones, is the exact reason that I don't prefer them...

I need to know that my finishing hone is measured at 16k or 12k or 30k...

But what does that do for the steel?

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

But what does that do for the steel?

The steel knows...... trust me it knows

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

Well, since many of the hones you listed are natural stones, there's also the issue of variability. My CH12k is as fine as some of my Thuringians. I have a Coticule that is the hardest hone I've ever used and is as coarse as most Belgian Blues, but then another one is almost too soft and polishes better than the CH12k. One of my "regular" thuringians is finer than one of my Eschers, but not the others. And then there's the Japanese hones that run the full range of characteristics depending on what your looking for.

Confused?

There are many routes that lead to "the best edge", but your current setup is good enough that you may want to consider any further acquisitions to be for the sake of experimentation rather than purely for improvement.

This is exactly the kind of post that makes me shy away from natural hones. I want to have some idea what sort of stone I will be buying.

Originally Posted by PonderingTurtle

This is exactly the kind of post that makes me shy away from natural hones. I want to have some idea what sort of stone I will be buying.

OK, here comes the "troublemaker" ... a lot of these hone discussions remind me of audiophiles arguing about equipment that reproduces frequency ranges that the human ear (or at least mine) is not capable of hearing. For many years I went from a Swaty to the strop and the results were fine. Now, that I've been educated by SRP, I go from a coticule to a four-sided paddle strop with Dovo Red, Dovo Black, chromium oxide and 0.25 micron diamond paste. I am delighted with the results. I recently bought a Chinese 12K out of curiousity but it didn't improve anything so I don't use it anymore. I'm not criticizing those who have made hones into a hobby. All I wanted to do was to find a system that gave me BBS with no irritation. Having found that, I'm moving on and won't be experimenting with any more hones.