Thread: Help with choosing a finishing stone

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

And yeah, many times enthusiasm can cause a guy with a brand new hone to rave about it like it's the best in the world when there's no way to know whether that's even remotely true, but outside of the Nakayama that I bought from O_S, nearly all of my stones have been picked up dirt cheap on ebay, at flea markets, or antique stores (more than one Escher for less than $10, not to mention the Coticules, those things are everywhere). I have no reason to favor any one of them over the others, save for their actual performance.

Percieved performance.

The problem is that while I am sure some of the things people do make a real difference, I am also sure some of them do not, but create a percieved difference. Butall human perception is faulty, and heavily influenced by what we want to believe.

So the only way to test it is with proper double blinded experiments, as it is not a question of what is the sharpest edge, but the most shaveable.

As shown in my reference of the tests using wine but telling people it cost different ammounts, they used MRI's to show that their experiances with the same wine where different depending on what they believed it cost.

The same thing happens to everyone all the time.

And money is not the only thing that matters. The hone you found in a fleamarket that is old and is no longer made or mined is also exclusive, and as such makes a strong narative.

The point about the cost is not that what someone paid for it effects their experiance, it is what someone believes about the quality of something will effect their experiance of that quality.