Thread: Help with choosing a finishing stone

Originally Posted by kevint

I think if you are going to evaluate a stone, you should shave off that stone. Going on to a paste only muddies the water.

A huge +1.

Originally Posted by PonderingTurtle

Yes. But it is the claims about needing 12 step sharpening techniques, changeing stones repeatedly and the like. These at least here often seem to be taken as proveable statements.


But it is easy to say you can feel the distinction when you know what the distinction is.

I, for one, never claim that you need anywhere near that many steps. I've said that you need a bevel setting stone (around 1k), a medium stone that is fast cutting enough to remove the scratches from whichever stone you chose for bevel setting (for me, this is up to 8k) and a finishing stone that is fine enough to shave off of. I usually don't use more than 4 stones/hones from start to finish. And neither do most other guys around here. The fact that we may have more stones doesn't meean that they are necessary, just that at certain times, it's helpful to have different kinds of stone to work with. More is nice, but not necessary, I will never tell someone that they MUST have X stone to get a good shave (you can search these forums for the kind of simple, customized advice that I, and most of the other guys, give to folks with issues if you want).

Also, you haven't shown how one is supposed to know the distinction prior to using a stone. How am I supposed to be able to bias myself in favor of a stone that is unidentifiable? How am I supposed to bias myself in favor of one coticule rather than another? The fact is that there are differences that are detectable, maybe most are within a range of diminishing returns, but there are stones out there that perform very differently from others of the same compostion and location.

And you mentioned earlier that Audiophiles commit a logical fallacy when they claim that they can hear tones even if you can't. This isn't a logical fallacy, maybe an invalid proof, but not a fallacious argument. They do have more authority than the average person, you would have to show them using their expertise in a field that does not apply to them for that argument to be fallacious.

You may in fact be commiting an "undisputed middle" fallacy with this conversation, the premise that sensations are influenced by preconcieved notions has disputable elements between it and your conclusion that rock-hounds are mistaken in their assessment of natural stones because of that bias. You'll have to resolve those elements before your case is air-tight.

Anyway, I don't intend to make this into an "I'm right and your wrong" conversation, I've acknowledged that you are speaking from a truthful basis and that it may be a factor in some cases. But you have, thus far, not shown how it happens to the extent that you are claiming.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

And you mentioned earlier that Audiophiles commit a logical fallacy when they claim that they can hear tones even if you can't. This isn't a logical fallacy, maybe an invalid proof, but not a fallacious argument. They do have more authority than the average person, you would have to show them using their expertise in a field that does not apply to them for that argument to be fallacious.

I would really dispute that. It is saying that someone who has studied homeopathy for years knows more about medicine than the average person.

You are totaly ignoreing that your perceptions are bias. THis is shown by the audiophiles well, but it is a constant. This means that if you want to make statements that X is better than Y, such baised methods of determining it are very poor, something you still do not admit.

It is something that effects all perception. This is the problem that people claim that animal studies of homeopathy prove that it works, because animals will not be subject to their perceptions to create the placebo effect. This is wrong because the placebo effect also effects how people observe the animals and change their enterpretation of the events. This is why people sell water to spray into a pets water to releave their pain.

All perceptions are subject to such bias. This is why in any serious science the sort of subjective statements being used here as evidence are known to be useless for proving a claim.

Maybe the razor itself is just a perception. Why don't we just perceive our faces as bbs each morning? And why don't we perceive others' objections to our perception as agreement to ours?

No, this thread hasn't been hijacked. That's just your biased perception

Guys. Knock it off.
Bring the discussion back to the topic, or start a new discussion in the Conversation forum to continue this off-topic discussion.

Originally Posted by Chimensch

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.

Wonderful! We should all be so lucky