Quote Originally Posted by Wildtim View Post
Bart, you are a little confused.
That's true for sure. Hence my desire to get into this swamp of particles.

Quote Originally Posted by Wildtim View Post
Thats why a Norton is faster than a Sun Tiger hone, they probably use exactly the same medium just in far different proportions.
A valid point for sure, but wouldn't the Norton actually cut more aggressively as well, in that case.
If it contains more particles, it probably releases fresh particles at a higher ratio too. And we all know that fresh sandpaper leaves deeper scratches than used sandpaper.

In addition to the grit designation discussion, sifting particles may be the starting point in the production of synthetic hones, but of course that's not the fact with natural hones. Only a few days ago, Rob Celis of Ardennes Coticule wrote in a thread that the Belgian Blue approximately contains 4000 garnets per inch² and the Coticule 8000 garnets per inch². Although he suggested as well that the grit rating of Belgian Naturals is also inspired by product orientation on a market that's dominated by grit/mesh numbers. (I can hardly blame them for that).

My point is merely that I feel people are far to often focussed on the grit numbers, a bit like everyone seems focussed on "Watt" when buying new speakers and on Megapixels when buying a new camera. Nothing wrong with that for the avarage honer/listener/photographer, but we're in the advanced honing section, so why not get carried away a bit?

Best regards,
Bart.